Claim that Finland is planning to extradite Nigerian separatist leader in July 2025 is false

Yahoo

30-04-2025

'Simon Ekpa to Be Extradited to Nigeria from Finland in July,' reads the headline of an X post published on April 22, 2025.
Shared more than 100 times, the post claims that Finnish authorities have confirmed Ekpa's extradition to Nigeria to face charges related to terrorism and incitement of violence in July 2025.
'The decision follows months of diplomatic negotiations and legal proceedings between Nigeria and Finland, marking a significant step in addressing the unrest linked to Ekpa's activities in Nigeria's southeast,' the post reads.
Attached is an image of Ekpa in an orange jumpsuit standing behind prison bars.
The post was published by an account under the username 'Pastor Okezie J. Atañi.' It has more than 49,000 followers and mostly shares content in support of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu's administration and his All Progressives Congress (APC) party.
Similar claims were spotted here and here on Facebook.
Ekpa, a dual citizen of Finland and Nigeria, is a self-proclaimed leader of a faction of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group pushing for the independence of Nigeria's southeast. The region was plagued by civil war in the late 1960s.
The separatist leader has been in jail since November 21, 2024, when Finnish authorities detained him on suspicion of terrorism-related activities for his online independence campaign that allegedly incited violence against civilians (archived here).
In March 2025, the Nigeria Sanctions Committee (NSC) designated Ekpa and 16 entities as alleged terrorism financiers in the country, ordering the immediate identification and freezing of all bank accounts and assets connected to them (archived here).
Speaking to BBC Pidgin on April 16, 2025, Ekpa's lawyer, Kaarle Gummerus, said that the separatist leader will appear in a Finnish court in June 2025 for pre-trial hearings (archived here).
However, the claim about Ekpa's imminent extradition to Nigeria is false.
Since his arrest, there have been no credible reports on any diplomatic arrangement for Ekpa's expatriation from Finland to Nigeria.
In an email response to AFP Fact Check, Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) senior detective Mikko Laaksonen, said Finnish police are 'not aware of any extradition decision'.
Gummerus also responded to the claim in an email on April 28, 2025, dismissing it as 'fake news'.
Two spokespersons from the Nigerian justice ministry -- Modupe Ogundoro and Kamarudeen Ogundele -- both denied knowledge of Ekpa's extradition plans in separate phone conversations with AFP Fact Check.
Meanwhile, we conducted a reverse image search on the image attached to the X post using Google Lens, and the results established that it was edited to add Ekpa's face.
The original image is a stock photo uploaded on iStock on May 7, 2018 (archived here).
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked other claims related to Ekpa's arrest here and here.