The Shackle of IPOB Resistance: Interrogating the Implicit Drivers of Armed Struggle in Southeastern Nigeria

ABSTRACT This study examines the implicit motivations of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) armed struggle in Southeastern Nigeria. Conventional perspectives have usually focused on evident structural issues, like political marginalisation, economic disparity and aspirations of Igbo people for secession. They frequently overlook the hidden role that esoteric beliefs and demographic factors like age, gender and marital status may play in these conflicts. The results of this study, which utilised hierarchical regression analysis, show that age alone does not significantly predict recurrent armed conflict, accounting for only 0.4% of the variance ( F [1, 346] = 1.34, p > 0.05). Nevertheless, the inclusion of gender in the model results in a significant boost in predictive power, with a variance of 1.9% ( F [2, 346] = 3.41, p < 0.05), indicating that gender dynamics, whether male or female, impact the rise of armed struggle. Moreover, adding marital status improves the predictability of the model, resulting in a combined variance of 2.2% ( F [3, 346] = 2.57, p < 0.05). Implicit motivation is a strong predictor of armed struggle, explaining 26.6% of the variance in conflict occurrences ( β = −0.52; t = 11.17; p < 0.05). These findings substantiate the hypotheses that demographic factors and implicit motivations play critical roles in IPOB's armed struggle. By illuminating these patterns, the study mapped into existing discourses on the factors sustaining the conflicts and how these factors frame IPOB resistance in southeastern Nigeria.