In July 2026, a delegation from the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), led by Mazi Chris Nwaogu, visited the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem. During the visit, they gave interviews and made statements expressing solidarity with Israel—a state whose military exercises in Gaza have been described by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide in the treatment of Palestinians.
What baffles me is not that IPOB chooses allies. Of course not! It’s the contradiction in their choice of ally. How can a people struggling to liberate itself from the consequences of colonialism become comfortable identifying with a state accused of perpetuating settler colonialism?
This is not the first time I have questioned such an alliance. But this morning, while listening to an interview with Buchi Emecheta, I began to wonder whether the deeper question is not Israel at all.
Emecheta recalled how her father was conscripted into the British army during the Second World War and died after serving in the Burma campaign. But then she said something that stopped me. Her immediate brother, she explained, had been named after Adolf Hitler. Why? “Because my people wanted him to be as strong as Hitler.”
Emecheta went further: “I come from the Igbo tribe, where people admire strength.” According to her, they knew Hitler “may be bad,” but what impressed them was that “he was a very strong man.”
That stayed with me. Not Hitler himself, but Emecheta’s observation about us: the admiration of strength.
Could this help us understand something about our contemporary politics? Could there be, within some of our political imagination, a fascination with the strongman—the person whose power itself becomes worthy of admiration, even when the exercise of that power is brutal?
And suddenly I was thinking about something larger than Biafra and Israel. About the fascination some Nigerians — in this case — some Igbos, have with powerful political figures such as Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin.
These are different men in different contexts, and I’m not equating them. Yet, I’m asking what their images of power awaken in us.
Why are we so fascinated by strongmen? How can a people whose memory is marked by colonialism, war, and the struggle for self-determination be drawn to leaders precisely because they project force and domination?
What do we see in brutal men? Why does the performance of strength sometimes fascinate us more than justice? And how can we demand liberation for ourselves while admiring forms of power that deny freedom and dignity to others?
That is the question I’m still trying to unravel.
