A Finnish court has handed down a six-year prison sentence to Simon Ekpa, a Nigerian separatist leader accused of backing terrorism and committing financial crimes.
Ekpa, who resides in Finland, leads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a movement long blamed by Nigerian authorities for violent attacks and kidnappings in the country’s southeast. Judges in Finland convicted him of participating in the activities of a terrorist organization, inciting crimes for terrorist purposes, aggravated tax fraud, and breaching the Lawyers Act.
According to the ruling, Ekpa sought to advance his separatist campaign for Nigeria’s southeast “through illegal means” and “equipped the groups with weapons, explosives, and ammunition through his contact network.”
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Nigerian officials had previously declared him wanted in 2024 as part of a broader crackdown that listed nearly 100 individuals accused of terrorism. Following his arrest in Finland, the Nigerian government requested his extradition.
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The IPOB’s push for secession draws from the memory of Biafra, a short-lived breakaway state that attempted to split from Nigeria in 1967. The ensuing civil war claimed an estimated three million lives before Biafra’s defeat in 1970. IPOB was officially banned in Nigeria in 2017.
Ekpa, according to AP’s report, assumed leadership after the detention of IPOB’s founder, Nnamdi Kanu, who was seized in Kenya in 2021 and extradited to Nigeria, where his trial remains ongoing. In the aftermath of Kanu’s arrest, the group enforced a weekly Monday shutdown across the southeast, halting commerce and daily life.
That “sit-at-home” order, still observed years later, has left a heavy toll. SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based geopolitical risk firm, estimates at least 700 people have been killed since the protests began, while Nigeria’s economy has suffered losses of 7.6 trillion naira ($4.79 billion).
