Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has written to United States President Donald Trump, urging him to order an independent investigation into what he described as “state-sponsored genocidal killings” of Christians and Igbo people in Nigeria’s South-East.
In the letter dated November 6, 2025, and delivered through the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Kanu—who remains in solitary detention at the Department of State Services (DSS) headquarters—appealed to Trump to act on his recent declaration that the United States was “prepared to act militarily and cut aid if Nigeria fails to protect its Christian population.”
“I extend warm greetings to you in the name of the Judeo-Christian faith and values we both hold dear,” Kanu wrote. “Your bold declaration on October 31, 2025, that the United States is ‘prepared to act’ militarily and cut aid if Nigeria fails to protect its Christian population ignited hope in the hearts of millions who have been abandoned by the world.”
Kanu warned that Christians in Nigeria “face an existential threat,” adding that “this genocide is not confined to the North; it has metastasized into the Igbo heartland, where Judeo-Christians are being systematically exterminated under the guise of counter-terrorism.”
The IPOB leader cited several incidents he claimed were evidence of “a hidden genocide” against Judeo-Christians in the South-East, including the 2016 Nkpor and Aba massacres, the 2017 Operation Python Dance raid on his Afaraukwu home, and the 2020 Obigbo killings. Quoting human rights reports, he referenced Amnesty International, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, and Nigerian group Intersociety, noting: “Amnesty International (2016) reported ‘at least 150 peaceful Christian worshippers killed, bodies dumped in rivers.’ UN Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard confirmed that at least 60 were killed and over 70 injured in St. Edmund’s Catholic Church during prayers.”
“This was not a clash. It was a massacre of worshippers commemorating their fallen,” Kanu continued. “In Aba, 22 were killed on-site, and 13 bodies were exhumed from a borrow pit. Children were executed for singing ‘Sweet Jesus.’”
According to him, the attacks were carried out by Nigerian military forces under the command of then-Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai, who was later appointed ambassador to Benin in 2021. “President Buhari granted him diplomatic immunity to evade ICC prosecution,” Kanu alleged, calling it “state-sponsored impunity on a genocidal scale.”
The IPOB leader also recounted his personal ordeal, stating he had survived four assassination attempts and was “forcibly abducted from Kenya in an extraordinary rendition operation” on June 20, 2021 — an act a Kenyan court later ruled illegal. He reminded Trump that Nigeria’s Court of Appeal discharged and acquitted him in October 2022, but “the government defied its own judiciary, refusing to release me as ordered.”
“I was never released, so there was no re-arrest, only continued unlawful imprisonment in blatant violation of the constitutionally protected double jeopardy safeguards,” he wrote, adding that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had declared his detention “arbitrary, unlawful, politically motivated.”
Describing his incarceration as “a state capture of the rule of law to silence a Judeo-Christian voice,” Kanu urged Trump to “launch a U.S.-led independent inquiry into state-sponsored massacres of Judeo-Christians in Eastern Nigeria, with full access to mass graves, military logs, and survivor testimonies.” He further called for “emergency Congressional hearings on the Igbo Christian genocide” and the imposition of Magnitsky Act sanctions on top Nigerian officials, including Buratai and former DSS Director-General Yusuf Bichi.
Kanu also appealed for U.S. support for “an internationally supervised referendum on self-determination for the Igbo people,” describing it as “the only peaceful path to ending this circle of violence.”
“Mr. President, history will judge us by what we do when genocide knocks,” Kanu wrote. “You have the power to stop a second Rwanda in Africa. One tweet, one sanction, one inquiry could save millions.”
He signed off as Mazi Nnamdi Okwu Kanu, Leader, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Prisoner of Conscience – DSS Custody, Abuja, reaffirming his commitment to non-violence and faith. “We seek only justice, truth, and freedom, even from a prison cell,” he concluded. “May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob grant you wisdom and courage to deliver His people once again.”
