According to a police spokesperson, gunmen killed five Nigerian police officers and two civilians in an attack in southern Imo state on Friday, in the latest event in a state riven by a gang and separatist violence.
The government often blames the armed assaults on police stations, government facilities, and polling booths in southeast Nigeria on the proscribed separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement. The IPOB has denied the claims.
Henry Okoye, the Imo state’s police spokesperson, confirmed the killings of police officers and citizens but did not offer any details.
Gunfights and kidnappings in Nigeria’s northwest, a raging Islamist insurgency in the northeast, and separatist and gang violence in the southeast all add to the country’s overall insecurity.
The Igbo People’s Organization of Nigeria and other similar organizations push for a breakaway state in southern Nigeria, the Igbo people’s historic homeland.
More than a million people died, mostly as a result of famine, after the region’s attempt at independence in 1967 under the name Republic of Biafra.
