Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, charged Ralph Uwazurike, the leader of a Biafra separatist movement, and 280 members, with treason in a court in the southeastern city of Enugu, police said.
“They were charged yesterday and remanded in prison,” Enugu state police commissioner, Dan’azumi Doma, said today in a telephone interview.
The Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, known as Massob, was formed in 1999 by lawyer Uwazurike to push for an independent Republic of Biafra. The oil-rich southeast region tried to secede from Nigeria as a separatist state in 1967, triggering a three-year civil war that led to more than a million deaths and Biafra’s defeat in 1970.
About 78 members of the group charged yesterday had previously been accused of treason, according to court documents. Massob claims Igbos, the dominant ethnic group in the region, are discriminated against.
Aug282011