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African Affairs, 119/4, 1–26 doi:10.1093/afraf/adaa025

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THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BIAFRA

SEPARATISM AND POST-WAR IGBO
NATIONALISM IN NIGERIA
CHIKODIRI NWANGWU , FREEDOM C. ONUOHA ,
BERNARD U. NWOSU AND CHRISTIAN EZEIBE*

ABSTRACT
The past two decades that coincide with the return of civil rule in most
African countries have witnessed the reinforcement of ethnic nationalism
and separatist agitations. While scholarly attention has focused on eth-
nicity to explain the revival of ethnic nationalism, how ethnic and class
discourses conflate in the pursuit of ethnic nationalism remains under-
studied. Using a qualitative-dominant approach, this article interrogates
how the Igbo petty bourgeoisie use ethnicity to mask the underlying dif-
ferences in their material conditions in relation to the alienated masses.
It also examines how these differences shape post-war Igbo nationalism.
In the main, this article argues that the intersection of ethnic and class
discourses is underpinned by unequal distribution of rights and powers
accruing from productive resources. This unequal distribution of rights
and powers results in differential material well-being and gives rise to con-
flicts between the dominant and subordinate classes. This explains the
divergent approaches of the different factions of Igbo petty bourgeoisie
to Igbo nationalism in Nigeria. The article concludes that understanding
the political economy of the intersection of ethnic and class discourses is
relevant for resolving the nationality question and the Biafra secessionist
agitations in Nigeria and others across Africa.

*Chikodiri Nwangwu ([email protected]) is a Lecturer in the Depart-

ment of Political Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Freedom C. Onuoha (free-
[email protected]) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science,
University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Bernard Ugochukwu Nwosu ([email protected]) is a
Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nigeria, Enugu Cam-
pus. Christian Ezeibe ([email protected]) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department
of Political Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. We are very grateful for the critical com-
ments the original manuscript elicited at the African Heritage Institution Conference of 2017.
We are also grateful to Professor Obasi Igwe and Dr Stephen Azom whose comments and sug-
gestions on the original draft proved very helpful. Lastly, we thank the anonymous reviewers
of this article as well as the editors of African Affairs for their useful comments.

1
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2 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

The revival of radical Igbo nationalism since 1999 has received substantial
scholarly attention.1 Despite the growth of scholarly interest in neo-Biafran
separatism, the dynamics of the political economy of ethnic and class divi-
sions in the pursuit of Igbo nationalism in Nigeria remains understudied.
Observably, there is an important internal divide between the conservative
wing of the Igbo petty bourgeoisie (first generation) and the more radical
though incipient petty bourgeois elements, which align better with the Igbo
underclass (second generation). This divide, which is largely a function of
the divergence in the political economy interests of the petty bourgeoisie,
requires a nuanced approach to understand how it is dialectically under-
pinned by their material conditions. This is because Nigeria’s ruling group
depends largely on the resources from the state in the form of perks of
office and proceeds of corruption. In effect, there is an intense struggle
for positions of power in which decisions of resource allocation are taken.
Although the contestation is mostly masked as inter-ethnic rivalry, it is, as
our analysis will demonstrate, actually a reflection of the factional divide
among the ruling groups of different ethnic nationalities.
The first generation of Igbo nationalism started immediately after the
Nigerian Civil War in 1970, and it is championed and dominated by
the conservative Igbo petty bourgeoisie. These petty bourgeois elements
operate through some elitist organizations, of which Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo
(Ohanaeze for short), Aka Ikenga and Alaigbo Development Foundation
(ADF) are the most influential. They provide the platforms for the pro-
tection and promotion of the interests of the Igbo petty bourgeoisie. Seen
largely as being disconnected from the grassroots, these bourgeois elements
are regarded by the second-generation Igbo nationalists as the surrogates
of their counterparts at the federal level.2 Their actions are largely guided
by the philosophy of ‘ako-na-uche’ (wise and tactful) through which they
seek increased participation of the Igbo in mainstream Nigerian politics.
‘Ako-na-uche’ is founded on ‘the application of wisdom, common sense,
sound judgement and restraint in dealing with all issues and situations
to achieve desired results’.3 The disconnection between the conservative
Igbo petty bourgeoisie and the masses largely accounts for the reinvention
of confrontational Igbo nationalism since the return to civil rule in 1999.

1. Godwin Onuoha, ‘Contesting the space: The “New Biafra” and ethno-territorial sepa-
ratism in South-Eastern Nigeria’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 17, 4 (2011), pp. 402–422;
Godwin Onuoha, ‘The politics of “hope” and “despair”: Generational dimensions to Igbo
nationalism in post-civil war Nigeria’, African Sociological Review 18, 1 (2014), pp. 1–25; Ike
Okonta, Biafran ghosts: The MASSOB ethnic militia and Nigeria’s democratisation process (The
Nordic African Institute, Uppsala, 2012); Kenneth Omeje, “‘Enyimba enyi”: The come-
back of Igbo nationalism in Nigeria’, Review of African Political Economy 32, 106 (2005), pp.
630–636; Okechukwu Ibeanu, Nkwachukwu Orji and Kelechi Iwuamadi, Biafra separatism:
Causes, consequences and remedies (Institute for Innovations in Development, Enugu, 2016).
2. Onuoha, ‘The politics of “hope” and “despair”’.
3. Joe Irukwu, Nation building and ethnic organisations: The case of Ohaneze in Nigeria (Spec-
trum, Ibadan, 2007), p. 247; Interview, a member of Imeobi Ohanaeze, Enugu, 3 November
2018.
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 3

In contrast, the second generation of Igbo nationalism is inclined to see

the crises of the Igbo nation as a consequence of the oppressive Nigerian
state and the collaborationist role of the conservative Igbo nationalists who
comprise the other wing of the petty bourgeois class. The second genera-
tion of Igbo nationalism is championed mainly by the incipient but radical
wing of the Igbo petty bourgeoisie in alignment with the underclass who
dominate the various youth-led ethno-nationalist organizations.4 These
radical neo-Biafran movements, of which the Indigenous People of Biafra
(IPOB) represents the most recent manifestation, adopt the philosophy of
‘nzogbu-nzogbu’ (combative and confrontational). ‘Nzogbu-nzogbu’ is a
well-known traditional war song in Igboland. It ‘evokes the idiom of the
presumed bravery and fighting prowess of the menfolk likened to the bull-
dozing power of elephants, which rely on their extraordinary body mass
to trample and crush their adversary’.5 Although mostly founded on the
avowed doctrine of non-violence, these populist organizations represent the
militant wing of post-war Igbo nationalism. This generation promotes the
secessionist inclination that surged since 1999, following the widening of
democratic space for people’s expression of grievances that were restricted
during military rule.6 Notably, the broadening of the political space in
Nigeria also facilitated the emergence of diverse ethnic activist groups such
as the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), Oodua
People’s Congress (OPC), Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Movement
for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Niger Delta Avengers
(NDA), Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra
(MASSOB) and the IPOB.
Although scholars have adopted either the ethnic or class approach to
explaining ethnic nationalism, we argue that this is insufficient for social
analyses.7 In other words, to understand ethnic nationalism and sepa-
ratist agitations in Nigeria and in other African cases, ethnicity and class

4. Chikodiri Nwangwu, ‘Ako-na-uche versus nzogbu-nzogbu: Interrogating the rup

ture between Igbo elite and their lumpen in Igbo nationalism’ (AfriHeritage Research
Working Paper, 2018-005) <https://www.africaportal.org/publications/ako-na-uche-versus
-nzogbu-nzogbu-interrogating-rupturebetween-igbo-elite-and-their-lumpen-igbo-nationali
sm/> (20 November 2018); Onuoha, ‘The politics of “hope” and “despair”’.
5. Omeje, “‘Enyimba enyi”’, p. 631.
6. Chikodiri Nwangwu and Adaeze Ononogbu, ‘National security and sustainable economic
development in Nigeria since 1999: Implication for the Vision 20:2020’, Journal of Educational
and Social Research 4, 5 (2014), pp. 129–142; Freedom C. Onuoha, ‘The transformation of
conflicts in the Niger Delta’, in Hassan Saliu (ed.), Nigeria beyond 2007: Issues, perspectives
and challenges (Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, Ilorin, 2008), pp. 263–283.
7. These scholars are Bruce Berman, ‘Ethnicity, patronage and the African state: The pol-
itics of uncivil nationalism’, African Affairs 97, 388 (1998), pp. 305–341; Erik Olin Wright,
‘Foundations of a neo-Marxist class analysis’, in Erik Olin Wright (ed.), Approaches to class
analysis (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005), pp. 4–30; Larry Diamond, Class,
ethnicity and democracy in Nigeria: The failure of the First Republic (Palgrave Macmillan, Lon-
don, 1988); Marcello Musto, The last years of Karl Marx: An intellectual biography (Stanford
University Press, Stanford, CA, 2020); and Okwudiba Nnoli, Ethnic politics in Nigeria (2nd
ed.) (PACREP, Enugu, 2008).
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4 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

