Secession and Independence Movements

Test your knowledge of secession and independence movements, from the struggles of the Iraqi Kurds to the battle for Northern Ireland.

Cameroon is spiraling downward, with fighting between rebels in the Anglophone regions (the Northwest and Southwest regions) and President Paul Biya’s security forces intensifying. At a briefing before the UN Security Council (UNSC) on December 13, the U.S. deputy permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Jonathan Cohen, urged the Biya government and the Anglophone rebels to begin talks. In a separate speech before the UNSC, the British deputy representative to the UN, Ambassador Jonathan Allen, announced a $3.1 million contribution from his government to the UN’s appeal for humanitarian relief in the Anglophone regions, representing 20 percent of the total appeal. The director of UN humanitarian operations, Reena Ghelani, said that Cameroon is “one of the fastest growing displacement crises in Africa.” She noted that internally displaced Cameroonians, who number almost half a million, lack adequate food, shelter, and water, and that there are at least thirty thousand Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria. In addition to rebels, most of whom are separatists apparently seeking to establish an Anglophone republic called Ambazonia, Cameroon also faces murderous operations carried out by the radical, jihadist Boko Haram in its predominately Muslim north. Obviously, dialogue that might stop the killing in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions is devoutly to be hoped for. The rebels are splintered into many separate groups, some of which are mutually antagonistic in addition to being hostile to the government in Yaounde. Biya’s regime, notoriously repressive, has a record of many broken promises with respect to the Anglophone regions.  Biya, around eighty-five years of age, recently won deeply-flawed elections in October, but already there is speculation about how the country will transition when he can no longer serve as chief of state. Under all these circumstances it is hard to see how a dialogue between the Biya regime and the rebels can begin anytime soon. Similarly, Boko Haram in neighboring Nigeria and in Cameroon shows little interest in dialogue with “secular” governments. In the short term, at least, the outlook for Cameroon is grim.  

President Paul Biya’s regime seems intent on establishing itself as one of Africa’s worst. The eighty-five-year-old president, with an estimated personal wealth of some $250 million (though nobody is really sure) is spending more and more time at a luxury hotel in Geneva. What had once been a federation between francophone and anglophone regions has become a centralized, if inefficient, despotism dominated by Biya and his cronies, enforced by his presidential guard and the security services. He has just been reelected to his seventh term in elections widely regarded as rigged and with low voter turnout.  Boko Haram remains active in the north, and the anglophone part of the country is approaching a full-blown insurrection, with an estimated four hundred killed so far. The security services have responded in a particularly brutal way in both areas. Non-governmental organizations credibly report atrocities on all sides. An American Baptist missionary was killed at the end of October, though the killer is not known. In the anglophone region, separatists are attacking workers at state-run industries, and are seeking to close schools in protest against the regime.  On November 4, two days before Biya’s inauguration, seventy-eight students, the principal, and two staff members were kidnapped from a Presbyterian school near Bamenda, in the Anglophone part of the country. On November 7, officials reported that the seventy-eight students were freed the day before, as was a staff member. As of November 8, the principal, a teacher, and perhaps more children, were still in captivity. A Presbyterian minister asserts that anglophone militants conducted the kidnapping, and individuals in a video supposedly showing the kidnapped children claimed that they were “Amba Boys,” a common reference to separatist forces. The video stated that the children would be held until the Biya regime accepts their demands for an independent, anglophone country that they call Ambazonia. However, it is not clear that the kidnappers were actually Ambazonian separatists, and at least one Ambazonian organization, the Ambazonia International Policy Commission, has denied any link. Apparently, the speaker in the video spoke Pidgin English poorly—spoken widely across anglophone Cameroon—and one of them was heard speaking French.  Perhaps attempting to placate the militants, at his inauguration, Biya promised greater autonomy for the anglophone region, and called on them to lay down their arms. His promises are likely to have little credibility. With Boko Haram in the north, an anglophone insurrection in the west, and a sclerotic and despotic regime in power in Yaounde, Cameroon’s outlook is grim.

