Rights lawyer Ejiofor warns criminals against creating insecurity in the South East

Human rights lawyer and chief counsel for the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Ifeanyi Ejiofor, warned criminal actors in the South‑East not to transform the region’s quest for liberation into a criminal venture.

He issued the warning in a statement titled “The South‑East Must Never Bleed Again: The Peril of False Labels, Criminal Impunity, and the Collective Duty to Defend Peace,” released on Saturday.

He said that over the years he has warned against those who have turned legitimate aspirations for self‑determination into a thriving industry of violence, extortion, fear, and death.

He added that, at great personal risk, he has devoted countless public interventions to exposing the dangerous contradictions, falsehoods, and destructive tendencies of individuals whose trade has become the merchandising of blood under the seductive banner of liberation.

“For daring to challenge this dangerous deception, I was vilified. I was declared persona non grata in certain quarters. I received threats. Yet I deliberately continued travelling throughout Alaigbo because no freeborn son should be intimidated into abandoning the land of his ancestors by merchants of violence masquerading as liberators.”

“Recent disturbing developments, however, deserve our immediate attention. Videos allegedly showing certain criminal elements issuing threats to make Alaigbo ungovernable once more, together with disturbing incidents reportedly emerging from communities such as Umulolo and Arondizuogu, should concern every conscientious Igbo son and daughter.”

Ejiofor was responding to recent videos widely shared on social media by various armed groups claiming to be followers of jailed IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, who have threatened to start violence in Igboland if he is not released.

He said: “Equally disturbing are what appear to be desperate attempts in some quarters to indiscriminately classify every criminal actor as an IPOB member, irrespective of the available facts.”

He added that there is perhaps no greater tragedy than a people who survive one season of terror only to watch, in silence, the ominous clouds of another gathering on their horizon.

He said that, if honestly examined, history teaches one immutable lesson: societies rarely perish because they lacked warnings; they perish because they ignored them. In the spirit of civic responsibility rather than sensationalism, he again raised this solemn alarm.

He added that insecurity never wears a single face. It constantly reinvents itself, borrows new identities, appropriates noble causes, manipulates public emotions, and recruits the unsuspecting through carefully manufactured propaganda. Criminality thrives most where truth is deliberately obscured.