should be studied concurrently. This article, therefore, interrogates how

ethnicity is used to mask the underlying differences in the material con-
ditions of the Igbo petty bourgeoisie and their alienated masses. It also
assesses how these differences shape post-war Igbo nationalism. The article
relies on a qualitative-dominant approach comprising focus group discus-
sions (FGDs), key informant interviews (KIIs), field observation, policy
appraisal and the analysis of secondary data on Igbo nationalism in Nige-
ria. Two FGDs were conducted with members of IPOB and Ohanaeze
each in Aba, Awka, Onitsha, Port-Harcourt and Umuahia, the major cities
in Igboland, from September 2016 to November 2018. Thus, we carried
out a total of 10 FGDs, each with between 6 and 10 participants. We
selected these cities because they have recorded the highest number of pro-
Biafran protests in Nigeria.8 A total of 10 KIIs were held with members of
Imeobi Ohanaeze, the state coordinators of IPOB and some veteran jour-
nalists, who are very knowledgeable about Igbo nationalism.9 The basis
for the selection of participants in the study included knowledge and cog-
nate experience of Igbo nationalism in Nigeria. The participants were asked
questions about the remote and immediate causes of the renewed agitation
for Biafra, consequences of the agitation, the generational disconnection
between Ohanaeze and the neo-Biafran agitators, the justifications for their
preferred strategies for the pursuit of Igbo nationalism and the challenges
of Igbo nationalism.
This article is divided into six sections. After this introduction, the sec-
ond section engages the relevant literature on ethnicity, class and how they
are intersected in the African political economy discourses. In this section,
we argue that understanding the intersection of ethnic and class relations
is central to explaining separatist agitations and other forms of conflict in
Africa. The third section examines the trajectory of Ohanaeze, which serves
as the ensemble of conservative Igbo petty bourgeoisie. In particular, it
interrogates how the Igbo petty bourgeois class leverages the conservative
approach in the pursuit of Igbo nationalism. Conversely, the fourth sec-
tion focuses on the confrontational nationalism of the radical Igbo petty

8. Nnamdi Obasi, ‘Nigeria’s Biafran separatist upsurge’, International Crisis Group, 4 Dece
mber 2015, <https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/nigeria/nigeria-s-biafran-separati
st-upsurge> (20 September 2016). Also, a recent poll conducted by SBM Intelligence found
that the growing pro-Biafra popularity in the South-East and Niger Delta has been sust
ained by perceived marginalization and economic deprivation. See SBM Intelligence, ‘The
prospects of Biafra 2.0’, 2017, <https://sbmintel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/201705_
Biafra-Prospects.pdf> (18 October 2018); Chika Oduah, ‘50 years on: Nigeria’s Biafra
secessionist movement’, Al Jazeera, 30 May 2017, <https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fea
tures/2017/05/50-years-nigeria-biafra-secessionist-movement-170529151102396.html> (18
October 2018).
9. Imeobi is the highest decision-making body of Ohanaeze while state coordinators of IPOB
are the highest-ranking members of the organization in different states.
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 5

bourgeoisie who align with the Igbo underclass. The fifth section interro-
gates the implications of both the conservative and radical approaches for
the pursuit of Igbo nationalism. The conclusion underlines the relevance of
intersecting ethnic and class discourses in explaining separatist agitations
and conflicts in Nigeria and other African countries.

Ethnicity, class and political economy: a theoretical review

Generally, there are two perspectives that explain how ethnicity is manip-
ulated for the domination of state power and the production process in
Africa: primordialist and instrumentalist perspectives. While ethnicity is
being perceived by the primordialists as a cultural and psychological phe-
nomenon, the instrumentalists see it as a vehicle for social, economic
and political competition.10 Meanwhile, ethnicity is not the only or even
the central explanatory variable in African politics. The central but often
neglected variable in African political discourses is class analysis.11 Yet,
even though there is evidence that class is a central social division in Africa,
its analysis is under-explored in the African studies literature.12 Although
class analysis is not new in African studies, categorizing groups in Africa
into clear social classes remains a major challenge, especially in terms of
understanding intra-class divisions of the dominant petty bourgeois group.
This is largely due to the tendency to describe Africa’s pre-capitalist social
structures as classless, thereby denying the possibilities of class analysis
in studying African politics. Nonetheless, African societies are divided into
groups with varying social, economic and political conditions which colour
their viewpoints. Class divisions in Africa were formalized by colonialism
and reinforced in the (early) post-colonial era.13 Thus, class analysis is nec-
essary to understand the inequalities and the dynamics of political economy
on the continent.14 This is because it offers a clear insight into the internal
structures and patterns of material production and distribution in Africa as
well as in other post-colonial contexts.15 These class interactions are under-
pinned by unequal distribution of rights and powers between and among

10. Crawford Young, ‘Nationalism, ethnicity, and class in Africa: A retrospective’, Cahiers
d’ Études africaines 26, 3 (1986), pp. 421–495.
11. Ibid., Nnoli, Ethnic politics in Nigeria.
12. Floya Anthias, ‘The intersections of class, gender, sexuality and “race”: The political
economy of gendered violence’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 27, 2
(2014), pp. 153–171.
13. Richard Wolff, ‘Colonialism in Africa and reparations: A class analysis’, Rethinking
Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 15, 1 (2003), pp. 141–150.
14. Sara S. Berry, ‘The study of inequality in African societies’, Items 30, 1 (1976), pp.
10–11; Joël Noret, ‘For a multidimensional class analysis in Africa’, Review of African Political
Economy 44, 154 (2017), pp. 654–661.
15. Filipe Duarte, ‘Marx’s method of political economy’, Progress in Political Economy, 5
February 2019, <https://www.ppesydney.net/marxs-method-of-political-economy/> (30 July
2020).
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6 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

different groups with respect to specific kinds of productive resources.16

The result is differentials in material well-being and opportunities, which
give rise to conflicts among the dominant class and between the domi-
nant and subordinate classes. While subordinate classes primarily seek to
enhance their material conditions, different strands of the dominant class
struggle to embed and extend their diverse factional class interests. Thus,
social class relations and their inherent differences inevitably shape other
struggles and are affected by prevailing contextual factors. In advanced
capitalist societies where ideology largely defines the direction of engage-
ment, political forces unite around their best visions of society and contest
to generalize them. However, the literature shows that in Africa, the elite
use ethnicity to mask class contradictions and interests while targeting
the political terrain to win and use power largely for personal and ethnic
interests.17
Notably, the common petty bourgeois strategy in Africa is usually to
express their exclusion as an ethnic problem and then mobilize support
together with the underclass of the same ethnic group. However, several
national liberation struggles and popular protests in the decades after inde-
pendence across Africa present an exception to this practice.18 In these
instances, the faction of the national petty bourgeoisie that was not ade-
quately integrated into the elite circuits of power successfully mobilized
the underclass across different ethnic groups. For example, in the 2012
subsidy removal protest in Nigeria dubbed ‘Occupy Nigeria’, the urban
poor, popular artists and musicians, pro-democracy groups and trade
unions were used to achieve a record nationwide reach. According to Adam
Branch and Zachariah Mampilly, the protest was ‘a potent demonstration
of people power that…brought political society and civil society together
in a powerful, but fragile, coalition that briefly threatened to topple the
government’.19
In light of the above, Graham Harrison’s approach appears useful here
for understanding the interaction of social class with the primordial ethnic
factor.20 Within the context of African politics, Harrison presents the nexus

16. Wright, ‘Foundations of a neo-Marxist class analysis’.

17. Chikodiri Nwangwu and Olihe A. Ononogbu, ‘The pursuit of material interest and
proliferation of political parties in Nigeria, 1999–2013’, Global Journal of Art, Humanities
and Social Sciences 2, 6 (2014), pp. 64–76; Jacob M. Mati, ‘Ethnicity and politics in Kenya’,
in Steven Ratuva (ed.), The Palgrave handbook of ethnicity (Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore,
2019), pp. 265–281.
18. Some of the most notable large-scale popular uprisings include the 1964 October Rev-
olution in Sudan, the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia, the 1977 protests in Egypt, the 1979 ‘rice
riots’ in Liberia, the 1983 uprising in Tunisia, and the South African township protests of the
1980s. See Adam Branch and Zachariah Mampilly, Africa uprising: Popular protest and political
change (Zed Books, London, 2015).
19. Ibid., chap. 5, n.p.
20. Graham Harrison, ‘Bringing political struggles back in: African politics, power and
resistance’, Review of African Political Economy 28, 89 (2001), pp. 387–402.
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 7

between structure and struggle by suggesting that while ‘class does not
even explain much in certain conjunctures… in terms of analysing struggle,
one can construct an argument that class analysis is essential’.21 Harri-
son argues that political movements are historical products of a changing
political economy defined by processes of accumulation, production and
class relations with which they engage in a process of mutual but unequal
influence. Political mobilizations in Africa often rely on ethnic identity.
Harrison uses the case of MOSOP, which started on a moral high ground
against environmental despoliation by petro-business, in which Nigeria’s
ruling group collaborates with transnational oil companies to destroy their
environment and impoverish them. This destruction of the environment
by the transnational oil companies has been widely reported. Besides the
2011 report of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP)
that acknowledges the complicity of the Nigerian government and transna-
tional oil companies in the environmental degradation of Ogoniland,22
there has been widespread allegation of undue militarization of the Niger
Delta by federal security operatives and private security guards of these oil
companies.23
MOSOP successful mobilization of transnational actors like the Human
Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Friends of the
Earth to support the Ogoni cause has ethnic, political and economic
colourations.24 Thus, while ethnic agitation played a crucial role in mobi-
lizing international support against environmental degradation in the Niger
Delta, Harrison observes that such international supports cannot be sep-
arated from ‘the political economy of capitalism’.25 This is because the
nature of neo-liberalism in post-colonial African states underpins class con-
tradictions and interacts with resistance movements to assume an ethnic
character.26 Although political, economic and environmental mobiliza-
tions in Africa often rely on ethnic identity, Harrison observes, rightly,

