Self-acclaimed Prime Minister of the Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE), Simon Ekpa, has expressed optimism that his sentence by a Finnish court will be reversed. Ekpa was sentenced to six years in prison on September 1, 2025, by the Päijät-Häme District Court after being convicted of terrorism-related offences linking him to killings in southeastern Nigeria, alongside convictions for aggravated tax fraud and violating Finland's Lawyers Act.

Speaking with fellow Biafra agitators during his appeal hearing proceedings on Thursday, Ekpa maintained that the wrong person is being imprisoned. "I'm very confident that the truth is going to come out. They will know that the wrong person has been imprisoned," he said.

Ekpa's loyalists, under BRGIE, had earlier vowed to appeal the sentence, with acting Prime Minister Ogechukwu Nkere alleging the judgment was influenced by pressure from the Nigerian government and describing it as politically motivated. The Finnish court had found that Ekpa used his social media following between August 2021 and November 2024 to incite terrorism-linked crimes in Nigeria's South-East, and ruled that he supplied armed groups with weapons, explosives and ammunition through a network of contacts. Ekpa was arrested in Finland in November 2024; the Nigerian government has separately sought his extradition, and Nigeria's Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, previously described his conviction as a "major victory" in the fight against terror.