Peter Obi’s ascendance appears to have ripped up the Igbo self-determination playbook.

The just released Nigeria 2021 Human Rights Report confirms what observers and rights advocates already know about the Nigerian state’s execrable human rights record and the increasingly dismal daily experience of Nigerians. Released annually since 1977 by the United States Department of State, the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are a critical gauge of the human rights situation across the world.

In October, an American scholar argued in a Washington Times op-ed that the United States should designate the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a secessionist group in Nigeria’s South East region, as a terrorist group. Doing so would be a mistake that risks causing a massive human rights crisis in Nigeria and West Africa.

Nigeria’s State Security Service (SSS) in July arrested three Israeli filmmakers and their Nigerian liaison. Following apparent, unpublicized diplomatic intervention, the three Israelis were released; none were ever charged after eighteen days in jail. Their Nigerian liaison was held an additional eleven days before she was released, also never having been charged.

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has ordered residents of Nigeria’s South East region—largely Igbo-dominated areas of the former Biafra, the break-away territory that tried and failed to establish an independent state during the 1967-70 civil war—to stay at home every Monday until their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is released from jail.