21. Ibid., p. 391.

22. UNEP, Environmental assessment of Ogoniland (United Nations Environment Pro-
gramme, Nairobi, 2011).
23. Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas, Where vultures feast: Shell, human rights and oil in
the Niger Delta (Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA, 2001); Okechukwu Ibeanu, ‘Janus
unbound: Petrobusiness & petropolitics in the Niger Delta’, Review of African Political Economy
29, 91 (2002), pp. 163–167.
24. Clifford Bob, ‘Marketing rebellion: Insurgent groups, international media and NGO
support’, International Politics 38, 3 (2001), pp. 311–334; Cyril Obi, ‘Structuring transna-
tional spaces of identity, rights and power in the Niger Delta of Nigeria’, Globalizations 6, 4
(2009), pp. 467–481.
25. Harrison, ‘Bringing political struggles back in’, p. 392.
26. Graham Harrison, Issues in the contemporary politics of Sub-Saharan Africa: The dynam-
ics of struggle and resistance (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002); Graham Harrison, ‘Authoritarian
neoliberalism and capitalist transformation in Africa: All pain, no gain’, Globalizations 16, 3
(2019), pp. 274–288.
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8 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

that the dynamics of political economy also determine and codetermine

the outcomes.
It is deducible from the foregoing that ethnic and class discourses are
hardly mutually exclusive and are neither independent of dichotomous
spheres of cultural and economic concerns. This is because economic
forces and processes cannot be situated outside the cultural structures
in modern societies.27 Both ethnic and class categories operate in differ-
ent ways to produce the cultural-material nexus of social relations, hence
scholars tend to study them as ‘sui generis’.28 However, the intersectional
approach is relevant for addressing the inherent disadvantages of ethnic and
class analyses in order to understand the political, economic and social
hierarchies in societies and institutions.29 This is because understanding
both class and non-class social formations are relevant for explaining the
nexus between the state and the economy.30 Marxist political economy
illuminates the inequalities engendered by capitalism in ethnic and class
analyses. Thus, ethnic consciousness is often present in capitalist class rela-
tions due largely to the economic rewards that accrue from the willingness
to discriminate.31
The closest approximation of ethnic-class intersection in Africa is the
race-class interface, which gained attention in South Africa in the 1970s.
Crawford Young observes that the interface between race and class is
not simply the outcome of uneven development; but it is, as he argues,
inscribed in public law and enforced by the coercive apparatus of the capi-
talist state.32 In Nigeria, understanding the intersection of ethnic and class
relations is relevant for explaining separatist agitations and other forms of
conflict.
We argue that the evolution of Igbo separatist groups in Nigeria is not
simply a matter of ethnic nationalism. Rather, it is a function of the inter-
section of ethnic and class interests that largely manifest in the differences
in the material conditions of the Igbo petty bourgeoisie and the under-
class. The petty bourgeoisie are so-called because their members, in large
part, do not own the means of production but are canalized into inter-
mediary activities through which they exercise significant control over not

27. Anthias, ‘The intersections of class, gender, sexuality and “race”’.

28. Ibid.; Edward J. McCaughan, ‘Race, ethnicity, nation, and class within theories of
structure and agency’, Social Justice 20, 1/2 (1993), pp. 82–103.
29. Floya Anthias, ‘Hierarchies of social location, class and intersectionality: Towards a
translocational frame’, International Sociology 28, 1 (2013), pp. 121–138.
30. Christian Ezeibe, ABC of political economy: A beginner’s guide to understanding the state
and economy (University of Nigeria Press Limited, Nsukka, 2015); Suraj B. Gupta, ‘Why
political economy?’, Indian Economic Review 27, Special Number in Memory of Sukhamoy
Chakravarty (1992), pp. 283–289.
31. Francesco Macheda and Roberto Nadalini, ‘The political economy of nationalism and
racial discrimination’, Journal of Labor and Society 21, 3 (2018), pp. 337–348.
32. Young, ‘Nationalism, ethnicity, and class in Africa’.
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 9

just the means of production but also the state machinery and policy
processes.33 On the other hand, the underclass is the commoners who rep-
resent the nucleus of the alienated and economically disadvantaged group.
Although widely viewed by classical Marxism as incapable of any revolu-
tionary action, the evidence presented by Asef Bayat regarding the ‘Arab
spring’ in Egypt and Tunisia demonstrated their revolutionary creden-
tials.34 Both the Niger Delta militancy and Boko Haram insurgency arose
from such conditions created and sustained by the petty bourgeoisie whose
fortunes embody neoliberal economy’s promise of stupendous wealth and
penury for the large layers of the masses.35
The foregoing demonstrates the trans-historicity of approaches from rad-
ical political economy, especially how they can be modified to take on board
cultural forces that supply narratives and discourses to political and eco-
nomic struggles. The contribution of this article is to provide a specific
case of how ethnic and class analyses conflate in the study and understand-
ing of the dynamics of ethnic nationalism in Africa where the dominant
petty bourgeois class do not focus on industrial production, where labour
relations do not produce class exploitation in the classic labour versus cap-
ital dialectic and where the state is managed by the petty bourgeoisie via
the bureaucratic and political systems. This way, the petty bourgeois class
have significant influence, or control, over not just the means of production
but also the state machinery and policy processes. While they are unable
to compete in economic productivity and value creation like the bourgeois
class, the petty bourgeoisie channel their energy to competing for vantage
positions, mostly by appealing to their ethnic and cultural groups.
The above characterizes the politics of the petty bourgeoisie and the rein-
vention of radical Igbo nationalism, both of which are commonly fuelled,
directly and indirectly, by the ethnic power plays of the petty bourgeoisie.
Directly, it is made possible through the constant manipulation of cultural
diversities in order to advance their economic interests. Since the 1950s,
the petty bourgeoisie have propagated the narrative that Nigerian politics is
all about the struggle of ethnic and religious groups for power and national
resources. The propaganda has been so successful that most politically
conscious Nigerians believe that ethnic politics is the reality of Nigeria’s

33. Nnoli, Ethnic politics in Nigeria.

34. Asef Bayat ‘Plebeians of the Arab Spring’, Current Anthropology 56, 11 (2015),
pp. 33–43.
35. Abubakar Dambatta and Musa Atiku, ‘Nigeria: Northwest banditry – the product of
a rotting system’, In Defence of Marxism, 23 June 2020, <https://www.marxist.com/nigeria-
northwest-banditry-the-product-of-a-rotting-system.htm> (30 June 2020); Peter Mbah,
Chikodiri Nwangwu and Herbert C. Edeh, ‘Elite politics and the emergence of Boko Haram
insurgency in Nigeria’, TRAMES: Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 21, 2 (2017),
pp. 173–190.
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10 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

existence. Indirectly, the emergence of separatist groups that are domi-

nated by the underclass should be understood within the context of their
poor material conditions. Limited access to economic opportunities and
the associated youth unemployment, even among highly educated young
people, are central to the separatist agitations among the Igbo and other
ethnic minorities in the Niger Delta.36
The current agitation for the state of Biafra by the youth is, to an extent,
an expression of resentment over their material conditions. Although such
conditions generally reflect the broader contradictions of the Nigerian
political economy, they are often understood as ethnic bias and exclu-
sion. This is deepened by a perception that other parts of the country,
especially the North, are unduly privileged by the federal government.37
This kind of perception is strengthened through beliefs about how political
appointments are distributed across ethnic groups in the country. Once a
particular ethnic group appears to constitute a greater number in the crit-
ical sectors of national political appointment, it tends to lend support to
narratives of domination and marginalization against other groups.38 The
next section focuses on the petty bourgeoisie’s conservative approach to
Igbo nationalism.

