South East Has Lost N4trn To Sit-At-Home – Reps’ Deputy Speaker

• The South East has lost about N4 trillion in the last two years due to the IPOB sit-at-home order
• The order has stifled economic growth and forced potential investors out of the region
• Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu has urged all Igbo sons and daughters to work together to put an end to the threat

According to Benjamin Kalu, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, the South East has lost about N4 trillion in the last two years due to the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) sit-at-home order.

According to Kalu, the order observed every Monday across the region’s five states has stifled economic growth.

The deputy speaker said in a keynote address on Friday at the “All Markets Conference 2023” in Lagos, “Catalysing Partnership with Traders through Innovation, Technology, Analytics, and Sustainability,” that the situation had forced potential investors out of the South East.

Kalu urged all Igbo sons and daughters to work together to put an end to the threat.

The existential threat to Igbo entrepreneurship and businesses now is the insecurity and sit-at-home problem in the South-east. The mutation of this problem is largely unfathomable. It is becoming a cankerworm that is eating deep into our collective fortune as a people.”

We have to rise up to nip the problem in the bud. The first wave of the migration of Igbo businesses post-civil war was in the late 1980s and the 1990s, when, due to incessant kidnappings, thievery and a rise in occultism, Igbo businesses domiciled in Igboland moved en masse to other parts of Nigeria and the West & Central African region to thrive.

We are currently witnessing the second wave of such migration of Igbos businesses, this time around, due to the insecurity and the sit-at-home problem in our beloved region, he said.

Kalu advocated for the revival of the Igbo apprenticeship system, which he claimed produced successful businessmen and women, emphasising that it should not be allowed to die out.

What FG must do to end insecurity in South East

The Indigenous People of Biafra say it has no hand in the recent wave of attacks and killings occasioned by the violent enforcement of the sit-at-home order across the South-East.

This is as the group implored the Federal government to release pro-Biafran leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to end insecurity in the South-East region.

It also distanced itself from the sit-at-home order issued by Simon Ekpa, a self-acclaimed leader of the party living in Finland.

The proscribed group pointed out that if the Federal Government really wanted insecurity to end in the South-East, it should release Kanu unconditionally from detention as pronounced by the courts.