17/04/2026
There is no such thing as “indigenous people of Biafra” because Biafra is not, and has never been, an indigenous identity.
“Biafra” was a political construct, not an ethnic civilization. It existed briefly between 1967–1970 during the Nigerian-Biafra Civil War. And Biafra even then consisted of Igbos and non Igbo people who made up the then Eastern Region. Before that war, there was no ethnic group anywhere identifying themselves as “Biafran.” None.
The term itself comes from the Bight of Biafra, a European label for a coastal region used during trade and exploration. It was never a tribe, never a nation with indigenous continuity, and certainly never an identity tied to a single people.
Igbo people did not historically identify as “Biafrans.” They identified by village, clan, hamlet and later by a broader ethnic identity Igbo (recorded in early texts as “Eboe”, because the "gb" sound was too hard for those who wrote about us). That Igbo "identity" existed long before colonial borders and long before any modern political rebranding.
Even Nigeria itself only came into existence through the Amalgamation of Nigeria. So by the time “Biafra” appears in the late 1960s, it is not some ancient homeland, it is a wartime secessionist declaration under very specific political conditions.
That distinction matters.
Because what we are seeing today is not history it is the false rewriting of Igbo identity.
The phrase “Indigenous People of Biafra” did not emerge organically. It was coined and popularized by Nnamdi Kanu in 2015. And that timing is not random.
Before IPOB, there was Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). That scam existed, it was agitated, but it did not gain the level of traction or control that the founder Uwazurike desired because of the times and his MO. After that, Radio Biafra emerged , but the name too was limiting . It could broadcast news, but it could not structure a movement that Kanu could brainwash and scam with!
Enter IPOB.
IPOB is not an ethnicity, not a tribe, not a people. It is an organization, structured, registered, and functionally operating like a corporate entity. A limited liability company cannot be an identity. It can mobilize people, influence narratives, even push agenda but it cannot rewrite anthropology and history!
The naming itself was deliberate!
“Indigenous People of Biafra” is crafted to sound like a legitimate, historically rooted identity similar to globally recognized indigenous groups. Then the acronym “IPOB” is close enough in rhythm and repetition that, over time, it begins to sit in the same mental space as “Igbo,” especially for those who are not historically grounded.
That confusion is not accidental. It is engineered.
And it has worked because many Igbo people today are not learning history from archives, scholarship, or primary sources. They are learning it through emotionally charged broadcasts from Radio Biafra . For some, their first introduction to concepts like the amalgamation, pre-colonial identity, and even Igbo history itself came not from study, but from repetition on platforms like Radio Biafra.
So now you have an entire layer of people who: think “Biafra” is an ancient homeland, believe “Biafran” is an ethnic identity, conflate Igbo history with modern political agitation
That is not history. It is false doctrine.
And it becomes dangerous when a constructed identity begins to overwrite a documented one.
None of this dismisses the suffering, trauma Igbo people experienced during the war. Those are real. But pain does not rewrite history and political movements do not retroactively become indigenous identities.
If anything, the real tragedy is this:
A people with one of the most complex, decentralized, and deeply rooted pre-colonial systems in Africa are slowly being detached from their actual history… and handed a simplified, emotionally charged, and politically convenient version of it. Just because.
And Igbo red cap wearing "high cheifs" and ndi "elders" who can see sitting down......sat by ihe emebie!
This and that should concern anyone who values truth over propaganda and faux history.
Igbo bu Igbo. Igbo is NOT Biafra. Before Biafra, Igbo was and after it, Igbo will remain!!!
By Chioma Amaryllis Ahaghotu
