Ifechi Japhet NwaorisaAuthor. Advocate. Owerri to England. Support line
What one person can do

How to help, peacefully

People write to ask what they can do, and the honest answer is that nothing one person does will free a man from Kuje prison this week. But the movement was built by one person at a time refusing to forget, and the list below is what that refusal looks like in practice. None of it involves a weapon.

Ifechi Japhet Nwaorisa smiling in front of a house in Owerri, Nigeria
Silent clip, 5 seconds

1. Learn it, then teach it

The state's first weapon was silence. Read the history, the famine and the timeline on this site, which are free. Read Biafra Rising, which is not, and whose proceeds go to legal defence for detained activists and to humanitarian help. Then tell a child. Ask your grandmother what she remembers and write it down before it is gone. A family with the story in it cannot be told there was no story.

2. Share the record, not the rumour

The movement's real weapon is documentation. Share Amnesty International's reports on the killings of 2015 and 2016, the United Nations working group's opinion on Kanu's detention, the Court of Appeal judgment, this site. Do not share unverified videos of atrocities, whoever they blame; half of them are from other countries and the other half are used to justify the next raid. Truth is on our side. We can afford to use only it.

3. If you are in Britain: write

Nnamdi Kanu is a British citizen kidnapped from a Commonwealth country and given life in prison after a trial his own country's appeal court said should never have happened. Write to your Member of Parliament. Give the three facts: British citizen, seized in Kenya in June 2021 without extradition, life sentence in November 2025 with an appeal pending. Ask what the Foreign Office has done beyond consular visits and what it intends to do. One letter is nothing; a constituency of letters is a question at the despatch box.

4. Support the people who are paying

Behind every detained activist is a family in Owerri or Aba or Onitsha paying for lawyers and food and transport to a prison in Abuja. Behind every sit-at-home is a market woman who lost a fifth of her income. Where you can give, give to legal defence funds and humanitarian efforts that publish accounts, and to organisations like Amnesty that document what happens. Ask hard questions of anyone raising money for Biafra online; the movement has been robbed by its own fundraisers more than once.

5. Refuse the machete

If you are in the south-east and someone tells you to enforce the sit-at-home, refuse. If you see a shop being threatened for opening on a Monday, say so, out loud, in Igbo. A movement for a people starved to death has no business starving Mondays. Every burned shop is a gift to Abuja. The men ordering it from Finland or from a laptop have never missed a meal for Biafra.

6. Observe 30 May in peace

Biafra Remembrance Day. Light a candle. Fly the flag where it is legal to fly it and, where it is not, keep it folded in the wardrobe under the wrappers, the way my mother did for fifty years, and take it out for your children. Do not march into a line of soldiers. They have shown, at Nkpor in 2016 and since, what they will do, and the movement does not need more names for the list.

7. Ask the question

Whoever you are, wherever you are, whenever Biafra comes up: ask why the people of the south-east cannot be given a vote. Not a war. A vote. Scotland had one. Quebec had one. South Sudan had one. Nigeria's answer to that question, for fifty-five years, has been a gun, and the more people who ask it calmly and in public, the harder that answer is to keep giving.

What I will not ask you to do. Arm yourself. Attack a police station. Threaten a shopkeeper. Send money to a man you have never met who promises a government in exile. Everyone who has done these things has ended the cause a little further from the vote.
Questions

Helping

How can I support Biafra without violence?

Learn and teach the history, share documented reports rather than rumours, write to your representative about Nnamdi Kanu's case if you are British, support legal defence and humanitarian efforts that publish accounts, refuse to enforce sit-at-home orders, and ask publicly for a referendum.

Where do the proceeds of Biafra Rising go?

According to the book's listing, all proceeds support legal defence for detained activists and humanitarian aid for affected communities.

What is Biafra Remembrance Day?

30 May, the anniversary of the 1967 declaration, observed by Biafrans worldwide. Gatherings in Nigeria have repeatedly been attacked by security forces, notably at Nkpor in 2016.

Start with the history.

The whole section, in order, from 1914 to the man in the cage.