Simon Ekpa, the ‘content creator’, gets his comeuppance, by Rotimi Fasan

Simon Ekpa, the so-called Prime Minister of the Biafran Government in Exile, the internet-based secessionist network of pretend freedom fighters who claim/ed to be fighting for the right of the Igbo to self-determination, was, yesterday, sentenced to six years in prison for terrorist activities and tax law violation by a district court in Finland where he has lived since 2007.

He could have been enjoying a quiet life in that country without any hassle but no, the opportunity to make easy wealth from home, by which I mean Nigeria, while claiming to fight for Igbo self-determination, was irresistible. He saw that opportunity and seized it with both hands, even digging his teeth greedily into it in the ravenous fashion of a hungry dog. Clearly, he didn’t see what has now become his fate, which is life, not just away from the limelight but behind bars for six grueling years, coming much less to understand what he was doing when he decided to make Finland his base to levy terror against Nigeria.

When he was first arrested about a year ago, neither he nor his online and offline supporters in Nigeria and elsewhere realised he was in for the long haul. They poured scorn on Nigeria when it looked like the Finnish authorities were more interested in defending the rights of an obvious terrorist than looking into the allegations made against him by Nigeria under President Bola Tinubu. Tinubu has not followed the template of the Muhammadu Buhari administration which was basically to ignore the disruptive activities of terrorists like Ekpa, but especially Boko Haram and their affiliates, even where there was available evidence like the UAE list of sponsors of terrorism in Nigeria. 

Perhaps, following criticism of the manner it effected the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu, the other separatist agitator whose case is still being heard in the courts while he and his supporters seek an out of court settlement after years of courtroom drama- perhaps based on responses to the extraordinary rendition of Kanu, Buhari took the criticism of that particular act for both national and international endorsement of terrorism and chose to do nothing thereafter. 

Let’s be clear: every people, including the Igbo, reserve the right for self-determination but Ekpa, a former medalist athlete for Nigeria, was never a genuine fighter of the Igbo right of self-determination. He was a mere opportunist, a journeyman who seized upon an emotive issue to self-aggrandise. If anyone looks at how things have shaped up for Nnamdi Kanu and, before him, Ralph Uwazuruike of MASSOB, there is that strong element of opportunism in the agitations of these Biafra separatists. It’s the same story with Asari Dokubo, Government Ekpemupolo aka Tompolo, Gani Adams, Sunday Igboho and leaders of the various sectarian, bandit and insurgent groups across the North-West, through the North-Central to the North-East regions of Nigeria. 

Their conduct is easily explained by the fact that most of them often led groups that separated from parent bodies before thereafter setting up shop independently. Gani Adams was a follower Dr. Frederick Fasehun of the Oodua People’s Congress, just as Nnamdi Kanu was a follower of Ralph Uwazurike. Simon Ekpa was a disciple of Nnamdi Kanu who took the opportunity of the latter’s imprisonment to promote his breakaway group. Upon his arraignment, Ekpa claimed he was a content creator- probably of a dubiously macabre trade in human blood. He was indeed involved in content creation with the emphasis he placed on the optics of his online performance and sartorial elegance. But he did far more than content creation even of the murderous variety. 

Like Nnamdi Kanu, he was obsessed with his performative status, how he comes across rather than the genuine impact he makes. Simon Ekpa’s self-determination gamble lacks any coherent ideological anchor beyond claiming to be fighting for Biafra. He commanded an army of opportunists forever willing to act on instructions that were meant for his personal enlargement. He basked in the attention he enjoyed while issuing orders that have destroyed thousands of lives and turned the thriving South-East into a wasteland. He turned out in different costumes, danced to music of all shades, including from among peoples his separatist rhetoric excoriated. He addressed adulating followers who celebrated him as the messiah of Biafra. He had more than enough Igbo diaspora funds to play with. 

He didn’t care the pain he inflicted on the ordinary people of the South-East who are genuinely aggrieved and feel shortchanged by the Nigerian state. His theatrics makes nonsense of and undermines their pain. He fed into and adopted the murderous ways of Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, which Kanu’s supporters, including some clear-headed Igbo, compare to Sunday Igboho’s agitation. Sunday Igboho, Nnamdi Kanu and others before them identified causes of genuine concern to their people, started out fighting for them but soon got too full of themselves and derailed from the cause to engage in self-promotion. They suddenly saw themselves as leaders in their own right in total disregard of the specific cause that threw them up. They went out on a limb, issuing orders, practically fatwas, not just on the terrorists masquerading as herders and the Nigerian state that had alienated a sizeable part of its population by its obvious support of the invading criminals. 

Both Kanu and Igboho saw the support they enjoyed as an opportunity to corner power for personal use and abuse. They cursed anyone, including traditional and religious leaders who had contrary views from theirs no matter how insignificant. The major difference between them, however, was with the response they elicited from their respective indigenous base. While the Yoruba were quick to voice opposition to the excesses of Igboho whose activities were limited to confronting criminal herders that invaded Yoruba communities, the Igbo turned a blind eye to Kanu and in some cases those who spoke in the name of the Igbo seemed to endorse his conquistador activities that he had upgraded to a determined rejection of the Nigerian state, its authority and structures of state power. 

He didn’t stop at that. He promoted ethnic division, verbally attacked other Nigerian ethnicities, called them and their leaders names and ordered his military wing, the Eastern Nigerian Security Network, to take on the Nigerian military and security apparatus, thus laying the groundwork for what the two-penny criminals and other blood-thirsty terrorists like the one who calls himself General Gentle De Yahoo, have been doing across the South-East in the name of Igbo self-determination. The Tinubu government’s effort is yielding good results and peace is returning to the troubled parts of Nigeria from the North-West to the South-East, even if politics would not make critics of Abuja admit it. Nigeria is the winner as Simon Njoku Ekpa gradually fades into oblivion. 

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