The apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohaneze Ndigbo has warned the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to stop its order on Igbo people in the Southeast to observe a sit-at-home as a means of forcing the government to release its leader, Nnamdi Kanu.
In a statement today, August 7, General of the Ohaneze Ndigbo, Okechukwu Isiguzoro, stressed that the planned sit-at-home could cause avoidable economic hardship on the Igbos and called on Igbos to ignore order.
He said that the sit-at-home declaration aimed at pressurising the Nigerian authorities to release Nnamdi Kanu will destroy the backstage activities and efforts of Igbo leaders and politicians to use diplomatic means to get him released.
“There is hunger and hardship in Southeastern Nigeria. From sad experiences of past ‘ sit-at-homes,’ there were economic losses, destruction of properties, and hikes in prices of food and essential materials across Southeastern Nigeria, and Igbos painstakingly endured untold hardship and this must not continue.”
Isiguzoro advised Igbos to circumvent the hardships associated with sit-at-home and ignore it and go to their normal businesses on Monday.
“IPOB should review their stance and unveil more strategic planning with Southern Nigerian Governors and Legislators to press for the release of Nnamdi Kanu without hurting or subjecting the people to sorrow, affliction and despair.”
This was even as the Coalition of South East Youth Leaders (COSEYL), which is the apex socio-political Youth Group in the Southeast region, also dismissed as senseless, the threat by IPOB to place the entire Southeast region under lockdown until Namdi Kanu is granted unconditional release by the Federal government.
COSEYL, in a statement jointly signed by its President-General and Secretary-General – Goodluck Ibem and Kanice Igwe respectively argued that shutting down the region and its economic activities would not augur well for anybody or group and therefore not a win-win case at a time like this.
COSEYL said that although it appreciates that right to self-determination is a property of the late 1940s Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which every human group is entitled to and to which Nigeria is a signatory together with other instruments of international law, it does not see economic wisdom in shutting down business and work-related activities on Mondays which it (IPOB) had labeled ‘Ghost Mondays.’
