Sit-at-home Order: FG Sets To Resist, IPOB blows hot
There is currently a feeling of uncertainty over the sit-at-home order handed down to the people of the South-East by the Indigenous People of Biafra as the pro-Biafra group and IPOB leader’s brother disagreed on the directive.
IPOB, had penultimate week, threatened a weekly lockdown of the South-East geopolitical zone from Monday, August 9, 2021 until Kanu is released.
The IPOB, through a statement on Sunday by its spokesman, Emma Powerful, had restated its readiness to push home its sit-at-home order until its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, was unconditionally released from the custody of the Department of States Services.
Powerful, in the statement, said, “The entire Biafra land will be locked down every Monday from 6:00am to 6:00pm beginning from tomorrow, (Monday) August 9, 2021, until our leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who was abducted in Kenya and brought back to Nigeria and locked up in DSS dungeon in clear violation of international laws is freed.
“All markets, schools, motor parks, airports, and public places in Biafra land should shut down from morning to evening every Monday. We understand the economic implications of this measure but we are constrained to take it so that the world will know that our Leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, is not alone in the struggle for Biafra autonomy.
“All residents and visitors in Biafra land are advised to comply with the order. Nobody should go out to avoid any clash or intimidation by the wicked Nigeria security agents.”
In what seemed like a direct response to Powerful’s position, Kanunta Kanu, the younger brother to the IPOB leader said he had suspended the sit-at-home protest of the group in the South-East.
Sit-at-home Order: FG Sets To Resist, IPOB blows hot
Kanunta, in a statement on Sunday, said the planned sit-at-home directive was suspended to allow the students in the geopolitical zone to participate in the National Examination Council.
He said a new date for the commencement of the sit-at-home order would be announced later.
He said, “IPOB on its part, having realised the academic deprivation the already marginalised Biafra students who entered for this year’s NECO would suffer, decided to suspend the sit-at-home order to a later date, to allow the students take their exams.”
Meanwhile, a former governor of Anambra State, Chief Chukwuemeka Ezeife, while condemning IPOB’s action, said, “There is no reason for that; it doesn’t help us in any way.
“Therefore, it should not hold, and our people will not obey it anyway, because they act with reason. How can somebody tell you to kill yourself and you proceed to kill yourself,” Ezeife queried.
Also, the Anambra State Government on Sunday in a public service announcement attributed to Head of Service, Harry Udu, asked workers in the state to report to their duty posts on Monday unfailingly or be sanctioned.
Speaking on the IPOB order, the Anambra State Police Commissioner, Chris Awolabi, said, “If you are in Anambra, you will know what we have been doing. IPOB is a proscribed group, what do you want me to say about them. We are working.”
In a related development, the Enugu State Government on Sunday warned pro-Biafra agitators, members of the Indigenous People of Biafra that it would not spare anyone that breached the peace in the state in the name of obeying IPOB’s sit-at-home order.
It urged residents of the state to go out for their businesses on Monday as their security would be guaranteed.
The state issued this warning in a statement issued by the Chairman, Enugu Capital Territory Development Authority, Denge Onoh.
The statement titled, ‘Enugu Capital Territory Development Authority wants residents to go about their businesses on Monday’, described the sit-at-home directive as a familiar propaganda that had enthroned hardship on the citizenry, adding that “by now, wisdom is supposed to be prevailing rather than emotion”.
It added, “ECTDA wishes to clarify that there is no constituted authority, either as federal, state or local government that declared any Monday as a resting or work-free day.
“The authority also wishes to assure residents in the three local government areas of the state capital that there will be no molestation of anybody conducting genuine business in the state except such a person is a miscreant in which case the law enforcement agents have been put on notice to deal with such nuisances.
“We therefore ask all business operators within the capital territory to ignore the propaganda of a sit-at-home order, as the state government has put machinery in place to ensure that lives and properties are secured.”
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