Ako-na-uche: petty bourgeois organizations and the pursuit of Igbo nationalism

Prior to the emergence of confrontational youth-led organizations with a
separatist agenda in Igboland, the post-war Igbo ethno-nationalist aspira-
tion was dominated by different socio-cultural groups and organizations,
including the Ohanaeze, Aka Ikenga and the ADF. However, the pur-
suit of Igbo nationalism predated these organizations. Historically, Igbo
ethno-national mobilizations have followed an elitist path. This tendency
manifested as part of the national response to British imperial rule in Nige-
ria.39 Between the 1920s and 1930s, there were unsuccessful attempts in
major Nigerian cities like Aba, Lagos and Port-Harcourt to birth a pan-
Igbo union. For example, in 1944, the Igbo Federal Union (IFU) was
launched and its membership was mainly made up of educated elite of
professionals, businessmen and politicians.40 In 1949, IFU was renamed
the Igbo State Union (ISU). This was aimed at advancing the political,

36. Ibeanu et al., Biafra separatism.

37. Peter Mbah, Chikodiri Nwangwu and Sam Ugwu, ‘Contentious elections, political
exclusion and challenges of national integration in Nigeria’, Cogent Social Sciences 5, 1 (2019),
pp. 1–21.
38. Christian Ezeibe, Ifeanyi Abada and Martin Okeke, ‘Zoning of public offices, liberal
democracy and economic development in Nigeria’, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 7,
3 (2016), pp. 328–337.
39. Interview, a member of Imeobi Ohanaeze, Umuahia, 17 November 2018.
40. Irukwu, Nation building and ethnic organisations.
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 11

economic, social, cultural and other interests of the Igbo in Nigeria and
the diaspora.41 The truncation of the First Republic in 1966, however,
narrowed the democratic space by proscribing the activities of ISU, and
indeed, every other ethno-regional organization. Accordingly, no ethnic
organization existed in Nigeria until the run-up to the 1979 political tran-
sition when the political space was opened for political and other related
activities.42
Ohanaeze was founded in 1976 as a successor to the defunct ISU and a
unifying apex organization through the effort of Professor Ben Nwabueze,
who galvanized other prominent Igbo leaders like Dr Akanu Ibiam, Dr
Michael I. Okpara, Chief Mathias N. Ugochukwu, Chief Jerome Udoji,
Dr Kingsley O. Mbadiwe, Dr Pius Okigbo, Chief Bob Ogbuagu, Dr
Anagha Ezeikpe and Chief Onyeso Nwachukwu.43 The earliest leader-
ship of Ohanaeze was committed to the organization’s main purpose of
unifying the Igbo and addressing most of their post-war challenges like pop-
ulation displacement and marginalization. In the course of its evolution,
issues began to emerge around its structure and management, including
perceptions among the Igbo at the grassroots level that the organization
was not only immersed in partisan politics but was equally elitist and non-
democratic in nature.44 With the advent of the Second Republic in 1979,
Igbo expectations of Ohanaeze failed to materialize since it was ‘hijacked
by [a] post-civil war Igbo elite’ who sought to align with, or submit to,
the ruling petty bourgeoisie from other sections of the country in the
prevailing power configuration.45 For strategic reasons, the leadership of
Ohanaeze under Professor Nwabueze, as the Secretary-General and chief
executive officer, aligned with the Shehu Shagari-led National Party of
Nigeria (NPN) at the centre and was largely seen by many as the ‘Igbo
wing’ of the NPN operating under a different name.46 Thus, the leadership
of Ohanaeze regarded the emergence of Alex Ekwueme as Vice President
under the NPN-led government not only as a solution to the perceived
lack of leadership in Igboland but also as a means of reconnecting their
struggle to mainstream Nigerian politics. The Igbo people rallied around
Ekwueme, with Ohanaeze being openly and strongly opposed to the Nige-
ria Peoples Party led by Nnamdi Azikiwe, and indeed other interests of the
Igbo outside the Ekwueme–NPN connection.

41. Ibid.
42. Onuoha, ‘The politics of “hope” and “despair”’; Interview, a member of Imeobi
Ohanaeze, Enugu, 3 November 2018.
43. Ben Nwabueze, Ben Nwabueze: His life, works and times: An autobiography, Volume 1
(Gold Press Limited, Ibadan, 2013). This viewpoint was also corroborated in an interview
with a member of Imeobi Ohanaeze, Enugu, 3 November 2018.
44. Irukwu, Nation building and ethnic organisations.
45. Onuoha, ‘The politics of “hope” and “despair”’, p. 11.
46. Ibid.
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12 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

The mainstream inclusivism of Ohanaeze is founded on the philosophy

of ‘ako-na-uche’. The philosophy strikes a conciliatory tone, revealing the
organization’s stance on Nigerian politics and its preferred principle for
Igbo relations with other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. The ‘ako-na-uche’
credo is founded on pragmatic wisdom; it is less confrontational, more
subtle and underscores the need for dialogue at appropriate times, to be
silent rather than being highly vocal and provocative, and it emphasizes the
need to promote amity instead of enmity.47 Hence, besides their material
considerations, a faction of the Igbo petty bourgeoisie, comprising mostly
war veterans and older generations who have bitter memories of the civil
war, advocates greater political, economic and social inclusion of the Igbo
as the most effective way of addressing the perceived victimization of the
ethnic Igbo. This partly explains their hesitancy to support any violent
stance against the Nigerian state that might undermine the security of the
Igbo. As noted by an Ohanaeze chieftain in Awka, ‘rather than secession,
their campaign for inclusion is mainly centred on devolution of powers and
restructuring of the Nigerian federation’.48
The ‘Ako-na-uche’ approach is therefore decidedly conciliatory, with
exceptions including ‘occasional condemnation of orchestrated attacks
against the lives and property of the Igbo, especially in Northern Nigeria’.49
However, what appears as a watershed in the pursuit of Igbo national-
ism by the inclusivists took place in 1999 when Ohanaeze alleged various
instances of rights abuses meted against the Igbo in Nigeria. In a mem-
orandum submitted to the Human Rights Violations Investigation Panel
(the Oputa Panel), Ohanaeze charted the alleged violations of the human
and civil rights of the Igbo as occurring in four phases namely: the imme-
diate pre-civil war period, during the civil war, the immediate post-war era
and later post-war era.50
Although the Nigerian Civil War ended on the principle of ‘no victor;
no vanquished’, several post-war policies and actions of the Nigerian gov-
ernment have stoked Igbo resentment.51 As argued by Moses Duruji, the
end of the war signalled the genesis of deliberate social, political and eco-
nomic policies aimed at reducing the capacity of the Igbo to challenge the
dominance of the Nigerian state.52 In a similar vein, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

47. Ibeanu et al., Biafra separatism.

48. FGD, Ohanaeze chieftains, Awka, 3 September 2017.
49. Nwangwu, ‘Ako-na-uche versus nzogbu-nzogbu’, p. 37.
50. Oha-na-Eze Ndi Igbo, The violations of human and civil rights of Ndi Igbo in the federation of
Nigeria (1966–1999): A call for reparations and appropriate restitution (Memorandum submitted
to the Human Rights Violations Investigation Panel, 1999).
51. Onuoha, ‘Contesting the space’; Paul Obi-Ani, Post-civil war social and economic
reconstruction of Igboland, 1970–1983 (Mikon Press, Enugu, 1998); Tom Lodge, ‘Conflict
resolution in Nigeria after the 1967–1970 civil war’, African Studies 77, 1 (2018), pp. 1–22.
52. Moses M. Duruji, ‘Social inequity, democratic transition and the Igbo nationalism
resurgence in Nigeria’, African Journal of Political Science and International Relations 3, 1
(2009), pp. 54–65.
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 13

posits that policies like removing the jurisdiction of state or regional gov-
ernments from strategic resources like crude oil, the confiscation of the
so-called ‘abandoned property’ belonging to the Igbo after the civil war and
the post-war currency conversion regimes, are specific strategies against the
Igbo.53 James O’Connell concludes that these apparent anti-Igbo policies
and actions in Nigeria make many Igbo people remain secessionists at heart
even though they accepted the Biafran defeat.54
The Ohanaeze has consistently argued that the Igbo, similar to the
situation during the 1953 Kano Riots, have become the main victim
of the various ethno-religious and political conflicts in post-war Nigeria.
Ohanaeze listed 10 violent cases between 1980 and 1993 in which Igbo
people were killed and their property looted or destroyed.55 They claimed
that there was a seemingly calculated effort to reduce those of Igbo nation-
ality to ‘second class citizens’ in the country.56 As part of the efforts to
reconcile the Igbo with all segments of the Nigerian society, a high-profile
delegation under the auspices of Ohanaeze visited the then president, Chief
Olusegun Obasanjo, in May 2004. They discussed issues encompassing
federalism, power-sharing, democracy and the mutuality of Igbo and Nige-
rian interests.57 However, Ohanaeze was later stalled by a series of factional
and personality disputes among its members, which greatly undermined its
performance.58
The emergence of Chief Nnia Nwodo’s National Executive Committee
in January 2017 reinvigorated Ohanaeze. Nwodo’s leadership has equally
deepened the discourse on the ideology of mainstream inclusivism as a
means of ending the perceived marginalization of the Igbo particularly in
the context of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. Contrary
to Buhari’s avowed declaration in his inaugural address on 29 May 2015

