Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement has accused the South East Igbo Governors as being behind the continued sit-at-home activities and lockdown of businesses in the area. This has been a major point of divergence between the Governors who publicly insist they want economic and social activities to return to nornalcy and the IPOB/activists.
The IPOB which initiated the protest tool of sit-at-home especially since the kidnapping and incaceration of IPOB’s leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, by the federal government of Nigeria, has through its Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, alleged that the “South East governors have hands in stopping our people from going back to their businesses because they want to use the opportunity to blackmail IPOB and Nnamdi Kanu. Some South East Governors arranged unknown gunmen and cultists to intimidate our people thinking they will destroy IPOB, but we are smarter than them and we know some of their acts to destroy IPOB. They have never hidden their activities to destroy IPOB and impress their ‘slave masters’ in Abuja.”
USAfrica correspondents in the major cities of the South East report that the sit-at-home orders and lockdown of businesses continue to ngeatively affect the investment, trading, exportation, importation, educational, medical check-ups and other spheres of living across the Igbo heartland.
In his news release, Emma Powerful stated that the “IPOB cancelled Monday sit- at- home when we realized it will not be in the interest of our people and we even mobilized to deal with the criminals allegedly enforcing it but some of our governors are using the order to destroy economic activities in the region because that was the agreement they had with their pay masters in Abuja.
“We therefore commend our people for coming out on Mondays, to go about their businesses. We want the banks and other businesses to start coming out because the Monday sit-at-home is not sanctioned by IPOB. IPOB authorities have suspended it after the first week of its observance in August last year. Anybody enforcing it is an enemy of our people. We wonder why South East governors refused to order for the opening of markets and banks in the region. They know what to do to any bank that disobeys their directive to commence operations, but they will not do the needful because they feel they can bring down IPOB and Nnamdi Kanu with blackmail-oriented sit-at-home.”
