ESN 5th Anniversary: Chinasa Nworu Recounts the Birth, Betrayals, and Burden of the Eastern Security Network (Part 1)

Bremen, Germany – December 14, 2025

On the fifth anniversary of the Eastern Security Network (ESN), Mazi Chinasa Nworu delivered a commemorative address highlighting the sacrifices, resistance, and injustice members of ESN have endured in their selfless service.

Speaking as a member of the Directorate of States of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nworu described the anniversary as a moment to “honor the brave men and women of ESN operatives, and recount how this very security outfit came to be.”

Nworu traced the origin of ESN to “a result of the adamance/lip services of the Eastern politicians and the aggravating menace of the Fulani terrorists,” across the region.

According to him, the failure of elected officials to act decisively left communities exposed and unprotected.

It was under these conditions, he explained, that IPOB leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu intervened. “After observing the unending menace,” Nworu said, Kanu “rallied the leadership of IPOB to mobilize and draft voluntary personnel from the former IPOB volunteers into the Eastern Security Network.”

He told of an ESN, born not as a mere act of provocation but as an act of survival, a community response to a vacuum of security.

Five years on, Nworu said, the network’s defining characteristics remain sacrifice and discipline, even as it operates under severe constraints.

He emphasized that the fight against the dangerously armed Fulani terrorist groups has been carried out by operatives who are “underfunded and underequipped,” yet “patriotic and disciplined to the task of defence against the invading enemy.”

“The battle has not been easy for men and women of ESN because they still fall short of some necessities.”

The costs of this commitment, he noted, are borne quietly and often invisibly. “Because of their sacrifice to stay devoted to homeland, many of you sleep at night even though you will not admit it,” he told listeners, underscoring a collective benefit that goes publicly unacknowledged.

Nworu recounted events following the establishment of ESN.

“It was after 6 months of setting up ESN that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was kidnapped in Kenya and Nigerian government activated several methods to destroy ESN, including asking for control of ESN through southeast governors.”

According to Nworu, the intensified campaign against the security outfit included sustained “blackmail,” and a deliberate “paucity of fund.”

He stated that insiders were recruited to undermine the movement, while a “robust media campaign” was engineered to discredit it. Ironically, he added, “many people started developing an interest in ESN, surprisingly,” as public attention grew amid the controversy.

Beyond political pressure, Nworu highlighted the personal toll on ESN operatives.

“Many of the warriors lost their families because they could not cater for the families,” he said.

Marriages collapsed, partners left, and some operatives who returned home were allegedly betrayed.

“Many had their wives and husbands leave them. Some came home but were sold out to the government by people close to them. Some came home but were sold out to the government by people close to them,” Nworu stated.

Despite these ordeals, he said, the leadership endured. “In all these challenges, the leadership has held the line, and it is all thanks to Chukwu Abiama.”

Reflecting further on the period after Kanu’s rendition, Nworu described a moment when, in his words, “vultures gathered seeking to hijack and redirect the purpose of the ESN.”

He stated that funds meant for sustenance were seized, “ill-advised” counsel proliferated, and operatives were discouraged and asked to abandon their posts.

Yet, he reserved particular praise for those who did not.

“I commend the leaders of the ESN operatives; they deserve the utmost respect accorded to any patriotic and disciplined soldiers,” he said, describing them as figures who have “paid ultimate prices, made excruciating sacrifices, and still [are] being blackmailed and betrayed to the Nigerian military by the same people these men are paying the ultimate price to protect.”

As the ESN 5th Anniversary is marked, Nworu’s speech stands as a chilling story of purpose and endurance, one that insists on remembering not only the formation of the Eastern Security Network but also the human cost embedded in its continued existence.

It is, above all, a reminder that behind the politics and propaganda, there are men and women whose lives, families, and futures have been irrevocably shaped by a security vacuum they stepped forward to fill.