53. See Ekwe-Ekwe as cited in Lasse Heerten and A. Dirk Moses, ‘The Nigeria–Biafra
war: Postcolonial conflict and the question of genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research 16, 2–3
(2014), pp. 169–203.
54. James O’Connell, ‘The ending of the Nigerian Civil War: Victory, defeat, and the chang-
ing of coalitions’, in Roy Licklider (ed.), Stopping the killing: How civil wars end (New York
University Press, New York, 1993), pp. 189–203.
55. These are the Kano Riots of 1980 and 1982; Buluta Maiduguri Riot of 1982; Yola Riot
of 1984; Gombe Riot of 1985; Kaduna Religious Crisis of 1987; Zaru Religious Crisis of
1988; Ahmadu Bello University Religious Crisis of 1988; Bauchi Riot of 1992; Zango-Kataf
Uprising of 1992; and 12 June 1993 Crisis in Lagos.
56. Press statement by the Igbo-speaking delegates to the 1995 National Constitutional
Conference, Abuja, on 11 January published as Appendix III in Uzodinma Nwala, Nigeria:
Path to unity and stability (Niger Books Publishing, Nsukka, 1997).
57. Irukwu, Nation building and ethnic organisations.
58. See KlinReports, ‘Ohanaeze still in tatters’, 2 March 2009, <http://klinreports.blogspot.
com.ng/2009/03/ohanaeze-still-in-tatters.html> (20 September 2017); Emmanuel Nzomiwu,
‘Ohanaeze crisis: Okorocha’s peace deal collapses’, Independent, 7 May 2016, <https://
independent.ng/ohanaeze-crisis-okorochas-peace-deal-collapses/> (20 September 2017).
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14 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

that he ‘belongs to everybody and not to anybody’,59 it has been alleged that
his appointments and siting of physical infrastructure across the federation
suggest an adherence to the infamous ‘97 percent versus 5 percent ratio’
principle in political considerations.60 The President-General of Ohanaeze,
Chief Nnia Nwodo, laments as follows:

Under the current Federal government, Igbo representation is abysmal

and falls extremely short of the constitutional provisions for the reflec-
tion of federal character in the appointment into important government
positions. No arm of government namely, the executive, judiciary or leg-
islature is headed by an Igbo. No section of the armed forces or paramil-
itary organization is headed by an Igbo. Neither the Supreme Court,
Court of Appeal nor the Federal High Court is headed by an Igbo…. No
railway construction is going on in Igboland. The Enugu/Port-Harcourt
and Enugu/Onitsha Expressways have become [a] national embarrass-
ment. State governors in Igbo states now rehabilitate federal roads in
Igboland from their lean budgets so as to keep alive mobility of factors of
production.61

Adding to Igbo discontent, President Buhari presented a US$29.9 billion

3-year External Borrowing Plan to the National Assembly on 25 October
2016 for infrastructural development without allocating any project in the
plan to the South-East zone.62 The borrowing plan that will raise Nigeria’s
total external debt to $41 billion in 3 years and its debt to GDP ratio from
13.2 percent to 20.7 percent provides fuel to those who claim that there is
a carefully crafted economic strangulation of the Igbo nation.63
Allegations of victimization are particularly strong regarding the appoint-
ments made at the federal level by Buhari’s administration, especially in
the configuration of internal security management. Table 1 reveals that
16 of the 18 heads of strategic national security institutions are from

59. Mohammed Lere, ‘I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody – Pres. Muham-
madu Buhari inaugural speech’, Premium Times, 29 May 2015, <https://www.premium
timesng.com/video/183998-i-belong-to-everybody-and-i-belong-to-nobody-pres-muhamma
du-buhari-inaugural-speech.html> (20 October 2018).
60. During President Buhari’s state visit to the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on 22
July 2015, he stated that the constituents that gave him 97 percent of the vote cannot be treated
the same way with constituencies that gave him 5 percent. Although the percentage does not
add up, it was President Buhari’s direct statement on how he would treat the geopolitical
zones in relation to their voting support. See Mbah et al., ‘Contentious elections’.
61. Nnia Nwodo, ‘Ndigbo: Our case, a ticking time bomb’, Vanguard, 28 January
2017, <https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/01/ndigbo-case-ticking-time-bomb/> (20 Sept-
ember 2017).
62. Kunle Aderinokun, ‘Examining Buhari’s request for $30bn foreign borrowing’, This
Day, 30 October 2016, <https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2016/10/30/examining-buh
aris-request-for-30bn-foreign-borrowing/> (20 October 2018).
63. Nwangwu, ‘Ako-na-uche versus nzogbu-nzogbu’.
 Table 1 Heads of national security institutions appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
S/N Name Position State of Geopolitical Date appointed
origin zone

1 Brig Gen Mansur Muhammad Minister of Defence Zamfara North-West 15 November 2015
Dan Ali (Rtd)
2 Lt Gen Abdulrahman Dambazua Minister of Interior Kaduna North-West 15 November 2015
3 Maj Gen Mohammed Babagana National Security Adviser Borno North-East 13 July 2015
Monguno (Rtd)
4 Abubakar Malami Attorney General of the Kebbi North-West 15 November 2015
Federation
5 Lt Gen Abayomi G. Olanishakin Chief of Defence Staff Ekiti South-West 13 July 2015
6 Lt. General Tukur Buratai Chief of Army Staff Borno North-East 13 July 2015
7 Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar Chief of Air Staff Bauchi North-East 13 July 2015
8 V Adm Ibok-Ete Ekwe Abas Chief of Naval Staff Cross River South-South 13 July 2015
9 Lawal Musa Daura Director General Department of Katsina North-West 2 July 2015
State Services
10 Abdullahi Gana Muhammadu Commandant General Nigerian Niger North- 17 July 2015
Security and Civil Defence Corp Central
11 Col. Hameed Ibrahim Ali (Rtd) Comptroller General Nigerian Bauchi North-East 27 August 2015
Custom Service
12 Muhammad Mustapha Abdallah Chairman National Drug Law Adamawa North-East 11 January 2016
Enforcement Agency
13 Ibrahim Idris Kpotum Inspector General of Police Niger North- 21 March 2016
Central
THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM

14 Muhammed Babandede Comptroller General Nigerian Jigawa North-West 17 May 2016

Immigration Service
15 Ja’afaru Ahmed Comptroller General Nigerian Kebbi North-West 17 May 2016
Prison Service
16 Ahmed Rufai Abubakar Director General National Katsina North-West 11 January 2018
Intelligence Agency
17 Boboye Olayemi Oyeyemi Corps Marshall Federal Road Kwara North- 24 January 2018
Safety Corps Central
15

Source: Authors’ compilation from media reports.

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16 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

120,000 112,744

100,000
88,008

80,000

60,000
44,405
39,134
40,000

20,000 10,429
3,253
0
North-Central North-East North-West South-East South-South South-West

Figure 1 Beneficiaries of federal government’s CCT scheme.

Source: Adapted from Chikezie Omeje.66

Northern Nigeria and none is from the South-East zone.64 It is also

claimed that similar unjust treatment is manifest in the distribution of
beneficiaries of the federal government’s social security scheme known as
Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT). Figure 1 shows the regional distribu-
tion of CCT to 297,973 beneficiaries of the scheme in Nigeria. While
only 3,253 are from the South-East zone, the North-West has 112,744
beneficiaries followed by North-Central and North-East with 88,008 and
44,405 beneficiaries, respectively. This unequal distribution of CCT does
not reflect varying population sizes of different zones. For instance, while
the North-East and South-East have the population sizes of 18,984,299
and 16,395,555, respectively, during the last national census in 2006,65
the CCT to the South-East is less than 4 percent of the allocation to the
North-East. Although South-West and South-South with population sizes
of 27,722,432 and 21,044,081, respectively, have a higher population than
North-East and North-Central (20,369,956 people), the northern regions
received higher CCT than their southern counterparts. While the com-
bined population sizes of South-East, South-South and South-West exceed
the population of North-West (35,915,467 people), the three southern

64. South-East is one of the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria, others being South-South,
South-West, North-Central, North-East and North-West.
65. Federal Republic of Nigeria, ‘2006 population and housing census: Priority table’
(National Population Commission, Abuja, 2010).
66. Chikezie Omeje, ‘Investigation: Poorest Nigerians deprived of federal govern-
ment’s cash transfer’, Sahara Reporters, 27 June 2018, <http://saharareporters.com/2018/
06/27/investigation-poorest-nigerians-deprived-federal-government’s-cash-transfer> (19
August 2018).
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 17

regions combined received less than 50 percent of the total transfers to

North-West alone.
In response to these issues, the Ohanaeze has campaigned for equality
of states in all zones and the creation of an additional state for the South-
East zone; for the practice of federalism as a national stabilizing factor;
for power-sharing with an emphasis on the election of a Nigerian presi-
dent of Igbo origin; and for the economic development of the South-East
zone.67 Besides, the organization has continued to promote what it regards
as the pre-civil war ‘Igbo spirit and values’, especially the spirit of genuine
national reconciliation based on the idea of ‘egbe bere ugo bere’ (justice
for all). Justifying why the Ohanaeze prefers restructuring of the coun-
try to secession, Nwodo argues that no ethnic group has greater stakes in
the Nigerian project than the Igbo who have huge economic investments
in other parts of Nigeria without any corresponding investment from oth-
ers in Igboland and as such do not consider a breakup as a viable option
to the Igbo question.68 Thus, this conservative group prefers a gradualist
and inclusivist approach in order to protect their huge economic invest-
ments in Nigeria. The next section investigates how the philosophy of
‘nzogbu-nzogbu’ has shaped the pursuit of Igbo nationalism in Nigeria.