Adam Valavanis is a volunteer intern in the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. On October 7, Cameroonians voted in the presidential election. Despite the opposition’s claim of victory prior to the release of official results, incumbent President Paul Biya is expected to prevail. One group that was underrepresented at the ballot box this year was Cameroon’s English-speaking minority, which has been ravaged over the past year by violence between government forces and Anglophone separatist groups, particularly in the country’s North West and South West regions. Fighting has killed approximately four hundred civilians and displaced some 246,000 people in the South West region alone as of August 2018.  In addition to those internally displaced, Anglophone Cameroon has seen an exodus of more than forty thousand people into neighboring Nigeria. But travel has grown more difficult during election season, with security forces and separatist groups blocking roads in and out of the North West and South West regions. For those that manage to make it into Nigeria, many stay with relatives living in border towns, but resources are scarce; some refugees have no access to clean drinking water, food, or sources of income. Furthermore, amidst the chaos of fleeing Cameroon, families have been separated and have little hope of ever being reunited.  Furthermore, over the past year, there have been reports of security forces and separatist groups razing villages across the two Anglophone regions. Such actions have threatened the prospect of future repatriation, increasing the burden of Nigerian border communities. Such a crisis comes on the back of increasingly strained relations between the two countries. Early in 2018, armed groups from Cameroon were reportedly using Nigeria as a launching pad for attacks against the Cameroonian government. Cameroonian officials went so far as to accuse Nigeria of sheltering separatist groups, though Nigeria vehemently denies such allegations. Tensions peaked after the Cameroonian military crossed into Nigeria while pursuing rebels without permission from the Nigerian government in December 2017. What started as a local protest movement is now challenging Cameroon’s relationship with Nigeria and could erode cooperation in the fight against Boko Haram.

President Paul Biya, the authoritarian leader of Cameroon, has kept in office for thirty-six years through rigged elections and repression of actual or potential opposition, including the country’s English-speaking regions. (Cameroon is primarily Francophone and has a long and close relationship with France.) His government is largely unaccountable to its people—though his power is likely checked by the security services—and he has amassed a personal fortune of $200 million.  Biya now faces two major security threats. In the southwest, where the Anglophone minority predominates, there is an insurrection in response to decades of repression and marginalization by Biya’s government. His security forces are responding with exceptional brutality, which has at times been matched by separatist rebels. The Far North Region of Cameroon, predominately Muslim, is also disaffected from Biya’s ostensibly Christian regime. Boko Haram is active there, especially after being driven from much of the territory they once held in Nigeria. Operatives of the Islamist militant group move easily throughout the Lake Chad Basin, crossing the artificial borders of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger, which were drawn by the British, French, and Germans. (Cameroon was the German colony of Kamerun; after World War I, it was then divided between Britain and France.) In the fight against Boko Haram in the north, Biya’s security forces are credibly accused of extensive human rights violations. Specifically, there are two horrific videos that have circulated on social media apparently showing Cameroonian forces executing civilians, one of two women and two small children, the other of twelve civilians. The Cameroonian government has since arrested seven Cameroonian soldiers and claims that an investigation is underway.  According to the Voice of America, the U.S. Department of Defense has three hundred personnel in Cameroon providing military training and teaching on human rights and the laws governing armed conflict. The United States also funds a program to train forty military legal advisers to promote human rights and accountability in the security services. A U.S. Department of Defense spokeswoman recently said that they are working with the Department of State to “ensure the government of Cameroon holds accountable any individuals found to be responsible” for human rights violations. Given the human rights track record of the Biya regime, it is unlikely that the Cameroonian investigation will actually result in significant change in the behavior of the security forces. The regime and the Cameroonian security services are actively involved in the struggle against Boko Haram. The Departments of Defense and State apparently judge that it is in the interests of the United States that Cameroonian involvement continue and be strengthened. So, while the Department of Defense has issued a statement calling on Cameroon to conduct a full investigation into the human rights violations captured on the videos, it has not taken steps to terminate its military relationship.  America’s dilemma is how to balance U.S. security interests with human rights concerns. This is an old song. After all, the United States partnered with Stalin’s Soviet Union against Nazi Germany during World War II. On the other hand, the increased use of videos and the rise of social media means that human rights abuses are harder to ignore now than then. They are more visceral and reach more people than the dry accounts of Stalin’s atrocities circulating at the time. And governments respond to aroused voters. General Thomas Waldhauser of the U.S. Africa Command has said, “We want to have a strong military relationship with Cameroon, but their actions will go a long way toward how that will play out in the future with regards to the transparency on some of these allegations.” It is to be hoped that the Departments of State and Defense are more forthright with their Cameroonian partners behind closed doors.

