By Charles Igbo
The Senate Chief Whip, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, has lamented the effect the sit-at-home order imposed on the people of the South-east is having on the region.
He said it has affected many businesses and ground the economy of the region to a halt. According to Orji, a former Governor of the State, Ndigbo lose a whopping N25b each day of the sit-at-home order.
The order was imposed on the region by the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, several months ago, to protest the continued prosecution of its leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, by the Federal Government.
To pressurise the Federal Government to release Kanu, they declared every Monday of every week as a sit-at-home day, as well as any day Kanu would appear in court.
Kanu is being prosecuted by the Federal Government for among other things, alleged terrorism and treasonable felony. The United Nations, recently, asked the Nigerian Government to release Kanu without any conditions.
IPOB had since bowed to pressure from well meaning citizens in consideration of the sufferings of the people, and especially, the violence which usually accompanied the compliance, cancelled the order.
But a splinter group led by Simon Ekpa, a self-confessed disciple of Kanu, but who has since been denied and disclaimed by IPOB, has continued to enforce the order, even though Kanu, whose disciple he claims he is, has since ordered the cancellation of the sit-at-home order. Ekpa, allegedly, leads a group identified as “Auto Pilot.”
Addressing his Constituents in Umunneochi Local Government Area, a hotbed of kidnappers, Kalu lamented what Igbo land has been reduced to by the incessant abductions of innocent citizens, and the enforcement of the sit-at-home order. He revealed that in connivance with the Military, he would bomb the bushes and forests in Abia State, and warned parents to ask their children who live in the bush to leave or risk being killed, emphasising that: “We want peace.”
Kalu: “We want peace here. We want our businesses to continue. The Igbo are losing N25 billion each day they close their businesses. And they cannot continue. I wish I’m still Governor of Abia State. But I’m not the Governor.”
