"Minutes after touching down in Port Harcourt, I could feel the paranoia setting in," writes AFP's Lagos-based correspondent Stephanie Findlay.

"I'd come to the city in Nigeria's south to travel to 'Biafraland' in the southeast, to see what the situation was like in the region that declared independence from the rest of the country in 1967, sparking a brutal three-year civil war."

"Discontent with the federal government has never been far from the surface in the region and over the last few months has increased, after the leader of a hardline pro-Biafra group, Nnamdi Kanu, was arrested and put on trial in the capital, Abuja."