Nolan Quinn is the Africa program intern at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. He is a master of public policy student at the University of Maryland, where he is studying international development policy and international security and economic policy. The anglophone crisis in southwestern Cameroon is getting worse, and outside observers are beginning to notice. According to Amnesty International, “alarm bells are ringing” in Congress over Cameroon, and on July 31, Karen Pierce, the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, tweeted that there is “lots of interest” in the crisis among UN representatives in New York. Such interest will likely result in greater foreign involvement. External actors should recognize the current crisis was not inevitable, but rather the result of decades of concerted efforts by the regime in Yaoundé to marginalize the anglophone regions. After allied forces captured “Kamerun” from Germany in World War I, the League of Nations divided the territory between the British and the French. Most of the territory became French Cameroun, while a strip bordering Nigeria became the British Cameroons. The British Cameroons, governed from—but not considered part of—Nigeria, were split into northern and southern administrative units. In 1960, francophone Cameroon and Nigeria became independent, prompting the UN to organize a plebiscite allowing anglophone Cameroonians to decide whether to integrate with Nigeria or Cameroon. Independence, the most favored outcome, was not an option. Northern Cameroons joined Nigeria, while Southern Cameroons opted for reunification with Cameroon. The constitution of the newly-established Federal Republic of Cameroon guaranteed respect for the cultural identity of the anglophone regions. But, in 1966, President Ahmadou Ahidjo banned all political parties other than the ruling Cameroonian National Union (the ban has since been lifted). In May 1972, a national referendum approved a new constitution that replaced the government’s federal structure with a unitary system. The referendum, which government records claim 99.9 percent of voters supported with 98.2 percent turnout, went against a 1961 agreement that “proposals for revision [of the constitution] shall be adopted by simple majority vote of the members of the Federal Assembly, provided that such majority includes a majority of the representatives…of each of the Federated States.” In 1984, President Paul Biya renamed the country the Republic of Cameroon—the name it held prior to reunification in 1961—and changed the national flag from a two-star design, which had signified the union of the anglophone and francophone regions, to that of a single star. Biya’s affront to the anglophone region proved the breaking point in relations with the central government. On March 20, 1985, Fon Gorji Dinka, an anglophone lawyer and the first president of the Cameroon Bar Association, denounced the government’s actions as unconstitutional and called for an independent anglophone entity known as the Republic of Ambazonia; Dinka was arrested and imprisoned for nearly a year without trial. Today, little has changed. Biya remains in power, the government represses the anglophone minority’s identity, and separatists long for an independent Ambazonia. However, after nearly a year of protests over the use of French in anglophone schools and courts, the “anglophone problem” erupted. In September 2017, the Ambazonia Defense Council declared war on the Cameroon government. Both sides have been accused of war crimes and refuse to talk to each other. Separatists do not trust the government after it violated previous agreements, while Biya said that his “government is open to dialogue only as far as the unity and diversity of our country are not questioned.” This seems particularly tone deaf given the Yaoundé regime’s history of undermining the country’s “unity and diversity.” The United States has a number of tools at its disposal to encourage talks, such as making aid conditional upon prosecution of human rights abusers, as the Senate report [PDF] on the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2019 suggests. But if and when talks begin, outside mediators and negotiators should place today’s crisis in the context of Yaoundé’s historical approach to the anglophone minority.

