In a candid and emotionally charged video address shared on YouTube, Biafra agitator and founder of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, has issued a stark warning about what he describes as a deadly campaign being orchestrated from inside a Sokoto prison accusing Nnamdi Kanu, convicted leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, of continuing to recruit young Igbo men into violent activities even while serving a life sentence for terrorism.

Uwazuruike, who has long championed a non-violent approach to the Biafra independence cause drawing inspiration from the philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. expressed deep anguish at what he says is a pattern of young Igbo lives being sacrificed for an agenda he believes serves no genuine interest of the Igbo people. He pointed to recent social media videos featuring hooded individuals claiming allegiance to Kanu and announcing their readiness for a fresh wave of violence in the South East as evidence that the imprisoned IPOB leader’s reach had not been diminished by incarceration.

Speaking with palpable frustration, Uwazuruike questioned how a man behind bars could continue to hold such dangerous influence over impressionable young people, and placed the responsibility for their fate squarely on the shoulders of Kanu’s continued agitation. He stressed that the consequences are not merely political they are lethal, with recruited youths paying with their lives for following a path of confrontation that he insists can never succeed against the might of the Nigerian state.

The MASSOB founder directed his appeal at the highest levels of Igbo leadership, urging the Ohanaeze Ndigbo the apex Pan-Igbo socio-cultural organisation and prominent Igbo leaders across the nation to physically travel to Sokoto and confront Kanu directly, delivering a firm warning to cease the recruitment and radicalization of young people. He argued that the Igbo community cannot afford to remain silent while its youth are being drawn deeper into a cycle of violence from which there is no easy exit.

Uwazuruike also raised a question that cuts to the heart of the current security challenge in the South East: why, he asked, are repentant IPOB members not offered the same amnesty and rehabilitation pathways that the federal government has extended to repentant terrorists and bandits in the North? He called for a structured amnesty programme that would allow those already caught up in IPOB’s violent activities to renounce the cause, return to their communities, and rebuild their lives rather than being pushed ever further into radicalization with no perceived way out.

The intervention by Uwazuruike carries particular weight given his own history as the man who first brought Nnamdi Kanu into the Biafra independence movement. Having watched his protégé chart an increasingly violent course one that he publicly broke with years ago his latest statement reflects not just political disagreement but what appears to be a deeply personal anguish at the human cost of a conflict he helped ignite. For the Igbo community and Nigeria’s security landscape, his warning is a sobering reminder that the battle for the hearts and minds of South East youth remains far from settled.