Secession and Independence Movements

Tension is rising in Nigeria over secessionist claims by “Biafran” organizations in southeast Nigeria. The Nigeria Security Tracker for the week of September 9 to 15 documents significant bloodshed in fighting between the security forces and alleged Biafran secessionist movements. The Nigerian army is currently conducting an exercise, called Operation Python Dance II, in the territory of the 1967-70 secessionist state of Biafra. Observers claim that the soldiers participating in the exercise are committing widespread human rights abuses against civilians, so much so that a human rights umbrella organization based in the region is preparing to “monitor” it. Meanwhile, the army and the security services, joined by the southern governors, have labeled the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), its leader Nnamdi Kanu, and other pro-Biafran groups as “terrorist.” Kanu and other’s associated with the IPOB have gone into hiding and the security services are seeking their arrest. His lawyer has not heard from him since September 14, and fears the worst. (Kanu is on trial for 'treasonable felony charges,' but was granted bail for health reasons.) Meanwhile, there is a swirl of charges and counter charges of ethnic and religious attacks across the country but tied in various ways to the southeast region. The security services claim the IPOB is securing weapons and uniforms and creating a “secret” army. The IPOB maintains that it is a peaceful movement for self-determination. However, an IPOB spokesman is warning that the movement might resort to violence. He said that the organization’s Directorate of State, headquartered in Germany, would meet soon “to vote on the vitality or otherwise of continuing our struggle in this non-violent manner.”  Another Biafra secessionist organization, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) denies that the security services and the southeast governors have the authority to declare organizations to be “terrorist,” a point also made by others, including Senate President Bukola Saraki. Members of parliament from the southeast are calling for the “de-escalation” of military operations. Human rights groups are saying that it is the police that should be concerned with maintaining internal order in the country, not the army. There are similarities between the current Biafra secessionist movement and the Biafra of the 1967-70 civil war, but the differences are perhaps more significant. The Biafra of the civil war was a territorial state. It inherited the administrative structures of one of the three regions that then made up Nigeria, and its army was led by officers who had defected from the Nigerian army. As it was a territorial state, the Nigerian federal forces defeated it by taking back the seceded territory, just as Union forces reoccupied formerly Confederate territory until little was left of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. The current movement for Biafra is more diffuse and administers no territory. The formal institutions of government in the region are opposed to secession, as has been made clear by the southern governors. Nor is it clear that the current movement has the widespread domestic support that Biafra enjoyed, at least during the early days of the civil war. The concern must be, however, that abuses by the security service and mismanagement by the federal authorities could fan the flames. The decision of the security services to designate Biafran secessionist organizations as “terrorists” does not help and is probably illegal.    

This is a guest post by Carl Unegbu. Carl is a Nigerian-born American lawyer and journalist. He lives in New York City. Nigeria’s old Biafra problem has reared its head again and with it, the specter of disintegration. For a thirty-month period between 1967 and 1970, Nigeria was embroiled in a bloody civil war as its eastern region unsuccessfully tried to secede from the country under the banner of the Republic of Biafra. The latest episode in the Biafra crisis revolves around the arrest on October 19, of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of a secession movement called the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Kanu is presently facing trial for sedition and treason. Since his arrest, protesters demanding both his release and an independent Biafra have repeatedly clashed violently with security forces with resulting deaths. On the international front, the European Union’s foreign policy chief recently weighed in on the matter with a policy statement and the controversy is on its way to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. To be sure, though the wider Ibo community do not support secession, the grievances about ethnic Ibo marginalization touted by the Pro-Biafra activists resonate highly with them. In context, Nigeria by character is fundamentally a tribal society with longstanding distrust among the various ethnic groups in addition to deep seated primordial loyalties. Rightly or wrongly, most ethnic Ibos believe that since the end of the civil war in 1970 and prior to the arrival of Goodluck Jonathan at the helm in 2010, Nigeria’s central government deliberately pursued a discriminatory policy aimed at marginalizing the Ibos. It is this tribal factor that largely explains the overwhelming Ibo support for Jonathan’s re-election despite the administration’s unfortunate record of high corruption and underperformance. By contrast, Muhammadu Buhari, a northern Muslim, is particularly viewed with suspicion and distrust in much of Iboland. Incidentally, separatist impulses and/or cries of marginalization in Nigeria are not limited to the Ibos in the Southeast. For example, after the mysterious death of Moshood Abiola as a political prisoner in 1998, separatist sentiments were heard among his Yoruba kinsmen in the Southwest around that period. Also, there was deep frustration and deadly violence in northern Nigeria after Jonathan defeated Buhari in 2011 amidst claims that the presidency should have been rotated to the north as allegedly promised – a dispute that terribly aggravated the Boko Haram problem and deeply divided the north and the south. However, the surprising success of the National Conference of 2014 offers Nigeria a silver lining, namely, that Nigeria’s diverse constituent groups seemingly want to continue coexisting with one another if fair terms of coexistence can be arranged. Among the most valuable proposals adopted at the National Conference was the provision for power rotation among the regions in the country. Given the country’s tribal character with its unfortunate, albeit understandable, obsession with control of the national government, the power rotation option for all its rather wooden or inelegant character, seems particularly utilitarian. Quite simply, Nigerians need to take the pragmatic step of first forging a country prior to attempting to build or develop it. The notion of “power rotation” may seem crude to democratic purists, yet, each society being different, it does have genuine utility in the current Nigerian context, comparable to the archaic device of the electoral college in American presidential contests, which made the new constitution acceptable to the smaller states. In this regard, Nigeria’s National Conference of 2014 and the American Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia can be viewed as parallel events aimed at renegotiating and improving the terms of national coexistence. In the end, nothing short of proactive measures by Nigeria is needed. And there is genuine opportunity in this crisis for the Nigerian government to profoundly strengthen the country. Since the continued detention of Kanu in disobedience of court orders is simply incompatible with the rule of law in a democratic society, the government is bound to release him. However, the government can take the wind out of the sails of Kanu and other ethnic separatists around the country by publicly committing itself to a reasonable timeline in which to implement the National Conference recommendations. This path offers the Nigerian government a genuine opportunity for a positive outcome in the current crisis.

