Nigeria has welcomed the arrest of a Biafra separatist leader in Finland accused of terrorism, including inciting violence against civilians.
Simon Ekpa, who claims to lead the so-called ''Biafra Republic Government in Exile'', has been remanded in custody by a Finnish court on Thursday.
He faces charges relating to his online campaign for a breakaway state of Biafra in southeastern Nigeria.
''We are very happy,'' spokesperson for Nigeria's defence headquarters, General Tukur Gusau, told TRT Afrika, while reacting to the arrest of Ekpa by the Finnish authorities.
''We pray that they will extradite him to Nigeria immediately, so that he will be put through the court, so that he will answer all the charges against him for terrorism and inciting violence, especially in the southeastern part of Nigeria,'' General Gusau added.
Facing justice
The Nigerian authorities have ''consistently appealed to all those concerned to ensure that the terrorist, Simon Ekpa, is extradited to Nigeria, so that he will face justice,'' he said.
Ekpa, a dual Finnish-Nigerian national, is a local representative for Finland's National Coalition Party in the city of Lahti, north of Helsinki, where he serves on a public transport committee.
He is known as a self-proclaimed leader of a faction of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group pushing for a breakaway state in southeastern Nigeria.
Following his arrest, the authorities in Finland took the 39-year-old separatist to Paijat-Hame District Court on Thursday, accusing him of "public exhortation to an offence committed with a terrorist intent," the court told AFP news agency.
Ekpa was arrested along with four other members of his group earlier this week, Finnish police said.
Social media campaign
Finnish investigators also requested that the other four people be remanded in custody on suspicion of financing Ekpa's activities.
Police believed he incited "violence against civilians and public authorities and other crimes in southeast Nigeria" from Finland, said Detective Chief Inspector Otto Hiltunen of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
"He has carried out this activity by campaigning, for example, on his social media channels," he added.
Dada Olusegun, special assistant to Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu, expressed happiness over the arrest, hoping that Ekpa would be extradited to the West African country.
Tackling violence
"Thank you Finland. See you soon Prime Minister," Dada Olusegun posted on social media, in a mocking reference to Ekpa's self-awarded title of prime minister of the so-called Biafra's government in exile.
In recent years, Nigerian authorities have been trying to quell a separatist movement in the southeast of the country largely led by IPOB, with government blaming the group for frequent deadly attacks on civilians and security forces in the region.
The group's main leader, Nnamdi Kanu, has been on trial in Nigeria on charges relating to terrorism.
A similar separatist move led to a bloody civil war in the late 1960s killing more than one million people.
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