What Happened to Monday: The Simon Ekpa Analysis
Simon Ekpa stole it.
When Max Botkin and Kerry Williamson wrote the script for what would later become a 2017 sci-fi thriller set in a futuristic USA, the pair had no plans of drawing parallels to an event that would play out four years later in Nigeria’s southeast.
‘What Happened to Monday’, their creation, tells the story of identical septuplets [played by Noomi Roopace] born in an era when a Child Allocation Bureau (CAB) mandatorily enforces an aggressive form of birth control, forcing parents to have no more than one child.
Couples with more than one forfeit the extra children to the government for what the CAB describes as ‘cryogenic freezing’ — a term that is supposed to mean preservation until the country has enough resources to cater for them but actually means death.
When a character, Terrence Settman’s granddaughter, gives birth to seven girls, Settman hides all seven, names them after every day of the week, and gives them a single identity to live out. Each child must play this character out in the real world once a week, the day corresponding to their name. All goes fine until Monday fails to return home. Without Monday, the other sisters must sit at home, and their lives become threatened.
IPOB, CAB PARALLELS
In 2012, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) emerged as the brainchild of the now-imprisoned Nnamdi Kanu. The secessionist group’s publicised intention was to break the southeast region away from Nigeria to ensure its people’s survival.
Employing hate speech, Kanu spread this narrative via Radio Biafra with the help of Simon Ekpa, a Finnish national with Nigerian roots. While they preached liberation, both men contributed to violence, destruction, and the killing of citizens in Nigeria’s southeastern region.
Fast-forward a dozen years later, both men are in jail in Nigeria and Finland, standing trial for terrorism-sponsoring and promoting violence in the southeastern region.
Kanu has already spent three years in detention. On June 27, 2021, the police arrested him in Kenya and extradited him to Nigeria to face charges. It was the second time the Nigerian government would get their hands on him as they had earlier charged him in 2015.
His second arrest came with some pushback as IPOB issued a statement declaring civil disobedience. The group banned activities in Nigeria’s southeastern region on Mondays until the government released Kanu. They also dismissed Ekpa because he refused “to follow the laid down rules of operation of Radio Biafra”.
On August 15, 2021, Emma Powerful, IPOB’s spokesman, announced a revocation of the sit-at-home order that occasionally forced day-long curfews on Nigerians living in the southeast. Powerful said the group would only enforce the order on days Kanu appeared in court, but this announcement had no effect.
Like Roopace in the 2017 movie, Monday was gone.
WHAT HAPPENED IN MONDAY’S ABSENCE?
When IPOB began enforcing its civil disobedience, it declared war on anyone who dared flout the order. Nothing survived. The group has shut businesses, schools, travel and the economy down every Monday since 2021.
Several instances of the group’s attacks appear here, here, and here.
In July 2023, a report documented the reactions of southeast governors and residents lamenting over how the sick could not get medical care, children could not go to school, and businesses could not make money on Monday, contributing to the region’s economic decline.
Despite the governors’ and Powerful’s repeated statements telling people to ignore the sit-at-home order, the uncertainty of attacks kept them indoors. And just as Monday in the movie had sold herself to the CAB to protect her own future children’s lives, Monday now belonged to IPOB and Ekpa to the detriment of everyone else.
Since Ekpa’s arrest, some residents have expressed optimism but there remains a conservative fear of the group’s continued violence, as some believe they have become too decentralised to fall with Ekpa.
Powerful already issued a statement on Thursday dissociating the group from Ekpa, but it was not the first time he would do so. Oyibo Ugwu, a travel documentary creator, told FIJ on Thursday that he learnt of Ekpa’s arrest via X, and hopes the region recovers with this news. He did not have so much enthusiasm when he spoke.
The Defence Headquarters has already expressed hope over his extradition to Nigeria to face charges, but the Finnish court is not quite finished with him yet. The court still wants answers to questions of terror financing and violence sponsoring.
If found guilty, the government would have proven the lives lost, businesses affected and casualties sustained were all Ekpa’s doing. But what we know at this moment is what happened to Monday.
Simon Ekpa stole it.
FIJ