Nzogbu-nzogbu: the reinvention of radical Igbo nationalism in Nigeria

The activities of Ohanaeze since its founding in 1976 have tended to
alienate the grassroots of the Igbo population. Hence, there is a percep-
tion among the radical separatists in the frontline neo-Biafran movements
that Ohanaeze is ‘a partisan club of Igbo petty bourgeoisie, wholly inter-
ested in the preservation of its privileged material conditions’.69 To them,
Ohanaeze’s clamour for the reintegration of the Igbo into the patrimonial
politics of the Nigerian state where they will play the ‘politics of the centre’
is not driven by any populist or wide ethno-nationalist project; it is aimed
at promoting and protecting their political economy interests.70
Thus, the separatists reject the option of reintegration of the Igbo
through inclusion in the state and contend that only an independent Biafran
state would guarantee the socio-economic and political development of the
Igbo.71 These separatists consist of groups like MASSOB, Biafra Zionist

67. Interview, a member of Imeobi Ohanaeze, Awka, 10 November 2018.

68. ‘Why Ohanaeze prefers restructuring to break-up – Nwodo’, Vanguard, 7 July 2017,
<https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/07/ohanaeze-prefers-restructuring-break-nwodo/> (20
September 2017).
69. Interview, veteran journalist, Port-Harcourt, 25 August 2018.
70. FGD, IPOB members, Umuahia and Port-Harcourt, 5 August and 19 September 2017
respectively.
71. FGD, IPOB members, Aba, 12 August 2017; Interview, coordinator of IPOB, Abia
State, 17 November 2018.
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18 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

Movement (BZM), MASSOB International, Biafran Zionist Front (BZF),

Biafra Independent Movement, Biafra Youth Congress, Biafran Liberation
Council and IPOB (now proscribed by the Federal Government), among
others.72 They have consequently leveraged the opportunities provided by
the return to civil rule in 1999 to openly express their hitherto suppressed
grievances against the Nigerian state. Prior to their emergence, discourses
on Biafra were regarded as taboo among the Igbo across different classes.73
Led by Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, MASSOB was established in Lagos on 13
September 1999 to promote the interest of the Igbo in Nigeria. MASSOB
was able to secure the support of a vibrant global network of Igbo organiza-
tions like the Biafra Foundation, Biafra Actualization Forum, Igbo USA,
Ekwe Nche and the Biafra Nigeria World.74 However, a combination of
state repression and internal leadership tussles weakened MASSOB and
introduced deep cracks in its organization.75 This paved the way for the
emergence of IPOB, led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. IPOB appeals directly to
the alienated underclass through its digital broadcasting and social media
outlets of which the internet-based Radio Biafra is the most popular.76
The Igbo underclass who are predominantly found within the rank
and file of neo-Biafran movements comprise artisans, traders, commer-
cial motorcyclists, commercial tricycle (‘keke’) riders, taxi drivers, the
unemployed and under-employed graduates. Nnamdi Obasi reveals that
the popularity of Biafra among Igbo youths has increased exponentially
under the leadership of Nnamdi Kanu.77 Corroboratively, IPOB members
enthused during FGD sessions that their membership ranges from 40 to
50 million people spread across over 100 countries.78 IPOB members who

72. The IPOB was first proscribed by the South-East governors, and shortly afterwards
labelled a terrorist organization by the Nigerian Army. It was later proscribed by the Federal
Government on 20 September 2017 through an order from Abdul Kafarati, the Chief Judge
of the Federal High Court Abuja, Nigeria.
73. Interview, coordinator of IPOB, Anambra State, 10 November 2018.
74. Omeje, “‘Enyimba enyi”’.
75. MASSOB leaders were incarcerated and charged for disturbance of public peace on
several occasions. See Samson Ezea, ‘Kanu’s, Uwazuruike’s travails and tempo of Biafra
struggle’, The Guardian, 16 May 2017, <https://guardian.ng/politics/kanus-uwazuruikes-
travails-and-tempo-of-biafra-struggle/> (20 October 2018).
76. Radio Biafra served as the propaganda outfit of the Republic of Biafra during the war.
Presently, it operates under the directorship of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Radio Biafra trans-
mits via the internet and shortwave. About a million people were projected to download the
Radio Biafran app to listen to Kanu’s historic broadcast from Israel on 21 October 2018. See
Christopher E. Chukwuemeka, ‘Quarter of a million projected downloads of Radio Biafra
mobile app’, eTimes Nigeria, 20 October 2018, <https://etimes.com.ng/millions-download-
radio-biafra-mobile-app-after-sightings-of-kanu-in-israel/> (25 October 2018). Also in a
broadcast of 13 August 2015, Kanu boasted that Radio Biafra is the most popular radio across
the earth. See ‘Download/listen to Nnamdi Kanu’s educative broadcast in August 2015’,
Gbam TV, 3 April 2019, <https://www.gbamtv.com/2019/04/03/download-listen-to-nnamdi-
kanus-educative-broadcast-in-august-2015/> (4 April 2019).
77. Obasi, ‘Nigeria’s Biafran separatist upsurge’.
78. FGDs, IPOB members, Aba, Awka, Onitsha, Port-Harcourt and Umuahia.
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 19

largely oppose the conservative ideology of a faction of the Igbo petty bour-
geoisie, whom they perceive as the clientele of the Nigerian government,
favour a radical approach to Igbo nationalism.79
Although founded on the avowed doctrine of non-violence, the youth-
based neo-Biafran organizations are mainly characterized by the confronta-
tional philosophy of ‘nzogbu-nzogbu’. They represent the militant wing of
post-war Igbo nationalism. Their philosophy inspires a belief in the peo-
ple’s ability to defeat any adversary. The ‘nzogbu-nzogbu’ approach of the
neo-Biafran agitators is a radical departure from the conservative ‘ako-na-
uche’ of the Igbo petty bourgeoisie. Many Igbo who espouse this idea have
continued to identify with the neo-Biafran movements as a viable solution
to the Igbo question. The neo-Biafran project rejects a state-led process
and seeks the realignment of the generational imbalance of power, and
ultimately, an exit of the Igbo ethnic group into an alternative political and
administrative arrangement.80 Although the separatist agitators agree on
secession as the only solution to the perceived Igbo victimization, they differ
on the ‘modus operandi’. At least three possible routes to sovereignty—
threat of armed secession, civil disobedience and a referendum (which are
not mutually exclusive)—have been suggested by pro-Biafra organizations.
The option of armed struggle was first mooted in 2014 when Kanu
threatened Igbo delegates to the 2014 National Conference not to return
to Biafraland unless they are able to negotiate secession from the Nigerian
federation.81 According to Kanu, ‘if they fail to give us Biafra, Somalia
will look like a paradise compared with what will happen to that zoo.82 It
is a promise, it is a pledge and it is also a threat to them’.83 Furthermore,
the BZM—a splinter group from MASSOB led by Benjamin Onwuka—
claimed responsibility for the 8 March 2014 invasion of the Enugu State
Government House. Members of the BZM occupied the State House for
four hours during which they successfully hoisted the Biafran flag and ban-
ners at the main gate. In line with the bellicose rhetoric associated with the
neo-Biafran movements, Onwuka warned Nigerians to vacate Biafraland
before 31 March 2014 or risk a bloodbath.84 They again tried without suc-
cess in the early hours of 5 June 2014 to seize the Enugu State Broadcasting

79. FGD, IPOB members, Umuahia, 5 August 2017.

80. Onuoha, ‘The politics of “hope” and “despair”’.
81. Biafraland is a term used to describe the geographical location of the envisaged Republic
of Biafra. It covers the defunct Eastern Region. However, the groups often argue that parts
of Edo, Benue (Idoma and Igede) and Kogi (Igala) States are also included in Biafraland.
82. ‘Zoo’ is a name used by IPOB members to describe the Nigerian state.
83. See ‘If they fail to give us Biafra, Somalia will look like a paradise- Nnamdi Kanu’,
Sahara Reporters, 25 March 2014, <http://saharareporters.com/2014/03/25/if-they-fail-give-
us-biafra-somalia-will-look-paradise-nnamdi-kanu> (20 September 2017).
84. Tony Edike, ‘We seized Enugu Govt House for 4 hours, says Onwuka, BZM
leader’, Vanguard, 13 March 2014, <https://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/seized-enugu-
govt-house-4-hours-says-onwuka-bzm-leader/> (20 September 2017).
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20 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

