The leader of the Auto-pilot rebel group, Simon Ekpa living in Lahti has been arrested by Finnish police.
Ekpa, who styles himself as the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, which has been declared a terrorist organization in Nigeria, leads an armed insurgency that sows fear in Nigeria.
According to Helsingin Sanomat(you switch to another service) the police have arrested Simon Ekpa, a Nigerian living in Lahti.
The Nigerian government has on several occasions asked Finland to intervene in Ekpa’s activities and prevent it.
In an interview with Yle, a Finnish newspaper, Ekpaclaimed that he leads a rebel group from Lahti that wants to establish an independent state of Biafra in the southeastern part of Nigeria.
Ekpa said it accepts the use of violence against Nigerian government forces. In addition, Ekpa has imposed a curfew on certain days of the week for residents of five states in South-Eastern Nigeria.
In December 2022, Simon Ekpa announced a five-day stay-at-home order for more than 20 million Nigerians from Lahti.
Ekpa’s Twitter video, in which he orders people to boycott the elections and stay in their homes, has already been viewed over a million times.
When Yle called Central Criminal Police Inspector Tommi Rehn and asked him if Ekpa was arrested in Lahti today, Rehn replied that the police had an operation in Lahti today in which one man was arrested, but at this stage his name or the reason for the arrest cannot be made public.
“We cannot comment further on the matter at this stage, because the measures related to the operation are still ongoing” , he says.
