The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has issued a rebuttal to comments made by U.S. Representative Riley Moore, challenging his assertion that preserving Nigeria’s unity is essential for protecting the country’s Christian population.
The secessionist group, in a statement released on Sunday by its spokesperson, Comrade Emma Powerful, described the American lawmaker’s position as “a familiar but deeply flawed assumption.”
Rep. Moore, who recently concluded a fact-finding mission in Nigeria, had taken to social media platform X on Saturday to caution against the nation’s disintegration. He warned that emboldening separatist movements could directly threaten the safety of Christians, especially in the volatile northern and Middle Belt regions. He stated that the stakeholders he met on the ground did not prioritize the country’s breakup.
IPOB, however, countered that history proves the opposite. The group argued that for over six decades, Nigeria’s territorial integrity has been maintained under a stifling central structure, during which Christians in the North, Middle Belt, and parts of Yorubaland have suffered “cyclical massacres, mass displacement, church burnings, and a culture of impunity.”
“The crises are not a deficit of security cooperation; it is a structural failure of a forced union between irreconcilable religious and civilizational systems,” the statement read.
Powerful framed the Biafran agitation, led by detained leader Nnamdi Kanu, as a peaceful quest for a democratic referendum—a recognized international mechanism for conflict resolution. He argued that an independent Biafra would serve as a “safe civilizational anchor” and a sovereign refuge for persecuted people, much like historical examples of Protestant England or the State of Israel.
The spokesperson also claimed that IPOB’s emergence has already had a deterrent effect, saying, “Since the emergence of the IPOB, the once-routine mass killings of Igbos in Northern Nigeria abruptly ceased.”
The statement concluded by asserting that true safety and dignity follow self-rule, not forced unity. “True concern for Christians — and for all Nigerians — begins with intellectual honesty: forced unity has failed,” Powerful said.
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