Nigeria: Biafra headed for new genocide?

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At least four were killed when Nigerian army troops raided the home of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), in Umuahia, Abia state, Sept. 14. Unconfirmed reports put the number of dead in the raid as high as 22, and it is unclear if Kanu himself was captured, killed or escaped. The raid comes two days after what local media called a "communal clash" between IPOB militants and ethnic Hausa residents in Oyigbo, Rivers state, leaving an undetermined number of casualties. A media representative of President Muhammadu Buhari's office issued a statement claiming a "deliberate and sinister agenda by IPOB to provoke soldiers into killing innocent people," charging the group with "accusing the government of ethnic cleansing against Igbos...for the sole purpose of gaining sympathy."

Clashes between Hausa and Igbos in recent days have also been reported in Abia city, and Jos, capital of Plateau state. Also in Plateau state, an apparent attack by Fulani gunmen left at least 19 dead killed at the village of Ancha, Bassa district. Children were said to be among the dead in what was called a retaliatory attack after reports that villagers had killed a local Fulani boy. News reports did not make clear if the villagers were Igbo, but some accounts did identify them as Christian.

A secessionist movement in the Biafra region [8] has again been gaining ground in recent years, fueled by grievances that the Igbo people of Nigeria's southeast have been marginalized, and their lands overwhelmed by Hausa-Fulani migrants from the north. There is a sectarian element to the conflict, with the Igbo principally Christian and the Hausa-Fulani mostly Muslim. The Nigerian government was accused of genocide in its efforts to suppress a Biafran separatist movement in the late 1960s. (Sahara Reporters [9], Vanguard [10], Vanguard [11], Vanguard [12], Nigeria, Sept. 14; Channels TV [13], Nigeria, Morning Star News [14] [Christian evangelical], Sept. 13; Sahara Reporters [15], Sept. 9; Al Jazeera [16], May 30; Combat Genocide Association [17])