Service, the state-owned radio and television station, for a broadcast. The
attack that claimed the life of a police sergeant and a member of BZM
was eventually foiled after a team of policemen arrested Onwuka and 12
members of his movement.85
The threat of armed secession further reverberated on 5 September 2015
during the Convention of the World Igbo Congress (WIC) in Los Angeles,
California. While speaking on the global effort to restore Biafra during his
address at the Convention, Nnamdi Kanu stated that ‘we need guns and we
need bullets’.86 Kanu’s confrontational rhetoric and call for armed struggle
were the reasons for his arrest on 14 October 2015 in Lagos by operatives
of the Department of State Services. His arrest triggered protests by IPOB
members in different parts of Nigeria, especially Abia, Anambra, Cross
River, Delta, Enugu, Imo and Rivers States.87 The protests heightened
tension in Igboland, putting pressure on the Nigerian government to deal
with the agitation.
The moves by the IPOB—including claims to have established the
Biafran Security Agency, Biafra Secret Service and Biafra National
Guard—not only fall within the conceptual purview of armed struggle but
further caused apprehension in security circles in Nigeria, hence President
Buhari’s administration’s eventual resort to a military operation to suppress
the agitation. In September 2017, the military launched Operation Python
Dance II, which it claimed was a ‘show of force’ to deal with criminality
and insecurity in the South-East.88 Worried for his safety in an environment
of an active military operation, Kanu stated that the IPOB leadership was
rethinking the viability of continuing the struggle in a non-violent manner,
especially in the face of relentless attacks from the Nigerian state.89
The second and perhaps more important strategy commonly used by
Biafran movements is civil disobedience. Aware of the success of this
strategy in Gandhi’s India, Mandela’s South Africa, the American Civil
Rights Movement and by the Baltic countries against the Soviet Union,

85. Tony Adibe, ‘When Biafra Zionists laid siege on Enugu’, Daily Trust, 14 June 2014,
<https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/general/when-biafra-zionists-laid-siege-on-enugu/175
37.html> (20 September 2017).
86. Biafra Television, ‘Director Nnamdi Kanu’s speech at 2015 World Igbo Convention
in Los Angeles’, 14 September 2015, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fPQOPEH-0Y>
(20 September 2017).
87. See Obasi, ‘Nigeria’s Biafran separatist upsurge’.
88. Python dance II is the codename of the military operation that lasted from
15 September to 14 October 2017 in the South-East. The operation was putatively
deployed to combat crimes but it later turned into a repressive tool against unarmed
neo-Biafran agitators, especially members of the IPOB. See Chukwujekwu Ilozue,
‘Biafra: 180 lives lost to “Operation Python Dance II” – Rights Group’, Independent,
7 September 2018, <https://www.independent.ng/biafra-180-lives-lost-to-operation-python-
dance-ii-rights-group/> (20 October 2018).
89. ‘Soldiers want to kill me - Nnamdi Kanu’, Authority, 14 September 2017, <http://auth
orityngr.com/2017/09/Soldiers-want-to-kill-me—Nnamdi-Kanu/> (20 September 2017).
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 21

among others, most neo-Biafran movements have sought to exploit this

non-violent liberation strategy in their separatist agitations.90 This strategy
has manifested through rallies, demonstrations, sit-at-homes and boycotts
of census and elections in Igboland. Most of the rallies and protests by
neo-Biafran agitators are held on 30 May every year, otherwise known
as Remembrance Day, in commemoration of the fallen heroes during
the Biafran war as well as other neo-Biafran agitators who were allegedly
murdered by the Nigerian state. The rallies are often accompanied with
the hoisting of the green-red-black Biafran flag on major roads, streets,
billboards and other strategic places in Igboland. On 26 August 2004,
MASSOB enjoined traders and civil servants of Igbo origin to observe a sit-
at-home order to remind the Nigerian government of the plight of the Igbo.
The order was widely adhered to despite massive government campaign
against MASSOB and its leaders.91
From August 2015, there was a series of protests, marches and gather-
ings by IPOB members and supporters. In particular, after the arrest of
Kanu in October 2015 on charges of sedition, ethnic incitement, terror-
ism and treasonable felony, the protests were mainly planned to coincide
with his court appearances. Although rallies and peaceful demonstrations
by Biafran separatists have always been associated with various gradations
of rights abuse by Nigerian security operatives, these violations reached
a high point during the 2016 Biafra Remembrance Day and forty-ninth
anniversary of the declaration of Biafra by Chukwuemeka Odumegwu
Ojukwu. The security forces shot people during the Remembrance Day
celebration in several locations, especially at Asaba, Nkpor and Onitsha.92
Reports of harassment, torture, disappearances, abductions and extra-
judicial killings of members of pro-Biafra movements by security agencies
have been documented by other rights organizations.93
Following his release after meeting his stringent bail conditions on
28 April 2017, Kanu held interviews and rallies in major cities across
Igboland.94 Given the unprovoked attacks recorded against unarmed

90. For instance, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike of MASSOB sees himself as a Gandhian pacifist.
See SBM Intelligence, ‘The prospect of Biafra 2.0’.
91. Onuoha, ‘The politics of “hope” and “despair”’.
92. Amnesty International, ‘Nigeria’; Emmanuel Mayah, ‘Special report: Inside the
massive extrajudicial killings in Nigeria’s South-East’, Premium Times, 8 June 2016,
<http://www.premiumtimesng.com/investigationspecial-reports/204902-special-report-insid
e-massive-extrajudicial-killings-nigerias-south-east.html> (20 October 2018).
93. ‘Pro-Biafra protests: Group accuses military of killing 11, wounding more’,
Sahara Reporters, 5 December 2015, <http://saharareporters.com/2015/12/05/pro-biafra-
protests-group-accuses-military-killing-11-wounding-more> (20 October 2018); Senator
Iroegbu, ‘Intersociety accuses FG, security agents of gross human rights abuses’, This
Day, 2 May 2016, <https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2016/05/02/intersociety-accuses-
fg-security-agents-of-gross-human-rights-abuses/> (20 October 2018).
94. See ‘Judge gives Nnamdi Kanu 12 conditions for bail—full details’, Premium
Times, 25 April 2017, <https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/229581-judge-
gives-nnamdi-kanu-12-conditions-bail-full-details.html> (20 October 2018).
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22 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

pro-Biafrans during the 2016 Biafra Remembrance Day, different sepa-

ratist groups, including IPOB, MASSOB and BZM, proclaimed a sit-at-
home order to mark the annual event in 2017, which also doubled as
the golden jubilee celebration of the declaration of Biafra. The exercise
recorded an unprecedented success as almost all the markets, schools,
banks and businesses in Igboland complied with the directive.95 The
commemoration was also observed by many Igbo in the diaspora. The
success of the sit-at-home order, among other things, led to the so-called
Kaduna Declaration of 5 June 2017, which was a quit notice issued to the
Igbo to leave the North before 30 September 2017 by the Arewa Youths
Consultative Forum.96
The separatist groups have also used, or threatened to use, boycotts of
some national events in Nigeria in order to advance their campaign. The
ultimate aim of this strategy is to pressurize the federal government to orga-
nize a referendum in order to ascertain the willingness or otherwise of the
Igbo to secede from Nigeria. To this end, some separatists campaigned
vigorously for the boycott of the 2005 National Identity Card Scheme as
well as the 2006 Population Census in Igboland. Some people who par-
ticipated in the scheme and census were harassed and intimidated by the
separatists.97 In the build-up to the 2007 General Elections, MASSOB
used handbills, posters and newspapers to campaign for the boycott of the
elections.98
Inspired by the success of the 2017 Remembrance Day sit-at-home, the
IPOB leadership ordered a boycott of the 18 November 2017 Governorship
Election in Anambra State. While justifying the call for a boycott, the group
noted that there was nothing to show for their previous political participa-
tion in Biafraland as the conservative Igbo petty bourgeoisie, especially the
governors, have always turned against the people they represent.99 One
of the strategies employed by IPOB members to ensure the effective boy-
cott of the Anambra election was ‘community evangelism’, which entailed

95. Lawrence Njoku, Uzoma Nzeagwu, Ann Godwin, Gordi Udeajah, Charles Ogug-
buajah and Owen Akenzua, ‘Sit-at-home order grounds South East’, The Guardian, 31
May 2017, <https://guardian.ng/news/sit-at-home-order-grounds-south-east/> (20 October
2018).
96. Juliet Oyoyo, Ejikeme Omenazu and Emmanuel Nzomiwu, ‘Northern youths give
Igbos Oct 1 deadline to quit region’, Independent, 7 June 2017, <https://www.independent.
ng/northern-youths-give-igbos-oct-1-deadline-quit-region/> (20 October 2018).
97. Saturday Champion, 7 September 2007; Daily Sun, 1 December 2008.
98. ‘Press release from the Biafran Foundation’, Center for World Indigenous Studies,
14 April 2007, <https://www.cwis.org/2007/04/press-release-from-the-biafran-foundation/>
(17 September 2018).
99. FGD, IPOB members, Onitsha, 2 September 2017; Interview, coordinator of IPOB,
Anambra State, 10 November 2018.
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 23

moving into villages to encourage people not to participate in the exer-

cise.100 Alarmed by the growing penetrative and mobilizational reach of
IPOB, the Nigerian military was deployed in the South-East through the
aforementioned Operation Python Dance II. The operation allegedly sub-
jected unarmed and defenceless neo-Biafran youths to physical torture
and other inhuman treatments.101 Amnesty International also observed
that the military was involved in arbitrary arrests, detentions and extra-
judicial killings of members of IPOB in South-East Nigeria between 2017
and 2018.102 Despite the repressive response of the Nigerian state to
the agitations of neo-Biafran separatist groups, the leaderships of these
groups continue to favour a confrontational approach to Igbo national-
ism due largely to wider considerations for their material conditions. The
next section assesses the implications of both the conservative and radical
approaches for Igbo nationalism in Nigeria.