Ayobami Egunyomi is a Robina Franklin Williams intern for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. She received her BA in International Relations from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis.  The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has ordered a sit-at-home for May 30 in the five southeastern states of Nigeria to commemorate the fifty-first anniversary of the Nigerian Civil War, in which “Biafra” attempted to secede. The IPOB primarily comprises members of the Igbo ethnic group, and reflects a desire to separate from Nigeria that dates back to before independence from British rule.  Nigeria, however, is not the only country that faces pressure from separatism. After their independence, over ten African countries have experienced armed separatist movements, many of which resent the retention of colonial borders. The African Union (AU) maintains that African countries should “respect the borders existing on their achievement of national independence.” Many in Africa, particularly separatist movements, see this as unfair, arguing that European colonists arbitrarily drew these borders when they partitioned the continent in the “Scramble for Africa.” They forced people from distinct religious and ethnic groups with diverse beliefs and little historical relationship into single political units. Sir Arthur Richards, the governor-general of Nigeria in 1948, aptly describes this problem: “It is only the accident of British suzerainty which has made Nigeria one country… they do not speak the same language and they have highly divergent customs and ways of life and they represent different stages of culture.” Two decades later, each of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria, each more or less dominating one of the country’s three administrative regions, had at some point threatened to secede. However, only the Igbo ethnic group carried out this threat in 1967, leading to the death of perhaps one million civilians. Many Igbos believe that they are and have been politically and economically marginalized. The Nigerian civil war emanated from a 1966 pogrom against ethnic Igbos living in the north. The pogrom itself was partly the result of a junior officer coup, popularly known as the “Igbo Coup,” which was led by four Igbo majors and one Yoruba major. The coup quickly took an ethnic coloration as its principal victims were northern and western leaders, leading some to believe the coup was a conspiracy by the Igbos to run northern elites out of government. To begin to address separatism in Nigeria, the government needs to address the concerns and grievances of the Igbo ethnic group through dialogue as opposed to the use of military force. More so, it is important that the Nigerian government revisit the 3R policy of “Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, and Reintegration” promised after the Nigerian Civil War. Many scholars have argued that the failure of the Nigerian government to achieve this is one of the major reasons for the recurrence of other uprisings. This process would involve implementing the recommendations of past national conferences. Unless the Nigerian government takes some form of action to understand the concerns of the Igbo ethnic group, it risks the perpetual agitation for an independent Biafra.  

The Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) is one of several groups seeking to revive republic of Biafra, a predominately Igbo state that sought to secede from Nigeria in 1967. Secession led to a civil war that left around one million dead, most civilians and mostly from disease and starvation, before the territory was re-incorporated into Nigeria in 1970. Nigeria’s military government, led by General Yakubu Gowon, pursued a post-war policy of “no victors, no vanquished,” and former supporters of Biafra quickly resumed prominent positions in national life. Nevertheless, pro-Biafra sentiment has never gone away, especially among the Igbo, and it is supported by some elements of the Nigerian diaspora. Many Igbos firmly believe that they are marginalized, but it is unclear just how much support Biafra has among the Igbo. In times of political uncertainly like now with the 2019 national elections on the horizon, discussions of Biafra tend to reenter the political and media mainstream. The civil war was a defining episode in Nigeria’s post-independence history, and for a generation of Nigeria’s leaders, including President Muhammadu Buhari, national unity is sacrosanct. The titular leader of IPOB is Nnandi Kanu and he holds both a British and a Nigerian passport. He argues that Biafra should be recast in terms of self-determination, that it is a legitimate political movement that reflects the aspirations of ‘Biafrans.’ The Nigerian government, on the other hand, sees his secessionist efforts as treasonous. The government arrested Kanu in 2017, jailed him, and then released him on bail pending his trial. He has since disappeared and the security services regularly say they do not know where he is. Biafra supporters have claimed that the security services murdered him, while others suggest that he fled to the United Kingdom. The British authorities, however, say they do not know where he is, but note that as a British subject, Kanu would be free to enter the United Kingdom at any time. Meanwhile, Kanu’s collaborators who were arrested at the same time he was but were not granted bail face a new three-count charge of treasonable felony. These charges effectively separate their trial from Kanu’s, when and if it takes place. The government has announced that their trial will start soon. In response, the IPOB has announced that if the defendants are not granted bail or released unconditionally, it will begin a campaign of civil disobedience. Should it take place, there is a real danger that the campaign could morph into sabotage of Nigeria’s oil production facilities. Oil provides more than 70 percent of the government’s revenue, and more than 90 percent of its foreign exchange. Hence, unrest in the oil patch poses a serious challenge to the Nigerian government. Charges of treason in the context of secessionist movements can be a blunt instrument, as the British government learned in Ireland in 1916. Conviction and execution can convert a marginal movement into a popular insurrection. Hence, it is to be hoped that the Nigerian government will proceed with caution and sensitivity.   

