Police in Nigeria on Sunday said they had arrested 65 people at a demonstration of support for US President Donald Trump organised by pro-independence activists in the country’s south.
The rally, which took place on Friday in the southern oil hub of Port Harcourt, was organised to coincide with the billionaire businessman’s inauguration as the 45th US president.
It was organised by a pro-Biafra group advocating an independent state in southeastern Nigeria and was held on the eve of massive demonstrations against Trump across the globe.
“Some suspected members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)… staged an unlawful protest in the Port Harcourt metropolis,” said Rivers State’s deputy police chief Ahmed Magaji.
He said the march was not authorised and had disturbed the public order, with police using tear gas to disperse them.
“About 65 of them were arrested” on suspicion of belonging to the IPOB, and were found to be carrying the movement’s flag, he said.
The IPOB is part of a wider secessionist movement that advocates an independent state of Biafra, a region in southeast Nigeria that unsuccessfully fought for independence in a brutal three-year civil war that ended in 1970.