AKPABIO’S LATEST THREAT DRESSED AS “PEACE TALK” IS STATE PROPAGANDA, POLITICAL BLACKMAIL, AND A FAILED ATTEMPT TO COERCE NDIGBO INTO SUBMISSION
The attention of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has been drawn to the latest remarks by Senate President Godswill Akpabio in Enugu, where he warned Igbo youths to “shun armed struggle” because “state power will always overwhelm you,” while dangling the tired political carrot of “an additional state” and recycled promises of inclusion.
Let us be clear from the outset: this was not a peace message. It was a threat. It was not dialogue. It was political blackmail wrapped in funeral rhetoric.
Akpabio’s statement was not addressed to armed groups. It was aimed at one target: the Biafra self-determination movement led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. It was yet another coordinated attempt by the Nigerian State to use public threats, political theatre, and planted judicial pressure to force Mazi Nnamdi Kanu into renouncing the legitimate and non-negotiable demand for Biafra self-determination. That will never happen.
Let it be stated again, without ambiguity: IPOB is not engaged in armed struggle against Nigeria.
IPOB’s position has never changed. IPOB is founded on one simple democratic demand: a referendum. Nothing more. Nothing less.
A referendum is not war.
A referendum is not terrorism.
A referendum is not armed struggle.
A referendum is the most democratic expression of political will known to any civilised people.
It is, in fact, more legitimate than Nigeria’s fraudulent four-year electoral cycle built on coercion, rigging, suppression, and elite bargaining masquerading as democracy.
The people of Biafra are not asking Akpabio for permission to exist.
They are not asking Abuja for permission to think. They are not asking the Nigerian State for permission to decide their political future.
That decision belongs exclusively to the people themselves.
Section 14(2)(a) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) states in language too clear to be manipulated: “sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority.”
The Constitution has spoken:
Power therefore does not belong to the Senate President.
Power does not belong to the Presidency.
Power does not belong to the ruling few in Abuja.
Power belongs to the people.
And where sovereignty belongs to the people, the right to determine political destiny cannot be converted into the private monopoly of a political class living off managed coercion and electoral fraud.
Only the people of Biafra have the sovereign right to determine how they wish to be governed — whether within Nigeria or outside it. That is the democratic question on the table. It is not for Akpabio to threaten. It is not for Abuja to suppress. It is for the people to decide.
That is not merely a political principle. It is law.
Article 20(1) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, domesticated law in Nigeria, second in hierarchy only to the constitution and enforceable as municipal law, provides in mandatory terms: “All peoples shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination. They shall freely determine their political status and shall pursue their economic and social development according to the policy they have freely chosen.”
Article 19 of the same Charter is even more direct: “All peoples shall be equal; they shall enjoy the same respect and shall have the same rights. Nothing shall justify the domination of a people by another.”
These are not political slogans. They are binding legal guarantees. And under Nigerian law, the African Charter is not a suggestion. It is part of Nigeria’s municipal legal order, enforceable by Nigerian courts, and subordinate only to the Constitution itself.
The Nigerian Supreme Court settled that long ago in Abacha v. Fawehinmi (2000) 6 NWLR (Pt. 660) 228, where it affirmed that the African Charter, having been domesticated by the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, forms part of Nigerian law and is judicially enforceable in Nigerian courts.
Akpabio’s problem is that he is deliberately falsifying the issue. Akpabio and his ilk must understand they are dealing with a highly sophisticated and intellect driven IPOB.
He frames a referendum movement as “armed struggle” because the Nigerian State cannot defeat the democratic legitimacy of Biafra agitation on its merits. So it must criminalise it. It must distort it. It must repackage a lawful political demand as militancy in order to justify repression.
That lie has failed for years, and it will fail again.
IPOB has consistently maintained a public, documented, and unambiguous position: our demand is self-determination by referendum.
What IPOB will not do is surrender the inalienable right of our people because frightened political actors in Abuja are uncomfortable with the consequences of democratic choice.
Akpabio says “state power will overwhelm you.”
That statement is not wisdom. It is confession.
It is the confession of a State that has no moral argument left.
It is the confession of a political order that can no longer persuade and now threatens.
It is the confession of a system that answers calls for democracy with force because force is all it has left.
When a government responds to a referendum demand with military language, it admits its own democratic bankruptcy.
If the Nigerian State had a legitimate answer to Biafra’s demand, it would present one.
If it had a constitutional answer, it would defend one.
If it had a democratic answer, it would test one.
Instead, it sends threats.
That is not strength. That is fear.
Akpabio also speaks of “peace” while defending the same political structure that abducted Mazi Nnamdi Kanu in Kenya, extraordinarily renditioned him in violation of international law, and has since weaponised the judiciary in a transparent campaign of coercion, attrition, and political intimidation.
No one should miss the sequence.
First, the Nigerian State criminalised peaceful agitation.
Then it abducted the leader of that agitation.
Then it illegally renditioned him.
Then it turned the courts into a theatre of managed pressure.
Now its political agents are openly demanding ideological surrender in exchange for “peace.”
This is not peace.
This is coercion.
And it will fail.
Akpabio’s offer of “an additional state” is even more insulting.
Biafra is not a bargaining chip for constitutional crumbs.
Biafra is not negotiable through patronage.
Biafra cannot be traded for another layer of administrative tokenism inside the same failed structure that produced the grievance in the first place.
The demand for self-determination cannot be neutralised by offering symbolic adjustments inside the machinery of dispossession.
You do not answer a sovereignty question with local government arithmetic.
And let Akpabio be reminded: if the Nigerian State had truly intended justice for Ndigbo, it would not need to offer it as a favour in 2026. Justice delayed for decades and presented as political generosity is not justice. It is manipulation.
His complaint about economic disruption is equally dishonest.
The greatest economic injury to the South-East did not begin with sit-at-home. It began with the deliberate political and military destabilisation of the region, the criminalisation of dissent, the destruction of commerce through militarisation, and the State’s refusal to address the foundational political question at the centre of the crisis.
You cannot set fire to a region politically, militarise it continuously, criminalise its grievances, and then blame the smoke on the victims.
The truth is simple.
IPOB is not asking for war.
IPOB is asking for a vote.
IPOB is not demanding violence.
IPOB is demanding consent.
IPOB is not threatening Nigeria.
IPOB is asking whether a people have the right to decide their own future.
That is the question Abuja has spent years trying to avoid.
And that is why men like Akpabio are deployed — not to resolve it, but to threaten, distort, and delay it.
But the age of intimidation is over.
No amount of political theatre, coordinated propaganda, judicial manipulation, or elite blackmail will compel Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to renounce the Biafra cause.
That cause does not belong to the Nigerian Senate.
It does not belong to the Presidency.
It does not belong to the courts.
It does not belong to political middlemen.
It belongs to the people.
And the people alone will decide.
COMRADE EMMA POWERFUL
Spokesperson/Media and Publicity Secretary
Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)
