In its statement, IPOB dismissed Gowon’s comments as “a coordinated propaganda campaign” aimed at whitewashing his role in what it described as “Africa’s most brutal civil war.”

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has slammed the former Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (rtd), branding him a “war criminal who presided over the murder” of millions of civilians.

The organisation also accused the former military leader of overseeing the starvation of millions of Southeasterners during the Nigerian Civil War. 

The group, in a statement issued by its media and publicity secretary, Emma Powerful, responded to recent media interviews by Gowon, in which he reflected on the Nigerian Civil War and his leadership during the period.

In its statement, IPOB dismissed Gowon’s comments as “a coordinated propaganda campaign” aimed at whitewashing his role in what it described as “Africa’s most brutal civil war.”

“Let us be clear, Gowon is a war criminal. He presided over the starvation and murder of over five million Biafran civilians, mostly children, as a deliberate weapon of war,” the statement reads. 

“That holocaust places him in the shameful company of the worst mass murderers in history.”

Gowon was Nigeria’s military head of state from 1966 to 1975, presiding over the country during the 30-month-long Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), also known as the Biafran War. 

The conflict began when the southeastern region of Nigeria, home mainly to the Igbo ethnic group, declared independence under the leadership of Lt. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.

The new republic, named Biafra, cited persecution and marginalisation of the Igbo people as primary reasons for secession.

The federal government under Gowon launched a military campaign to crush the secession, leading to a humanitarian disaster. 

Estimates of civilian deaths vary, with most sources citing over one million, many due to famine, disease, and blockades of food and medical supplies.

Over the decades, the war has remained a sensitive and polarising chapter in Nigeria’s history. 

While Gowon has long maintained that the war was necessary to preserve national unity, critics, including many in the southeast, have accused his regime of committing atrocities amounting to genocide.

IPOB accused Gowon of orchestrating a campaign of extermination against “Biafran” civilians. 

It referenced the blockade that cut off food and medical aid to the Biafran population, bombing of civilian infrastructure, and the abandonment of peace initiatives, including the 1967 Aburi Accord, a failed peace agreement reached between Nigerian and Biafran leaders in Ghana.

IPOB also criticised Gowon’s recent attempt to cast himself as a peace-loving statesman. 

The group said, “It is morally sickening that a man who ordered the bombing of hospitals, schools, and refugee centres now seeks to be remembered as someone who ‘loves Nigerians.’ You cannot massacre people and claim to love them.”

The group drew a direct line between the past and present, arguing that the insecurity and lawlessness now engulfing parts of northern Nigeria, including Gowon’s native Middle Belt, are karmic consequences of the 1967–70 war.”

“The same forces he unleashed on Biafra have now turned their daggers on his own people. Gowon is now a refugee in Abuja, a ghost in a country he destroyed,” the statement stated.

IPOB further alleged that Gowon was shielded from international accountability by the British government, accusing the former colonial power of backing the Nigerian federal side to maintain access to oil reserves in the southeast.

“Unlike Hitler, who faced judgment at Nuremberg, Gowon escaped justice not because he was innocent, but because the British Government, motivated by its pathological hatred for the Igbo race, shielded him,” IPOB said.

The group also referenced aid workers and relief agencies during the war who described the humanitarian crisis in Biafra as “a calculated extermination,” reinforcing its claim that the suffering of civilians was not incidental but intentional. 

IPOB challenged Gowon to answer questions regarding military strategy, international complicity, and post-war reconciliation, including why British authorities “strongly” supported the Nigerian federal side.

“Why were relief centres bombed? Why were aid workers raising alarms of genocide? What has been done to compensate victims’ families?” IPOB asked. 

The group insisted that their struggle is not driven by revenge, but by the pursuit of truth, justice, and the right to self-determination for the Igbo people.

“Our mission is not vengeance. It is truth, justice, and national liberation. We will never allow the murderers of our ancestors to rewrite history with ink dipped in blood,” Powerful declared.

Gowon, now in his late 80s, remains a controversial figure. 
While he has received accolades over the years for his efforts to maintain Nigeria’s unity and his “No victor, no vanquished” post-war policy of reconciliation, critics argue that the crimes committed under his leadership have never been fully acknowledged, let alone addressed.
His “Nigeria Prays” initiative, launched in the 1990s, promotes interfaith unity and peace. 

However, IPOB has dismissed such efforts as “spiritual posturing” and “moral laundering.”

IPOB was founded in 2012 and has since grown into a vocal separatist group advocating for the re-establishment of an independent Biafran state. 

The group has faced repeated crackdowns from the Nigerian government and has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Nigerian authorities, a designation IPOB strongly rejects.

IPOB declared, “Biafra is not dead. Biafra is a spirit. That spirit is alive in our bones, in our minds, and in our souls… History will remember Ojukwu as the man who tried to save lives and Gowon as the man who feasted on corpses.”