ESN 5th Anniversary (Part 2): Chinasa Nworu Declares IPOB a Collective Shield, Not a One-Man Project

Bremen, Germany – December 14, 2025

Five years after the Eastern Security Network was announced to the world, Mazi Chinasa Nworu’s anniversary address sharpened the ideological spine of the ESN project. He rejected the deliberate misrepresentations of both IPOB and its security architecture.

Speaking on Radio Biafra on Friday, Nworu highlighted the survival of ESN and the wider Biafra movement as proof that it was never a personality cult, never a one-man enterprise, and never a fragile structure that could collapse with the incarceration of its leader.

“Had it been that the Biafra struggle championed by IPOB was squarely centered on the now incarcerated leader of IPOB,” Nworu stated, “this movement would have collapsed upon the abduction and extraordinary rendition of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.”

Instead, he argued, the opposite occurred. The movement endured because, in his words, “there are other leaders working assiduously in different departments in IPOB,” spanning administration, media, publicity, and security.

For Nworu, the continued operation of ESN after Kanu’s rendition from Kenya to Nigeria stands as living evidence that the struggle “did not collapse and will never collapse.”

Reiterating this point with deliberate emphasis, Nworu dismissed critics who insist that Nnamdi Kanu single-handedly controls every arm of IPOB.

“If it was only Mazi Nnamdi Kanu that was in charge of everything, this movement would have been gone,” he said. “It is not that you do not know. You are simply being mischievous.”

In his telling, the decentralised leadership structure is not accidental but strategic, designed to withstand precisely the kind of state disruption the movement has faced.

Nworu credited ESN with preventing what he described as a catastrophic spillover of violence into the South-East.

“International organization have recorded eye witnesses testify that save for ESN, Fulani jihadists would have had a walkover.”

“If not for ESN, the fate of the Middle Belt would have been worse in the Southeast,” he said, pointing to the mass displacement in Benue State, where he noted that over two million people have been uprooted, many outside formal IDP camps.

According to him, some of those displaced have relocated toward the East and West, contributing to agricultural activity in order to sustain relatives still trapped in camps.

“Many labourers in the Southeast and other Southern states are Northerners whose families are in IDPs. Even our people that engage labourers say it.

“This is the same Benue that borders Ebonyi and Enugu,” he warned, dismissing as dangerous fantasy the idea that Biafraland is immune to the same violence.

Nworu insisted that these realities are not speculative. He cited long-standing documentation by IPOB and civil society groups such as Inter-Society, which he said have recorded Fulani attacks since 2009.

When such reports were made public, he confessed, “the Nigerian government was shocked to their marrow.”

This documentation, he insists, validates ESN’s existence as a defensive response rather than an aggressive creation.

Nworu’s frustration was most visible when addressing public ingratitude and internal sabotage against ESN.

He revealed that at moments of deep discouragement, the leadership contemplated withdrawing ESN operatives entirely to expose critics to the consequences of unrestrained attacks.

“But none of these people mouthing rubbish on social media will defend our land and defenseless citizens,” he said.

He made an example of the false accusations by Orji Uzo Kalu, contrasting claims against IPOB with the silence surrounding the death toll from herdsmen attacks in Biafraland.

“Orji Uzoh Kalu falsely accused Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who is actually in detention of killing 30,000 people, a false figure of course but still cannot tell us in Biafraland how many the herdsmen have killed or the number of our people that was killed during his dirty sponsorship of defunct Bakasi boys.”

Nworu declared that IPOB and ESN have moved beyond lamentation.

“IPOB/ESN no longer lament over random attacks of Fulani terrorists against Biafrans, because we know we possess the capabilities to match them head on and pay them in their own coin.

We don’t subscribe to the policy of lamentations or ransom paying to Fulani terrorists unlike the Nigerian government and its respective local authorities.”

He distanced the movement from the Nigerian government’s approach. Instead, he asserted that ESN now possesses “the capabilities to match them head on,” framing deterrence as the new reality.

“Many ESN members and operatives have businesses but because they are being snitched on by saboteurs, they close their businesses. This affects their families and personal lives.

