Sit-At-Home Has Chased Businessmen Away From Southeast – Abaribe

The Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe has expressed worry over the insecurity challenges in the Southeast describing it as a tragedy.

Senator Abaribe stated this in Enugu on Saturday while Speaking during the investiture of the 16th President of Enugu Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (ECCIMA).

He stressed the need to make Southeast more attractive to businesses, adding that giving in to Mondays’ sit-at-home could succeed in destroying the economy of the region.

According to him “What we need in the southeast is to turn the zone to a place that attracts people not the place that people are running away from. We cannot grow as a region if we don’t work 24 hours daily to uplift our standard of living.”

He said that the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu, told him while in detention that he neither ordered nor knew about the Monday sit-at-home which has continued to be observed in the Southeast.

“It is unfortunate that businesses were now relocating to other regions as a result of insecurity in the region.

“What is happening in Southeast is a tragedy. Every Monday people sit at home in what they call ‘Holy Monday’. What is holy in making people suffer like this?

“IPOB has said countless times that they are not the ones enforcing the order. We don’t know who is enforcing it nor does it seem like we have a way to solve it.

I went with Ike Ekweremadu and two Bishops to the DSS to see Nnamdi Kanu and he told us ‘I have never said people should sit at home. I told him that nobody believes you outside. Because people have said they don’t like it but they keep sitting at home.

“There is no way we are going to survive like this. You are sitting at home and the people who you are doing these things for are in Lagos and Abuja and everywhere and they don’t care. And you are here killing your own.

“Aba is known for bringing and opening containers of imported goods on Mondays. So, the problem we’re having today is that because of the sit-at-home, people now go to Port Harcourt, Uyo and Calabar to open their containers. They’re leaving Southeast and moving out to Lagos. When we all leave, who will you blame? The captains of industries are no longer there,” he said

Senator Abaribe who lamented that the insecurity of the Southeast had assumed the biggest problem of the region said insecurity in the Southeast is the biggest problem we are facing now and the sooner we tackle it the better for us.

“Even if you are seeking a separate country, why would you destroy your place with your hands? You need to have a viable country and not a scattered one," he started.