Jack McCaslin is a research associate for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. On November 21, 2017, Somaliland peacefully elected its third president since 2003 and held its fifth peaceful election since declaring independence from Somalia in 1991. It was the first time that the incumbent did not stand; instead, former president Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud “Silyano” chose not to seek reelection. Muse Bihi Abdi, the new president, is a former minister in the government of the still-ruling Peace, Unity, and Development Party, and was a commander in the Somali National Movement (SNM). The SNM was the liberation movement that ultimately defeated Mohamed Siad Barre, the longtime leader of Somalia, and led Somaliland’s secession from Somalia. He was sworn in on December 15.  The secret, at least in part, to Somaliland’s quarter-century of peaceful de facto independence, was its gradual transition to democracy, partially shepherded by the SNM. A few months after the Barre regime collapsed at Mogadishu and the civil war ended in January 1991, the SNM held a conference of clan leaders that elected an interim leader, agreed to secede from Somalia, and created the independent Republic of Somaliland. This structure weathered intense internal violence in 1992, and in 1993 it elected Somaliland’s first president in multiparty elections. While the 1990s continued to be fraught with political and clan infighting, the newly-declared country was able to stick together and hold a constitutional referendum in 2001, which passed with over 97 percent of the vote. Like other liberation movements, such as the ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe, many current politicians and members of government were former members of the civilian and military arms of the SNM, but unlike Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF, the movement did not morph into a singular political party that controlled the state. It was a national movement at the time of independence, and eventually dissolved, creating space for political parties to emerge that reflected different views. In 2017, Freedom House ranked Somaliland as the only free ‘country’ in East Africa. Despite its rare albeit short history of peaceful democracy, only a quarter of working-age Somalilanders are employed, and in 2012, its per-capita GDP was the fourth-lowest in the world (if ranked independently). Remittances allow for much of the population to get by.  Through its reliance on councils of clan elders, known as Guurti, Somaliland utilized distinctly African forms of governance to guide it to democracy. It is ironic that African regional organizations have refused to recognize it, and the Untied States has followed suit. Their chief objection rests in the potential for a domino effect of successful secession movements in a region where there are numerous aggrieved (some more legitimately than others) parties itching for a chance to breakaway. For Somaliland, recognition by the international community is much more than merely symbolic; international recognition would enable legal foreign direct investment into the anemic economy.  

