United States (U.S.) Congressman, Riley M. Moore on Saturday said that any attempt to “embolden separatists” will hurt Christians in Nigeria.
But the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) reacted angrily to Congressman Moore’s position, calling it “familiar but deeply flawed assumption that preserving the territorial integrity of Nigeria is synonymous with protecting Christians. History proves the opposite.”
Moore said in a post on X throughout his travel to Nigeria, “the idea of dividing the country has not come up in any serious way,” adding that “a destabilized Nigeria would embolden terrorists and make Christians less safe in Nigeria and across the continent.”
The full post by Moore reads: “I have traveled to Nigeria and engaged in multiple high-level meetings with Nigerian officials, the Church, aid groups across the country, and IDPs, to get a better understanding of the rampant persecution of Christians in Nigeria. In my discussions, the idea of dividing the country has not come up in any serious way.
“Efforts to embolden separatists hurts Christians in Nigeria – especially in the North and Middle Belt. A destabilized Nigeria would embolden terrorists and make Christians less safe in Nigeria and across the continent.
“I remain committed to working to save the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ – and for that matter, all Nigerians – suffering from the instability wrought by terrorists throughout Nigeria.
“The US and Nigeria have just entered into a security cooperation agreement, and that is an important step in tackling the violence in Nigeria and deepening and strengthening the bilateral relationship between our great nations. God bless you all.”
But IPOB, in a statement by its Spokesperson, Emma Powerful, said: “With utmost respect, the position attributed to Rep. Riley Moore reflects a familiar but deeply flawed assumption: that preserving the territorial integrity of Nigeria is synonymous with protecting Christians. History proves the opposite.
“For more than six decades, Nigeria has remained territorially intact under a British-designed suffocating central structure. During this period, Christians — especially in Northern Nigeria, the Middle Belt and parts of Yorubaland — have endured cyclical massacres, mass displacement, church burnings, and a culture of impunity enabled by the state itself. The crisis is not a deficit of security cooperation; it is a structural failure of a forced union between irreconcilable religious and civilizational systems.
“The claim that self-determination “emboldens terrorists” is a line of reasoning born out of 9 million dollars lobbying enterprise in Washington not reason. Terror movements are not triggered by oppressed peoples seeking safety; they flourish where centralized states suppress identity, deny autonomy, and reward violence with appeasement. Afghanistan stands as a modern warning: decades of military cooperation, aid, and institutional engineering collapsed overnight, while radical ideology reasserted itself with even greater ferocity.
“History demonstrates that separation — not forced coexistence — has repeatedly saved persecuted religious minorities. The religiously persecuted Huguenots did not survive Catholic France because France became tolerant. They survived because an independent Protestant England already existed — a sovereign refuge with the political will, military capacity, and moral clarity to protect them. Without Protestant England, there would have been no sanctuary for European Protestants fleeing annihilation. The same principle applies to Nigeria today.
“The agitation led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is not a call to violence, nor a scheme to destabilize West Africa as British/Nigerian lobbyists in Europe and USA would have us believe. It is a demand for a democratic referendum, the most peaceful conflict-resolution mechanism recognized in international law. A restored Biafra would function as a safe civilizational anchor — a homeland where Christians and people of other faiths from across Nigeria can live without fear, and from which persecuted Christians elsewhere could find refuge and protection.
“This is not theoretical. Since the emergence of the (IPOB), the once-routine mass killings of Igbos in Northern Nigeria abruptly ceased. That outcome was not accidental. Collective self-assertion created deterrence where decades of appeasement failed.
“Security cooperation between the United States and Nigeria may manage symptoms, but it has never cured the disease. Repeating a strategy that has failed for generations — while dismissing self-determination as dangerous — is not realism; it is historical amnesia.
“No serious advocate of peace opposes cooperation against violent extremism. But refusing to acknowledge peaceful constitutional exits, while insisting on the permanence of a demonstrably broken state, guarantees the continuation of persecution rather than its end.
“An independent Biafra, like an independent Protestant England or the State of Israel, would not threaten regional stability. It would create it — by giving persecuted peoples something they have never had within Nigeria: a sovereign place of safety.
“True concern for Christians — and for all Nigerians — begins with intellectual honesty: forced unity has failed. Safety, dignity, and peace have always followed self-rule, not its denial.”