While those of us who love Nigeria have been fixated on Boko Haram and the discontents of the North, the Ibo-dominated parts of the south have been heating up. Separatists that invoke the defeated Biafra in the 1967-70 civil war are increasingly visible. On December 2, at least 8,000 pro-separatist Ibo youth demonstrated at the Niger Bridge at Onitsha, Anambra state, the link between Nigeria’s south east and the west. At least eight demonstrators and two policeman were killed. The demonstrators burned the city’s central mosque and attacked trucks belonging to the Dangote Group, owned by northern billionaire Aliko Dangote. Meanwhile, the amnesty that reduced violence in the adjacent, largely non-Ibo, riverine, oil-producing parts of the country is scheduled to end in December. President Muhammadu Buhari has said that it will not be renewed, but that there will be enhanced state investment in the region—at a time when government revenue is falling because of the decline in international oil prices. To help sort through developments, especially in Iboland, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has published a quick summary of events in question-answer form. It provides a good, quick summary of the Biafra episode and identifies the larger groups active on behalf of current Biafra separatism, including an introduction to their intricate politics. The ICG concludes that at present there is little Ibo sentiment for a repeat of the 19670-70 war of secession. But, it also warns that in the aftermath of December 2, the risk of violence could escalate, especially if the federal government and the security services mishandle the situation. The ICG warning is well placed. The flash point of the current round of demonstrations was the government’s October 19 arrest of Nnamdi Kanu. He is the leader of the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the director of Radio Biafra, an unlicensed radio station that on occasion urges a violent struggle for an independent Biafra. The charges against him could lead to long jail terms and even a death sentence. Ostensibly, the demonstrators are demanding his release. Ever since the civil war, the Federal government has denounced any form of separatism. President Buhari recently reiterated that Nigeria is indivisible. On occasion the security services have responded badly to separatist demonstrations. It should be recalled that it was the 2009 murder of Mohammed Yussuf while in police custody that led to the transformation of Boko Haram into the organization it is today. The Abacha military government’s 1995 execution – a judicial murder – of Ken Saro-Wiwa, leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People led to Nigeria’s international pariah status and the Commonwealth’s suspension of Abuja for three years. Judicious security service behavior and the government’s restrained use of its prosecutorial authority will be crucial to the successful management of the current round of separatist demonstrations.

This is a guest post by Aala Abdelgadir, research associate for the Council on Foreign Relation’s Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative. Ten years ago today, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended twenty-one years of civil war in Sudan. The internationally brokered accord between the governing National Congress Party (NCP) in the north and the southern rebel forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/A, later SPLM) was hailed as a tremendous achievement at the time. However, a decade later, an independent South Sudan is mired in civil conflict, political tensions and rebel violence are rife in Sudan, and the CPA has failed to establish peace and stability. Given the long history of failed negotiations between the NCP and the SPLM/A, the signing of the CPA in January 2005 was welcomed by northerners, southerners, and foreign governments alike. The CPA introduced an interim constitution for Sudan, which established power sharing between the NCP and SPLM/A at the national government level, provided for a semi-autonomous regional government in the south under SPLM/A leadership, elaborated a formula for dividing oil revenues, and committed the state to holding a self-determination referendum in the south in 2011. The CPA signatories and the international interlocutors who facilitated the agreement saw the period leading up to the referendum as an opportunity for the ruling NCP to initiate democratic reform, and thus demonstrate the benefits of Sudanese unity and incentivize southerners to vote against South Sudanese independence in 2011. The initial implementation of the CPA was promising: a national unity government integrating southerners was formed, SPLM/A leader John Garang was appointed as first vice president of Sudan, and the regional government of the south was transitioned into the hands of the SPLM/A. Yet, it was not long before the cracks began to show. Vice President Garang died in a helicopter crash weeks after taking office and was replaced by Salva Kiir, who later became president of South Sudan. Unlike Garang, Kiir and other SPLM/A leaders were not invested in a united Sudan, and rather than facilitating Sudanese unity, they worked to lay the foundations for an independent South Sudan. At the same time, the NCP did not make the necessary political reforms to create an inclusive, democratic unity government and integrate the SPLM/A. Given that neither party made Sudanese unity a viable, attractive option, it was no surprise that southerners voted for secession in the 2011 referendum. Despite the promise of the CPA, conflict abounds in Sudan and South Sudan today. The South Sudanese have been locked in a year-long civil war, sparked by a power struggle between President Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar. In the north, conflict rages on in the states of Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile as the central government continues to disregard rebels’ grievances of political disenfranchisement and economic marginalization. The responsibility for the current situation lies squarely with the political elites in Sudan and South Sudan. Certainly, there are valid criticisms of the CPA, including its neglect of conflicts in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile states, its inadequate treatment of the border regions between Sudan and South Sudan, and its exclusion of other political parties and rebel groups.Nevertheless, the CPA was not designed to be a panacea for Sudan’s problems. By halting the civil war and establishing a six-year interim period, the agreement provided the SPLM/A and NCP an opportunity to embark on the political transformation necessary for long-term peace, stability, and unity in Sudan. Not only did these parties squander this political opportunity, but they have prolonged violence and conflict, to the detriment of all Sudanese.