At its inception, MASSOB concentrated on organizing rallies and peaceful protests which culminated in hoisting Biafran flags at different locations in the South East.

This sparked a lot of excitement at the time especially as one Biafran pound was said to exchange for two hundred and seventy naira at the border communities of Togo and the Republic of Benin.

[8] In his reaction, the then President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, likened the Biafran pounds to a collector's item and attributed its high exchange value to its relative rarity.

The group's sanitation grassroot information spokesperson, Kelechi A. Chukwu, has alleged that the government forces carries out secret executions of MASSOB members in detention centres and prisons nationwide.

[10] In June 2012, the Human Rights Writers' Association of Nigeria condemned the alleged killing of 16 members of MASSOB by security agencies in Anambra.

In February 2013, MASSOB claimed that several corpses found floating in the Ezu River on the boundary of Enugu and Anambra States were those of its members previously arrested by the police.