Ayobami Egunyomi is a Franklin Williams intern for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. She received her BA in International Relations from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. She is a native Nigerian. The decade after Nigeria’s independence, Africans referred to it as “the giant of Africa,” with the promise of great things to come for the newly minted African nation. Fifty-seven years after, it is a different story. Plagued by myriad problems, the future of Nigeria in its current form, with less than twenty years as a democracy under its belt, is bleak. Fortunately, the people’s consciousness of the severity of the situation is growing.  The country is witnessing a renewed firmament for the secession of Biafra by the Southeasterners and support for restructuring by the Southwesterners. Even Nigerian elites, such as Bola Tinubu, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Emeka Anyaoku, and former vice president of Nigeria Atiku Abubakar, are lending their voices to support restructuring the country. The increasing clamor for change should be unsurprising considering how numerous the problems are that the country has been plunged into, including poor infrastructure, lack of good governance, endemic corruption in all sectors, as well as ethnic and religious tensions. Restructuring in order to enable true federalism represents a first step to solving the challenges the country faces. Nigeria practiced true federalism and regionalism in the 1960s as enshrined in the 1960 and 1963 Nigerian constitutions. However, with the emergence of the 1966 Military junta in Nigeria came the destruction of this system, and Nigeria has since been unable to return. One of the most viable ideas put forward for restructuring Nigeria is a new system that will subsume the thirty six states into their already-present six geopolitical zones. These zones would then become self-governing regions, with their own local governments under the auspices of a less powerful federal government. The regions increased autonomy would enable them to look inward and develop more self-reliant local economies, as opposed to relying on ‘handouts’ of oil revenue from the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja). Western Nigeria is rich with cocoa and limestone, the South with oil palm, coal, and crude oil, and the North with agricultural resources such as groundnut and cotton. As these regions turn inward for wealth creation and development and hold themselves accountable, they will help create a vibrant and diverse national economy that can propel Nigeria forward.  Contrary to popular belief, regionalism does not pose a threat to nationalism. Instead, it furthers the cause of developing a national identity by promoting equitable regional development throughout the country. This is because uneven development among the regions has bred resentment that eventually expresses itself in the form of ethnic and religious tensions. Suffice to say, restructuring would reduce such ethnic and religious tensions. Since Nigerians are largely loyal to religion and ethnicity, it would not be hard to convince them that restructuring might be the solution because restructuring would be done along ethnic and religious lines. Moreover, it will silence the agitation of the unrelenting Biafra and Niger Delta movements by giving them a region with the autonomy they seek. True federalism will send the old recycled politicians back to their tent as there will be less concentration of power in the center, hence less reliance on the ‘national cake’—the vast oil wealth of Nigeria that it distributes through Abuja to the rest of the country. Hopefully, by removing this concentration of wealth and temptation, this new system can at least begin to address the bane of corruption. While these politicians could take this menace of corruption to the regional level, it is unlikely to be so, as citizens would be better able to hold their regional leaders accountable when they see other regions flourish, encouraging friendly competition among these regions. This form of accountability, one that is closer to home and not in the far-away capital,  is what is needed to make Nigeria work.

The still unknown whereabouts of Namdi Kanu, a leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has led to public exchanges that provide insight into the mindset of at least some of Biafra's supporters. The IPOB is one of a number of organizations that are calling for the secession from Nigeria of the predominately Igbo and Christian states in southeast Nigeria, and the federal government has labeled it a terrorist organization. Following a security service raid on his house, Kanu has gone missing, either into hiding or, as his lawyer speculates, he has been killed by the security services. He is due in court to face treason charges on October 17. As he is a British subject as well as a Nigerian citizen, the British government has asked the Buhari administration for Kanu’s whereabouts, but it denied any knowledge of them. Former Abia state governor Orji Kalu is claiming that Kanu fled to the United Kingdom via Malaysia, but this is strenuously denied by IPOB spokespersons. Mr. Emma Powerful, the IPOB’s media and publicity secretary, characterized the United Kingdom as being better organized and less corrupt than Nigeria. Further, it is “an island nation surrounded by water and it is near impossible to enter without being documented.” Accordingly, Mr. Powerful continued, the British government would know whether Kanu was in the country. The fact that the British government is asking the Nigerian government for Kanu’s where about is “proof” that he is not in Britain.  