Tue 13 Sep 2005 9:40 AM ET
By Chukwujama Eze

Hundreds of activists seeking independence for southeastern Nigeria, a region known as Biafra, have been detained for peaceful protests over the last few months. Many have been charged with treason.

"Rather than discourage them, these spates of arrests will strengthen their determination to achieve Biafra," said Ralph Uwazurike, leader of the banned Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).

Uwazurike spoke to Reuters from his new house in a remote farming village in Imo state, which is still under construction after security services torched his previous home in 2003.

The 46-year-old has been declared wanted by the secret service, but there were no police visible at his walled compound at the end of a rutted dirt road. Youths clutching walkie talkies stood guard.

"If I come out, they will of course arrest me. There have been plans for them to assassinate me," he said.

MASSOB is a non-violent group drawing support predominantly from the Ibo, Nigeria's third largest ethnic group. It plays on sentiments that caused the 1967-70 civil war in which more than a million people died, mostly from hunger.

The group is particularly popular among youths who did not experience the war, but many older Ibo view the war as a monumental failure and see secession now as unrealistic.

MASSOB last year staged a stay-at-home protest which brought most businesses in the southeast to a standstill.

"My tribe, the Ibo, are disliked in Nigeria ... They just take us to be slaves," Uwazurike said.

OIL RICHES?

During the civil war, the putative Biafran nation included the oil producing southern states of the Niger Delta, but these are populated by different tribes and many delta groups have rejected invitations to join MASSOB.

"In as much as we do not want anybody to force us to belong to Nigeria, we won't force anybody to belong to Biafra," Uwazurike said. "Essentially, the five southeastern states form the bulk of our territory. But if any part of the south of their own volition want to be part of Biafra, that's OK."

The Nigerian government argues that membership of MASSOB amounts to treason because it implies waging war on the rest of the country, but it has yet to secure a legal conviction.

Uwazurike said security services had accused him of keeping a rocket launcher under his bed, which he denied.

"The central idea is to find any means of tracking me down, getting me assassinated or put behind bars for a very long time."

Uwazurike accused the government of rigging itself into power in elections in 2003 and called for a referendum to decide on the region's fate. Independent observers reported widespread malpractices in the 2003 poll which saw President Olusegun Obasanjo win a second term.

MASSOB has relaunched the defunct Biafran pound and national anthem, and hoisted the red and yellow Biafran flag on some buildings in the southeast. It has also opened some "diplomatic missions" abroad to further its cause among Ibo in the diaspora.