"The struggle to achieve sovereignty and independence for Ndigbo (the Igbo people) is not negotiable, but there will be no armed struggle," Ralph Uwazuruike, the head of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), said in an interview at the weekend.

"In all the 25 stages earmarked for the struggle, none is violent. We have told our people that violence is not allowed, violence will not be employed. We have chosen a peaceful and constitutional path and this will be vigorously pursued," he said.

Between 1967 and 1970 the Igbo ethnic group fought a brutal civil war against federal forces, seeking independence for their so-called "Republic of Biafra" from the rest of Nigeria.

More than a million people, most of them Igbo, were killed or starved to death during the conflict. Today, at more than 40 million strong, the Igbo are one of Nigeria's three main ethnic groups but many of them still feel like second-class citizens.

"Since the end of the civil war in January 1970, successive Nigerian leaders through their action and statements have behaved as if the Igbos did not matter in scheme of things in Nigeria," the 47-year-old Uwazuruike told AFP at his fortified compound in the farming village of Okwe.

"The scars of the civil wars are yet to heal. Nigeria is still punishing us for that war. The hazards of that war are still with us. They have treated us as an endangered species, killing our people every now and then in other parts of the country," the Indian-trained lawyer said.

"Even in peacetime, we are killed like chicken and since we are a rejected people, a marginalised people, a defeated people, we should be allowed to go in peace," he added.

Members of Uwazuruike's movement have been arrested and harassed by Nigerian security forces, and both local and international human rights activists have complained of torture and extrajudicial killings.

"More than 1,000 of our members have been killed by Nigerian security agents while some 2,000 are in detention camps throughout the country," asserted MASSOB spokesman Uche Uchenna.

Nevertheless, there is a mounting mood of militancy among the Igbo, especially among the majority of the population too young to remember the horrors of the Biafran war.

The red, black and green rising-sun banner of Biafra flies above buildings and is brandished at boisterous rallies in the bustling trading cities of the Igbo southeast.

The Biafran pound, once the currency of the breakaway republic, is once more changing hands in the markets of Onitsha, Owerri and elsewhere.

Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 after 16 years of brutal military dictatorship under the leadership of generals from the Hausa-speaking community of Nigeria's mainly Muslim north, amid hopes that Africa's most populous country could at last bridge its deep divides.

But then newly elected President Olusegun Obasanjo, who in his former career as an army general had fought against Biafra and accepted the surrender of its leader General Emeka Ojukwu, immediately offended Igbo nationalists by dismissing their demands for senior postings.

"While reacting to our protests over non-appointment of Igbos into key positions in government, Obasanjo said a people defeated in war was not supposed to talk for 200 years," Uwazuruike claimed.

"If the president whom we massively voted for could say that, it shows that my people are not wanted in Nigeria," he added.

Since Obasanjo came to power more than 20,000 people have been killed across Nigeria in ethnic, political and sectarian unrest and the prospect of rising Igbo militancy will worry international observers already concerned about the safety of Nigeria's vast oil exports.

But MASSOB's plan, Uwazuruike insists, is to adopt the trappings of statehood step-by-step -- with measures like the reintroduction of the Biafran currency -- rather than to rise up in violent revolt.

"Independence is not a one-day affair. We shall get there soon. Our membership is spreading all over the world," he said, claiming that 7.5 million people had signed up to the struggle.

"I am a Biafran. My people are Biafrans. Every MASSOB member has renounced his Nigerian citizenship. All we want is for the United Nations, African Union, and foreign countries and organisations to accept us," he said.