Since the news of the sentencing of the Finland based, pronounced Biafra agitator Simon Ikpa, the global air waves have been inundated with reactions. The long-term Lahti resident, and one-time councillor in the Finnish city, had faced a long list of charges including participating in a terrorist organisation and publicly inciting crimes for terrorist purposes.
Some say it is good riddance to bad rubbish, others say that Mr Ikpa has caused so much pains to so many of his people and therefore deserve a jail sentence. Particularly is the every Monday sit at home he and his gun weilding followers imposed on every part of the area he had mapped out as being the surposed Biafra land. Too many have lost their lives because of this imposition, others have been hurt while too many also have lost their means of livelihood because of this madness of an imposition. Some of the folks who have been known to dare that imposition did not live to tell the tale.
Others on the other hand feel that the jail sentence is undeserved as the man is a crusader for the cause of his people.
The major group leading the agitation for the actualisation of the nation of Biafra, IPOB, standing for the Indegenous People Of Biafra, has roundly denied Simon ikpa. The say categorically that he is not their member and does not hold any office in their organisation. As far as they are concerned, Simon Ikpa has been running his own show from Finland without any relationship to them.
Päijät-Häme District Court of Finland yesterday 1st of september 2025 sentenced Simon Ekpa to six years in prison after finding him guilty of terrorism-related charges.
The court ruled that Ekpa had participated in a terrorist organisation and had publicly incited crimes for terrorist purposes.
The charges relate to Ekpa’s alleged activities aimed at re-establishing an independent state in the Biafra region of southeastern Nigeria, which was briefly independent in the late 1960s.
In its verdict, the court said that Ekpa had used his significant social media following to stoke tensions in the Biafra region between August 2021 and November 2024.
It added that Ekpa was an influential member of a Biafran separatist movement, which established armed groups aimed at bringing about Biafran independence by force.
The district court’s ruling further noted that Ekpa had supplied these groups with weapons, explosives and ammunition through his network of contacts in the region. He was also found to have encouraged his followers on social media platform X to commit crimes in Nigeria.
Ekpa, a long-term resident of Lahti and one-time local National Coalition Party councillor, committed these crimes from the Finnish city, the verdict added, meaning the Finnish court had jurisdiction in the case.
Ekpa had denied all the charges in court. Born in Biafra, he moved to Finland in 2007 as an athlete.
The court on Monday also convicted him of aggravated tax fraud.
Note that the district court’s verdict is not final, meaning it can be appealed to a higher court.