Perhaps more central to the IPOB’s outlook are Emma Powerful‘s comments about the threat posed by the “Fulani caliphate.” He accuses Kalu and other Igbo political figures who criticize Kanu as “Hausa-Fulani errand boys.” Among the Igbo errand boys, there is “an ongoing battle as to who will emerge the anointed son of the Fulani caliphate.” Fear of northern, Muslim domination of Nigeria is a long-standing theme in Igboland and other parts of the south. Some current Biafra supporters characterize the 1967-70 Nigerian civil war as a struggle between Christians and Muslims, in which the latter were victorious because of the “betrayal” of Yorubaland (a western, religiously mixed region of Nigeria), which allied with the Muslims of the north to destroy Biafra. The fact that the current president, Muhammadu Buhari, is a Fulani Muslim encourages this way of thinking. If fear of Fulani domination is one of Emma Powerful’s themes, another is bad governance. He states, “Our leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu before his abduction by Nigerian Army has brought an end to the era of cash and carry politics of subservience to Hausa-Fulani to the detriment of Biafra.”  Other pro-Biafra organizations are expressing support for Kanu. Uchenna Madu, the leader of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), issued a statement that Kanu is a “true hero of Biafra either dead or alive.” Madu’s statement also raises the northern specter, if perhaps with more subtlety than Mr. Powerful: “This artificial entity called Nigeria will never be united or exist as one nation as long as these [sic] established mentality of a section of the country seeing themselves as the lords of Nigeria.” His statement denounced a military operation underway in the southeast called Operation Python Dance II, as well as government opposition to the fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian state. He criticized the “acceptance of deadly Fulani herdsmen as common criminals" by the Buhari administration, arguing that, in total, these actions have prompted the “eastern, western, and Middle Belt regions of Nigeria towards self-determination for survival.” It is to be hoped that the Nigerian federal government will respond to the upsurge of Biafra sentiment with subtlety and political skill. Southeastern leaders are in fact meeting with Buhari today, reportedly to discuss the “alleged marginalization” of the region. It is also to be hoped that Kanu is alive and well. Were he to be made a martyr, it could very well lead to further unrest and the possibility of violence.  

In the midst of secession movements in Catalonia and Iraqi Kurdistan, the New York Times recently highlighted two African movements, in Nigeria and Cameroon. In both countries, secession movements reflect long-standing grievances and ham-fisted government responses. In southeast Nigeria, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement has revived the call for an independent Biafra. The movement is closely associated with the aspirations for independence of the predominately Christian Igbo people. That cause was initially defeated in a 1967-70 civil war that left between one and two million dead. The defeated Biafra was quickly re-integrated into Nigeria under a policy of “no victors, no vanquished.” While many Igbos have done well, still others believe that there is a glass ceiling that keeps them down and makes them feel like second-class citizens. As elsewhere in Nigeria, loyalty to the Nigerian federal government is weaker than that to ethnicities and religions. It is important to point out that the IPOB is separate from militants in Nigeria’s adjacent oil patch, which are not Igbo but rather from a variety of small ethnicities. Generally speaking, Niger Delta militants do not want independence, but simply a larger share of the region’s oil revenue. The two movements, while both hostile to the federal government in Abuja, are not allied. In fact, many people of the Niger delta opposed the Igbo effort to incorporate it into Biafra during the civil war. Niger militants can sabotage Nigeria’s all-important oil production. At present, however, they have a declared a cease fire in anticipation of Abuja meeting their demands, which center on channeling more resources to their region.  