In April, there was a mass jailbreak in the southeastern Nigerian city of Owerri where up to 1,800 prisoners escaped, after armed gangs committed various killings against the police in the region. Since then, the region has been enveloped in rampant gang violence against authorities, along with other major offenses such as robbery, kidnapping, and banditry.
This week, Nigerian police launched a new operation to clamp down on the prevalent crime in the southeast of the nation. The nation’s intelligence and military force will also be aiding the police in the operation, which seeks to “roll back the murderous attacks, violence, proliferation of weapons and other threats to law and order occasioned by the separatist agenda”. That “separatist agenda” is where the Nigerian police have placed the blame for the recent violence and crime; namely, on the banned separatist group called the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its violent militia wing, the Eastern Security Network. IPOB denies any role in the jailbreak and crimes.
The southeast region of Biafra is no stranger to ethnic conflict. In the 1960s, there was a secessionist movement from the Igbo people, the majority ethnicity in the region. One million people died before the separatists efforts were finally quashed by Nigerian forces in 1970. These same separatist sentiments seem to drive the IPOB, and as such, the Nigerian government has kept a vigilant eye on its possible secessionist activities.
There are some parallels between this situation in Nigeria and what we saw in the previous Chad story, although there are also some very significant differences. In both, there is widespread violence sweeping a certain region in the nation that is being met with harsh action from the authorities; both have violence driven by separatist feelings, although the case in Nigeria seems to be far more a case of rampant crime than any organized secessionist effort. If the situation in the Biafra region is indeed as dire as it is described by the Nigerian police, one can hardly blame the authorities for taking such strong measures.