IPOB Rejects Imo Police Claim of ESN Camp Raid in Oguta, Calls It a Recycled Script

IPOB Rejects Imo Police Claim of ESN Camp Raid in Oguta, Calls It a Recycled Script The Directorate of State of the Indigenous People of Bia...

IPOB Rejects Imo Police Claim of ESN Camp Raid in Oguta, Calls It a Recycled Script

The Directorate of State of the Indigenous People of Biafra on Tuesday dismissed the Imo State Police Command’s account of a raid in Ubah Agwa, Oguta Local Government Area, saying the command has recycled the same “ESN camp bust” narrative since 2022 and that no such camp exists.

The briefing, dated 22 September 2026 and signed by DOS Press Secretary Dr C. Okadigbo, responded to a police statement issued last week by the command’s spokesman, DSP Henry Okoye. That statement said investigators following the 21 August attack on Agwa Divisional Headquarters arrested two suspects, dislodged a suspected IPOB/ESN hideout, and recovered weapons and other items from an abandoned uncompleted bungalow.

Nigerian newspapers, including Premium Times, Tribune and The Sun, reported the police version on 17–18 September. According to Okoye, a kingpin identified as Chiemela, also known as “Disaster,” was killed during the foiled 21 August attack. Subsequent inquiries led to the arrest of Happiness Uche, 32, of Ubah Agwa, and Jones Okechukwu Anyim, 29, of Umuokijo Mgbala Agwa, on 15 September. Officers then moved on a hideout at Ubah Agwa. Police said occupants opened fire and fled, some of them believed to have been wounded. Recovered items listed in the statement included one AK-47 rifle with no visible identification number, two magazines loaded with 52 rounds, a hand grenade, military and police uniforms, Biafra flags and regalia, ESN-marked uniforms and berets, ATM cards, currencies with Biafran inscriptions, foreign currency, enlarged photographs and objects described as ritual materials.

IPOB rejected that account point by point.

The group said its leadership has long maintained there is no ESN camp in Agwa. It again denied that IPOB or the Eastern Security Network is a terrorist organisation or that it operates terrorist camps anywhere. Nigeria’s federal government designated IPOB a terrorist organisation in 2017; the movement rejects that designation and presents itself as a non-violent self-determination group.

On the exhibits, Okadigbo argued the haul does not match a “fierce gun battle.” He asked where the bullet holes, blood trail, bodies or video were if a firefight had taken place, and questioned how one rifle could represent an entire camp. He described the uniforms, flags, berets, shrine items and photographs as “Nollywood props” and said the inventory was “the exact same” list used after raids in the Ubah Agwa/Izombe forest in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Police have previously announced operations in that same forest belt; an April 2023 statement by Okoye also spoke of a raid in the Ubah Agwa/Izombe tropical forest and listed uniforms, insignia and other items.

IPOB also challenged the timeline. If Chiemela “Disaster” was killed on 21 August, the group asked why an investigation of that attack produced arrests on 15 September and a later raid of a site from which everyone allegedly escaped. “If you killed the kingpin, who are you still fighting in an empty bungalow?” the briefing said.

The statement further claimed there had been no independent check. It said residents of Ubah Agwa have repeatedly denied the existence of an ESN camp and that the site police called a camp is known locally as farmland and family houses. No community leader, journalist or independent monitor was taken to the location, it said, and no drone footage or body-camera video was released only a press statement.

Okadigbo framed the raid announcement as a pattern: when police fail to protect people and infrastructure in Imo, the next step is a familiar “we busted an ESN camp” story used, the group alleged, to justify extrajudicial killings and to squeeze communities. It named the two arrested youths and accused Okoye of “criminalising innocent Imo youths.” The briefing also asked why prominent voices in the state have not condemned Governor Hope Uzodimma over the use of the police against unarmed young people labelled terrorists.

“We maintain that there was no ESN camp busted in Agwa, Oguta because none existed,” the statement said. It added that the “modus operandi of the ESN will remain a puzzle” the Nigerian government “can neither understand nor have the capacity to solve.”

As of Wednesday morning there was no public reply from the Imo Police Command or the state government to the 22 September briefing. Independent journalists and community leaders have not published on-site verification of either the police exhibit list or IPOB’s claim that the location is ordinary farmland.

The exchange sits inside a longer contest over security in Imo and the wider South-East. Police and the military regularly announce raids on alleged IPOB/ESN camps. IPOB regularly replies that those announcements recycle stock exhibits, criminalise local youths, and paper over failures of ordinary policing. The latest statements, four days apart, follow that same script. What remains unverified by a third party is the physical site itself.

Family Writers Press International.