He who feels it knows: The Simon Ekpa Affair - the way I see it (through a glass darkly….

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Sep 3, 2025, 4:00:05 PM (5 days ago) Sep 3

to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Stockholm

Sweden

Peoples’ planet

3rd September, 2025

Because it's usually postulated that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” I will have to modify what I said previously, because as a qualified lawyer and a Finnish citizen at that, Simon Ekpa must be conversant with the laws of his country, even as he makes the comical, incongruous, better word, preposterous claim of being “Prime Minister of the Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE)”

True: In the US right now, there’s Reza Pahlavi ,the deposed Shah of Iran’s son who believes himself to be “the Shah of Iran in Exile” just as the unelected Simon Ekpa sees himself as the lawful Prime Minister of the non-existent Biafra, the theoretical Biafra of his imagination.

If in this Simon Ekpa case, I had been the prosecuting attorney,

I would have questioned him in a voice like that of Mr Macaroni,

“Are you normal?”

After watching some of Cardi B’s court trial, a sane conclusion is that presence and performance in court matters. Presence and performance in court have to be impressive. Imagine what a vicious prosecuting attorney could do or would have done to Simon Ekpa - much worse than Pontus Pilate asking Jesus of Nazareth, “ Are you the King of the Jews?” - to which Jesus replies, “ My kingdom is not of this world” -echoing the other line “ Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven” / “the kingdom of God”

Tentatively, the prosecuting attorney starts with some preposterous propositions:

What’s your name ?

Simon Ekpa

Like the question to Malcolm: Is that your legal name?

Yes.

Are you a Finnish Citizen?

Yes

Are you a Nigerian Citizen?

No answer

So you are the Prime Minister of the Biafra Republic Government in Exile?

Yes.

So you are simultaneously a Finnish Citizen and Prime Minister of Biafra?

Yes.

Are you normal?

It should be interesting to read the verbatim transcript of the trial of Steve Biko, published as The Testimony of Steve Biko, essentially the trial of his ideology known as Black Consciousness

With regard to Biafra and Barrister Simon Ekpa as the self-appointed Prime Minister of that country, if that kind of question ever popped up at his trial, like Dave Dellinger, Simon Ekpa could have defined Biafra as “ a state of mind” etc etc etc.

Of course there are many ramifications and implications thereof , Biafra being a theoretical figment of his imagination, theoretically a country, like “the kingdom of heaven “ and Hamlet’s “the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns “ - and in like manner Simon Ekpa, a tragic hero…

The way things are in Nigeria just now the ambitious Hon. Peter Obi whose star is on the ascendant in Nigeria’s political firmament, cannot afford to fall and fail nor should he allow his star to be dimmed by resurrecting the spectre of Biafra or in any way associating himself with that cause as it would not go down well in the South West or in the Muslim North and the other parts of Federal Nigeria that were assembled in opposition to Biafra secessionists and their sympathisers during those fateful years 1967 -1970 when that war raged on at incalculable cost in terms of death and destruction, hunger and starvation, the tragic loss of human life and property…

And so Peter Obi - Igboland’s major player - I almost wrote “Igboland’s major prayer”- perhaps because there are very few Muslims among the Igbos, perhaps not even one Musulman among them) and therefore it behoves Peter Obi to distance himself from what he whispered to the venerable Bishop David Oyedepo when he proposed that the Nigerian Presidential Election of 2023 was akin to “a religious war”, at which time, what he had in mind was he himself the holy Peter Obi leading the war against the Infidels and hoping to claim victory through Calvary. These mistakes of the past are reason enough to adopt more politically astute / politically correct behaviour when approaching Bishop David Oyedepo and other Christian community leaders surreptitiously or the Muslim leaders openly, when hustling their votes -and even before that - right now, since this is topical, to take a distance to the likes of Messrs Simon Ekpa and Nnamdi Kanu and their secessionist aspirations, even if he wants to be elected Nigeria’s next president in order to address some of the underlying causes that led to the divorce proceedings in the first place - the violent divorce proceedings, divorcement from the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and justifiably so, over there back then, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation” but at this stage in everyone’s beloved Nigeria , no Igbo presidential candidate / aspirant/ ambitious Igbo wannabe with an eye on Aso Rock wants to resurrect the Ghost of Biafra….

There has been a spate of post-mortems, documentaries, fiction and non-fiction such as Elechi Amadi’s war diary, Sunset in Biafra and sadly this latest episode with Simon Ekpa whose only real crime was that of trying to keep hope alive, resulting in his tragic demise in the form of a six year sentence for alleged ”terrorism” over there in the world’s happiest country, the non-violent Finland.

But what more to say about Simon Ekpa, when in trying to elevate him, some of his most ardent supporters are probably currently either celebrating or lamenting that he has joined the ranks of e.g. Jomo Kenyatta and Madiba Nelson Mandela who in his own trial in his own country, then shackled in Apartheid, pleaded his cause in that now famous courtroom plea” I Am Prepared To Die” -before being sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island.

Oddly, the lyrics of this English lullaby “ Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” come to mind, with an image of Simon Ekpa twinkling somewhere in the Biafran firmament, on the people’s planet, spinning in vast space

Hopefully, whether the terrorism and other charges are dropped/ overturned or not ,he will return to the scene of action to help foster a better Nigeria ( with $13 trillion lithium discovered in Nigeria, Nigeria should be going places…