Simon Ekpa To Lockdown South-east For Three Consecutive Days In May

By Charles Igbo

Trouble looms in the South-east of Nigeria in the month of May.

For three consecutive days, the Zone will be on lockdown. People will be forced to sit at home. It will be like a ghost zone, that is if the order prevails.

Beginning from May 16, 2022, to May 18 when it will end, nothing would work in the Zone. If anything, violence could reign. There could be a confrontation between State actors and non-State actors.

And, this time, it is not on the orders of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB or its Directorate of Services, DOS. It is from Simon Ekpa, who Kanu’s IPOB has denounced and declared a criminal.

Finland based, Ekpa fell out with IPOB’s DOS, and since then, he has been on a solo mission, working at counter purposes with IPOB.

For instance, IPOB has since suspended the weekly sit-at-home order which it instituted to pressurise the Federal Government into releasing Kanu who has been in its custody since June, 2021. Seeing that it has failed to achieve its aim, and that the Federal Government couldn’t be bothered, and that it amounted to only the suffering of its own people who IPOB said it is protecting, IPOB suspended the exercise.

But since then, Ekpa and his group, identified by IPOB as Autopilot, has carried on with enforcing the sit-at-home order every Monday. The violence has continued and IPOB says Ekpa and his Autopilot are responsible for it.

Now, Ekpa has given a long notice for a three-day lockdown of the Region. In a post, he said it will be historic. “Get ready for a historic lockdown of Biafraland in the month of May. It will go down in the history of Biafra liberation that we lockdown (sic) our territory for three days demanding for the release of MNK.”

The Governors in the South-east, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Elders, Clerics have all decided to put a stop to the sit-at-home order which has spilled so much blood in the Zone, crippled the economy, and brought so much hardship and suffering to the people.

So, will Ekpa have his way in May? Will he have a change of mind? Will something finally give? Time will tell.