ESN Operatives are responsible men and women who have genuine means of livelihood but they have to abandon these means to keep their oath to protect Biafraland.

This is the price they are playing with their own lives and means of survival.”

At the core of his address was a detailed explanation of ESN’s internal discipline.

Nworu stressed repeatedly that ESN operatives are bound by “very serious oath secreted by the land of Biafra, that they will not commit crimes against our people.” Thereby, prohibiting crimes against the Biafran people, including extortion, kidnapping, or murder.

“It is an abomination,” he said. He described severe consequences for violations, recounting an incident in which an operative who allegedly collaborated with the Nigerian military was struck blind at a village market before confessing.

“There’s an incident where an ESN Operative connived with the Nigerian military to lead to the attack on ESN, as soon as he came out to the village market to meet with the Nigerian military, he immediately got blind at that spot and was shouting for help.

It was later when he was interrogated that he confessed that he had snitched on his fellow comrades. This is the extent the oath can go and beyond.”

For Nworu, this episode illustrated the gravity of the oath and the movement’s belief in spiritual accountability.

He also pushed back strongly against claims of ESN-linked extortion.

“ESN members do not have social media accounts. They are not known to the public,” he said, warning that anyone claiming to be an ESN commander is a scammer.

“Our people are pretending that they are not aware of scammers that are calling people and threatening them to give them money.”

Operatives, he explained, are required to remain anonymous, disguised, and detached from public attention as part of their operational ethics.

“As a result of the strategic work of the Eastern Security Network, these operatives are not allowed to reveal their identity to the public or even have presence on the social media, they are not allowed to attract attention to their person, they must stay disguised if they temporarily leave their line of duty, these are part of their operational ethics.”

Victims of impersonation, he urged, should provide phone numbers and details so such networks can be exposed and dismantled.

“We understand that under pressure, they may not remember to record the conversations. Further details like their phone number etc which can be used to follow up these impersonators.”

He tackled the Fulani Herders and questioned the rational of forcing their cows to Southeast despite the law against open grazing.

“How many communities do the Fulani want to live in. They claim Niger state alone is bigger than the whole of southeast, why can’t they build a grazing reserve there in Niger state. Why are they bringing their cows to the ocean? Do they want their cows to swim?”

Nworu did not shy away from confronting state authorities.

“For those thinking that they will destroy IPOB like Soludo, Peter Mbah and the rest, we want to remind them that the dead Buhari thought as much but look who is still standing tall.”

He warned governors who are exhibiting hostility toward ESN that IPOB’s strategy is long-term.

“We have plans that will outlive you. Even when you are made an ambassador or you go to a foreign land to live, we will still send your dossier to your host country,” he said.

He added that dossiers documenting their crimes would be submitted to host countries even after officials leave office.

Drawing a historical comparison, he noted that IPOB outlived the Buhari administration despite sustained repression. “Today, Buhari is down there six feet,” he said bluntly. “We will outlive this present challenge.”

Nworu further disclosed that ESN operatives recently survived a military attack while on duty, attributing their survival to superior intelligence and preparation.

“It is imperative to announce to the world that the Nigerian military tried to attack them as they were discharging their duties but thankfully we are more intelligent than they are.”

He questioned why security forces appear only when ESN confronts armed Fulani terrorists, accusing state governments of helping the Fulani terrorists in their war against indigenous people.

One of the most striking moment of the speech came in his rejection of what he called international double standards.

“This hypocrisy of telling people that they should only raise awareness but not defend themselves when government forces kill them like western diplomats do, is a joke taken too far. Even Americans have guns for self defense,” he said.

For Nworu, the principle is simple and uncompromising: “Is it not someone that is alive that can talk?” Reiterating that “Governments must not be allowed to get away with murder while the victims are told to give it some time.”

“Imagine how many people that would have died had Mazi Nnamdi Kanu not done what is necessary? If the leadership did not hold the line after Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was kidnapped, imagine how much blood of our people Fulani jihadists would have shed?”

Five years on, the message of the ESN anniversary was unmistakable.

According to Nworu’s, ESN exists because survival demanded it, endures because discipline sustains it, and persists because, had it not, “imagine how much blood of our people Fulani jihadists would have shed.”