Implications of the conservative and radical approaches for Igbo nationalism

The responses of Igbo petty bourgeoisie to the perceived collective victim-
ization of the Igbo in post-war Nigeria have occurred in two significant
phases, namely the first and second generations of Igbo nationalism. The
intersection of ethnic and class relations defines the approach of Igbo petty
bourgeoisie to Igbo nationalism in Nigeria. While the first generation of
Igbo petty bourgeoisie (including the South-East governors, members of
the National Assembly, professionals, intelligentsia, business moguls, tra-
ditional rulers, the clergy and other political bigwigs) prefers a conservative,
gradual and diplomatic approach to facilitate the inclusion of the Igbo,
the orientation of the second generation is largely radical and militant.
Although the fractures within this ethnic group could be easily passed off
as a matter of mere tactical differences, it is also clear that such differ-
ences are bound up with ethnic, class and political economy consideration.
Thus, the conservative faction of the Igbo petty bourgeoisie prefers a less
confrontational strategy that prioritizes the protection of their economic
interests (investments) to an aggressive approach that seeks the liberation
of the Igbo masses from the overly centralized federal system of the Nige-
rian state. Such interests have continued to define the preferred strategy of

100. Peter O. Mbah, Thaddeus C. Nzeadibe, Chikodiri Nwangwu, Ambrose O. Iheana-

cho, Christopher O. Eze and Christian C. Ezeibe, ‘Separatist threat, militarization and
voter turnout: Exploring the dynamics of the 2017 governorship election in Anambra State,
Nigeria’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 55, 8 (2020), pp. 1093–1107.
101. Ilochi Okafor, ‘On Biafra…the bitter truth’, A speech delivered by Prof. Ilochi A.
Okafor (SAN) during the 2017/2018 Legal Year of the Anambra State Judiciary held in Awka,
Anambra State on 25 September 2017.
102. Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 2017/18: The state of the world’s
human rights (Amnesty International, London, 2018).
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24 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

the conservative Igbo petty bourgeoisie in the pursuit of their political and
economic interests in Nigeria.
Conversely, the reinvention of the ‘nzogbu-nzogbu’ approach to Igbo
nationalism since 1999 has brought the claims about Igbo victimization
into the national and international limelight. Through the activities of
MASSOB, BZM, IPOB and their global network of supporters, the agi-
tation for Biafra has gained wider global visibility in frontline international
media outlets like the VOA, BBC, France 24, RFI, CNN, among oth-
ers.103 Consequently, Kanu enthused that IPOB has gained recognition as
a national liberation movement in over 88 countries.104 IPOB and Radio
Biafra have, therefore, raised the consciousness of the Igbo on their rights
to self-determination and the legality of their quest for the Republic of
Biafra. Through the more radical campaigns championed by the sepa-
ratists, the old generation logic of negotiation and accommodation seems
to be waning.
The above achievements of the radical separatists notwithstanding, cases
of internal wrangling over the control of dues and levies as well as dona-
tions from their global network of supporters in Europe and the United
States are prevalent.105 A journalist notes that ‘the competition for the rev-
enue accruing from agitation for Biafra liberation has led to a multiplicity of
these separatist groups in Nigeria. Hence, the leaderships of these groups
are often accused of corruption’.106 Expectedly, the economic and polit-
ical benefits associated with the leaderships of neo-Biafran groups have
made the competition to determine who leads such groups very intense.
Again, the leaderships of pro-Biafra groups have been criticized as anti-
democratic. For instance, the IPOB leader has been accused of tyranny.107
This authoritarian tendency of the IPOB leader has been linked to a desire
to retain political power, which also confers enormous economic bene-
fits. Nonetheless, the struggle and competition over who gets what, when
and how, may have motivated the emergence of splinter groups such as
Reformed Indigenous People of Biafra (RE-IPOB) and The Rebranded

103. For instance, see Ahmed Idris, ‘Biafra: Young Nigerians renew calls for independence’,
Al Jazeera, 5 July 2017, <https://www.aljazeera.com/video/news/2017/07/biafra-young-
nigerians-renew-calls-independence-170705120220867.html> (20 October 2018);
Chika Oduah, ‘Nigeria’s Biafra separatists see hope in Trump’, Voice of America,
14 November 2016, <https://www.voanews.com/a/nigeria-biafra-separatists-see-hope-
donald-trump/3595549.html> (20 October 2018); Rosie Collyer and Moïse Gomis,
‘Shadow of Nigeria’s Biafra war still looms large, 50 years on’, France 24, 1
September 2017, <https://www.france24.com/en/20170901-revisited-biafra-nigeria-civil-
war-landmine-famine-humanitarian-aid-obudu> (20 October 2018).
104. Biafra Television, ‘Director Nnamdi Kanu’s speech’.
105. Interview, veteran journalist, Enugu, 11 August 2018.
106. Interview, veteran journalist, Onitsha, 10 November 2018.
107. Nairaland Forum, ‘Election boycott: Nnamdi Kanu is a tyrant & dictator- former
IPOB lawyer bellows’, 27 June 2017, <https://www.nairaland.com/3885739/election-boycott-
nnamdi-kanu-tyrant> (30 July 2020).
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THE REVIVAL OF RADICAL IGBO NATIONALISM 25

Indigenous People of Biafra (TRIPOB) from IPOB in 2016.108 The emer-

gence and split of these radical separatist groups are not exclusively linked
to the promotion of Igbo nationalism; it is closely associated with the pur-
suit of the material interests of the radical petty bourgeois class. The next
section draws some general conclusions, emphasizing the relevance of the
study to the wider literature on political struggles in Africa.

Conclusion
The existing debates on ethnic nationalism and separatist agitations in
Africa centre predominantly on ethnic relations.109 The dynamics of the
political economy of ethnic and class divisions in understanding ethnic
nationalism and separatist agitations have been neglected in the African
studies literature. However, existential realities in Africa indicate that
neither the ethnic nor class discourse exists in mutually exclusive dichoto-
mous boundaries. Thus, the intersection of ethnic and class relations is
relevant for explaining ethnic nationalism in Nigeria and other African
states.110 The recourse to the intersectional approach in this article, there-
fore, is informed by its ability to address the inherent deficiencies of a
mono-analytic approach (focusing on either the class or ethnic dimen-
sion) in understanding the political economy and socio-cultural milieu of
multi-ethnic states in Africa.
We argued that the dynamics of petty bourgeois divisions and the differ-
ence in approach to Igbo nationalism reflect the intersection of ethnic, class
and political economy concerns. Although explaining the divergent strate-
gies of Igbo nationalism in terms of a mere difference of tactics can be
one way to approach it, such tactics are geared towards achieving interest-
driven ends, which in the final analysis serve the political economy and
socio-cultural interests of the Igbo petty bourgeoisie. The differences in
the strategy of the factions of the petty bourgeois class are a function of
their levels of integration into the mainstream Nigerian politics. Hence,
the share of state resources that members of the contending petty bourgeois
groups can access determines their approach to resolving the Igbo question.
This also undermines the capacity of the different factions of the Igbo petty
bourgeoisie to build consensus on the best strategies for achieving the Igbo
agenda in Nigeria.
More than a story about intra- and inter-class rivalry within the purview
of Nigerian politics, this study highlighted how ethnicity and class analyses

108. Ugochukwu Alaribe, ‘IPOB: Another group emerges, sacks Kanu, TRIPOB’,
Vanguard, 25 August 2016, <https://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/08/ipob-another-group-
emerges-sacks-kanu-tripob/> (30 July 2020).
109. Berman, ‘Ethnicity, patronage and the African state’; Nnoli, Ethnic politics in Nigeria.
110. Diamond, Class, ethnicity and democracy in Nigeria.
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26 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

conflate in African political economy discourses. This interaction reflects

the specific nature of relations of class forces in African countries such
as Angola, Cameroon, Democratic Republic Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Mozambique, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, The Gambia
and Uganda where ethnic nationalism has persisted. While ethnicity seems
to hollow out the class element on a cursory observation, the main dynam-
ics of petty bourgeois divisions and the alliance of their radical faction with
the underclass are actually founded on claims of material deprivations. The
deprivation of the underclass that constitutes a large army of the urban poor
also accounts for the continued relevance of militias like IPOB, MASSOB,
MOSOP, OPC, Arewa Youths, MEND and NDA in Nigeria. This article
observed that in Nigeria and other multi-ethnic societies in Africa where
ethnic solidarity is used to mask class interests, the dominant petty bour-
geoisie are divided along ethnic lines as well as factionalized within their
ethnic groupings. By the same token, we demonstrated that the alignments
of the radical petty bourgeoisie and the underclass in political struggle are
conditioned by ethnic and class interests. Thus, understanding the political
economy of ethnic and class intersection is relevant for addressing the Igbo
national question and secessionist agitations in Nigeria as well as similar
agitations across Africa.