It is not the first time Simon Ekpa, leader of a violent faction of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has shared images of conflicts in Francophone Africa to push his propaganda.
Simon Ekpa, leader of an armed secessionist group agitating to break away from Nigeria, recently shared misleading images meant to discredit the country’s military forces.
On Thursday, July 25, he posted a picture on his X/Twitter account of a black Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (MRAP), which had been damaged by gunshots. A man wielding an assault rifle can be seen pointing at the ground combat vehicle.
“Gwo gwon gwo! Obia nke mbu, iju. Obia nke abuo, iju. Obia nke ato, iju,” he wrote, quoting lyrics from an Igbo song currently trending on social media alongside a dance challenge.
“There is no mercy on the terrorists going, we don’t know tribe.”
Ekpa has repeatedly shared images of security personnel killed in the southeastern region of Nigeria by armed separatists, often labelling state forces as “terrorists”. Many of such pictures appear to be original (in other words, they had not surfaced on the internet before they were posted by Ekpa and his followers). However, that is not the case with the recent tweets.
The picture of the MRAP first appeared on the internet on Sunday, July 21, in reference to a terrorist attack on a military barracks in Kpékankandi, a Togolese community close to the northern border with Burkina Faso.
According to Zagazola Makama, a local security commentator who posted that same picture along with others on Sunday afternoon, the attack happened the previous day.
“After a brief but intense confrontation, the jihadists forced the Togolese forces into a disorderly retreat and maintained control of the barracks for several hours before withdrawing back to Burkina Faso, having emptied the barracks of its contents,” he stated.
The picture also appeared elsewhere, such as on Facebook, on the same day.
Earlier today, Ekpa had posted another picture of two uniformed soldiers lying dead on the ground next to another picture of partly eaten mangoes. A closer look at the picture reveals the letters “FAT” on the bulletproof vest of one of the military personnel. This acronym is for the Togolese Armed Forces (in French, Forces Armées Togolaises).
The picture, which is from the same jihadist attack in Kpékankandi, can be seen in this report by Journal du Togo published days ago.
A third picture shared by Ekpa around the same time has the same watermark (“shot on Awesome A70”) and is likely from the incident in Togo as well. “How many of the terrorists @HQNigerianArmy can you see? What is going on here?” he asked in the post.
The images and misleading context have been amplified by other pro-Biafran social media accounts on both Facebook and X. “Biafra Defence Forces continues [sic] decimating the Nigeria terrorists military in Biafraland,” one internet user said in a Thursday tweet that was reposted over 160 times.
It is not the first time Ekpa has shared images of conflicts in Francophone Africa to push his own propaganda. In June, he shared a video of a burning community and claimed it showed state-sponsored terrorists killing members of a Christian community in Northern Nigeria. “This is what should have been happening in Biafraland today if not for the Biafra Defence Forces under [the] Biafra government; with the way they hate Biafrans, it would’ve been worse than this,” he added.
The video, however, first appeared on the Tiktok account of a user based in Côte d’Ivoire.
Simon Ekpa, a Nigeria-born Finnish national, calls himself Prime Minister of the Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE) and is the leader of a faction of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) previously known as Autopilot.
In October 2023, the BRGIE launched an armed wing called the Biafra Liberation Army (BLA), which has become notorious for attacking Nigerian security forces. Ekpa often publishes pictures of such attacks on X and constantly raises money from IPOB members all over the world to continue to fund BLA’s activities.