Ex-IPOB lawyer urges South-East residents to reject calls to boycott 2027 election

Ifeanyi Ejiofor, a prominent human rights lawyer and former lead counsel to the Indigenous People of Biafra, has urged residents of Nigeria’s South-East to reject any directive calling for a boycott of the 2027 general elections.

Ejiofor described such a boycott as another “tragedy” that the region must not allow to happen. His statement came after IPOB spokesman Emma Powerful issued a 14-day ultimatum to the Federal Government. The group demanded the immediate listing and hearing of detained leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s appeal, or said it would call for a boycott across the South-East and other parts of “Biafraland.”

IPOB said the ultimatum followed renewed concerns from Kanu’s family about delays in hearing his appeal against his conviction and life sentence. In a statement titled “Ala-Igbo at a crossroads: Jettisoning electoral boycott before it becomes another tragedy,” Ejiofor said the issue went beyond political tactics.

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This intervention is therefore not about politics; it is about the preservation of Ala-Igbo and the protection of the lives, livelihoods and hard-earned peace of our people.

“This intervention is therefore not about politics; it is about the preservation of Ala-Igbo and the protection of the lives, livelihoods and hard-earned peace of our people,” he wrote. He warned against turning electoral participation into an offence against the collective interest of South-East residents.

Ejiofor said the region could not keep pursuing political objectives through strategies whose collateral consequences were borne almost entirely by ordinary people. He argued that past experience showed the danger of converting political grievances into rigid commands and forcing residents to pay for decisions made by people removed from the consequences.

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Any directive advocating an electoral boycott, under whatever guise or euphemism it may be presented, must be unequivocally rejected.