A former mayor in the United States, Mike Arnold, has declared that self-determination is not a crime for any of Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities.

Arnold, who is also founder and Chairman of Africa Arise International (Nigeria) and Africa Arise USA, made the assertion in a message tagged ‘The Sokoto Declaration: Principles for the Deliverance of the People’, released to coincide with the Biafra Heroes Remembrance Day on Saturday, May 30, 2026.

The US citizen, known to be sympathetic to the struggle for actualization of Biafra, delivered the declaration from Blanco, Texas in the US, through Biafra Radio.

He described the declaration as “a clarion call to every tribe and tongue oppressed under Nigeria’s flag to rise as one and seize their freedom”.

Arnold specifically declared that self-determination is not a crime for Biafrans, the Yoruba, indigenes of the Middle Belt and minorities in the North, as well as any people told by force what flag they must answer to.

Making reference to the conviction and imprisonment of Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, leader, Nnamdi Kanu, he declared that speaking truth is not terrorism.

He told Nigerians no one is coming to save them, as power is never given but is taken. According to him, to wait for rescue is the habit of a people in chains.

The 15 point declaration read: “Every soul on this land bears the image of God — and with it, the right to life, to liberty, and to a future of its own choosing.

“The displaced shall come home. Until every exile stands again on the soil of their fathers, nothing else is finished.

“Government draws its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. A regime that arms the killers, buries the camps, and pays foreign hands to hide the graves has forfeited the right to rule.

“Self-determination is not a crime. Not for Biafra. Not for Yoruba. Not for the Middle Belt. Not for the minorities of the North. Not for any people told by force what flag they must answer to. A free vote is not violence. Speaking truth is not terrorism.

“No ideology that demands death for words, death for faith, or death for tribe holds any claim upon the future of this land.

“The wealth beneath this ground belongs to the people who walk upon it. Every barrel drawn under cover of massacre is theft. Every dollar fled to foreign vaults while children starve is theft.

“No one is coming to save us. Power is never given. It is built. It is taken. To wait for rescue is the habit of a chained mind.

“Peace is not passivity. Peace is strength under restraint. Every people holds the God-given right to defend its life and its families — with overwhelming lethal force, should the hour demand it. We reject unjust aggression. We reject the revenge that poisons every cause it enters.

“How we fight shall determine what we build. No true freedom has ever been won with unjust hands. There is a line between defending the living and becoming what we oppose. Know it. Walk it. Hold it.

“Unity, or ruin. Every faction set against another faction does the work of the Darkness. The hour is too late, the cost too high, the cause too great for division.

“Resistance shall be coordinated, disciplined, unrelenting. In the streets. At the ballot box. In every courtroom that will hear the evidence. In every church too long silent. Online and on the ground. Darkness rules by our silence and our fear. We withdraw both.

“The regime that loots this land must be dismantled — by the peaceful and sovereign will of the people, by lawful and democratic means, and by an internationally supervised referendum for a new constitution and a true self-determination.

“The world stands with the people of this land, or it stands aside. We will not wait. And we will remember.

“History is not kind to those who choose the wrong side of it. Pharaohs do not win in the end. They never have.

“The cause is life. The cause is liberty. The cause is the right of every human being on this land to live in peace in the home of their fathers — to worship freely, to vote freely, to build freely.”

Concluding the declaration, Arnold stated, “The long night is ending. Let us stand together. May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — who delivered Israel from Pharaoh — grant us wisdom and courage to deliver His people once again.”