The armed men who once turned Mondays into days of terror across Nigeria’s southeast have largely vanished. Attacks blamed on the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra and allied separatist groups dropped by half this year, and the reason traces back to a prison cell in Finland.
Simon Ekpa, the firebrand Biafran agitator who directed violence from his home in Lahti, received a six-year sentence in September for terrorism. Since his arrest in November 2024, the region has seen a dramatic shift. PREMIUM TIMES tracked every reported attack in the five southeastern states over 22 months, counting 100 assaults between January and November 2024, and just 50 in the same period of 2025. The death toll fell from 206 to 162, though kidnappings only dipped slightly from 66 to 59.
Ekpa’s role was no secret. The Finnish court found that he supplied weapons and explosives to armed groups in Nigeria, incited crimes on his X account, and enforced a brutal sit-at-home order that paralyzed the region. His faction, Auto Pilot, claimed responsibility for deadly attacks even as the main IPOB group, led by Nnamdi Kanu, disowned him.
The sit-at-home directive, originally imposed in 2021 to demand Kanu’s release, had become a weapon of economic destruction. SBM Intelligence estimates that the region lost over 7.6 trillion naira between 2021 and 2025, while Amnesty International documented at least 1,844 killings from 2021 to 2023 alone.
Anambra and Imo states bore the worst violence. In 2024, Anambra recorded 30 attacks with 48 deaths; Imo had 22 attacks and 64 killed. By 2025, those numbers dropped significantly, though Imo saw a spike in killings, with 92 people losing their lives, many in clashes linked to pro-Biafra gunmen.
Security analysts see a fragile peace. Patrick Agbambu of the Africa Security Watch Initiative warned that southeastern leaders must now redirect the youths who once followed Ekpa. “If they don’t work on their psyche, he will find foot soldiers again when he returns,” he said.
Kabiru Adamu, founder of Beacon Security and Intelligence, cautioned that the root causes of the separatist movement remain unaddressed. “The perception of marginalization is still there,” he said. “Even if Simon Ekpa is stopped permanently, a new Simon Ekpa will emerge.”
The data offers a clear picture: Ekpa’s imprisonment broke the cycle of violence, but the grievances that fueled it endure. For now, the streets of the southeast are quieter. The question is how long that peace will last.