If secession in Nigeria is fueled by ethnicity and the division of the “national cake” (the Nigerian phrase for elite division of national oil revenue), in Cameroon the issue is language. After World War I, the British and French governments divided the former German colony of Kamerun. The French took the lion’s share, and eventually incorporated Cameroon into the colonial federation of French Equatorial Africa. The British incorporated their much smaller share into Nigeria. Following the independence of the French territory in 1960 and the British territory the next year, a referendum was held in the British part of Cameroon. The vote was to merge with French-speaking Cameroon rather than remain part of Nigeria. Under the terms of the new federation between the two Cameroons, both French and English were to be legal languages of equal status. This was not to bear out, as a Francophone-dominated government would later replace the federation with a unitary state. Reflecting in part their demographic predominance and this new arrangement, Francophones in the united Cameroon  dominate politics and the economy. According to the Times, among other slights to Anglophones, recent laws have not been translated into English, and central government officials speak it poorly. Predictably, Anglophone alienation has been accelerating and their economic development lagging. Corruption in both Nigeria and Cameroon is corrosive, though in the former the government of Muhammadu Buhari has launched a major campaign against it. In Cameroon, President Paul Biya is estimated to have a personal fortune of some $200 million. Nigeria is a functioning, if weak, democracy. In 2015, Buhari defeated incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan in credible elections, and, importantly, Jonathan conceded. By contrast, Biya’s rule is that of a “big man,” with only a few trappings of democracy providing a fig leaf for his authoritarian rule. In both countries, government response to secession movements has been the hammer, rather than dialogue to address deep seated grievances. In both countries, security service harshness and human rights abuses appear to encourage local support for secession movements. With deep popular roots, secession movements are difficult, if not impossible, for distant governments to destroy by force. At best, central governments can drive them underground, from which they emerge again when the powers that be show signs of weakness.     

This past Sunday’s edition of the New York Times ran a story about the revival of the Latin Mass among Roman Catholics in southeastern Nigeria, the region that was once the breakaway state of Biafra. The story discusses the popularity of conservative forms of religious expression, especially during periods of unrest, such as is occurring in Nigeria today. The country faces a continuing insurrection in the northeast associated with the radical, Islamist Boko Haram; “range wars” in the Middle Belt involving Muslim, Hausa-Fulani cattle herders and Christian, minority tribe farmers; the mystery surrounding the state of President Buhari’s health; and a revival of agitation for an independent Biafra. Meanwhile, international oil prices remain low, squeezing government revenue. This story is timely in a number of ways; in particular, it alludes to an oft-cited myth that the end of the Biafran war was characterized by “rape and pillage” by the federal forces. In fact, such violence did not take place. Given the re-emergence of pro-Biafra sentiment today, it is important to be accurate about the civil war almost fifty years later. The predominately Igbo areas of southeast Nigeria, the core of the former Biafra, are overwhelmingly Christian and predominately Roman Catholic. Biafran propaganda at the time of the civil war greatly oversimplified the conflict, reducing it to a struggle between Christians and Muslims (though many Christian clergy supported Biafra). The reality is much more complex. Biafran secession occurred in the aftermath of two bloody coups and a pogrom against Igbos in the Muslim north, pushing Igbo refugees south into the region that would become Biafra. The secession movement reflected the Igbo desire for a separate, Igbo-dominated state. Biafra’s leaders also wanted to control Nigeria’s oil wealth, much of which came from the same region, but from parts that were not dominated by Igbo. Over the course of the war, between one and two million people died, mostly from disease and starvation. After the war was over, the Federal government in effect “punished” Christian churches that had supported Biafra by closing church schools and hospitals and incorporating them into the public system. Their quality plunged, contributing to the ongoing educational and health crisis in Nigeria. At the time, it was widely expected that the victors would massacre the Igbo. Instead, President Yakubu Gowon instituted a policy of “no victor, no vanquished” to promote national reconciliation. The discipline of federal troops proved to be far better than anticipated, physical reconstruction and national reconciliation took place remarkably quickly, and the Igbo resumed a position in national life (though many complain of a “glass ceiling” beyond which they still may not rise). The revival of pro-Biafra sentiment appears to be acquiring a Christian colorization that reflects the same ecclesiastically conservative outlook as the popularity of the Latin Mass, and, potentially, an over-simplified characterization of the civil war. Historical memory of what happened then could distort Nigerians' and others' response to developments now.

The Spanish government’s efforts to block a referendum may push more Catalan voters to support independence.