The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu, has lamented that businesses and investors are being forced out of the South East as a result of the stay-at-home order which forced people in the region to stay at home every Monday and in some other days.
According to him, the stay-at-home order has crippled businesses and investments in Abia, Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi and Imo, the five states of the South East.
Kalu spoke while delivering a keynote address tagged at the ‘All Markets Conference 2023’ with the theme: “Catalysing Partnership with Traders through Innovation, Technology, Analytics & Sustainability” held in Lagos yesterday.
He said: “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. Ummunnem, this is not us. We are not known for these. If I do not tell you these truths as your son, then it will be difficult for anyone in governance from Ala-Igbo to tell you.”
The Deputy Speaker also claimed that about N4 trillion had been lost to the stay-at-home order in the past two years.
The Deputy Speaker however said he will work with other lawmakers from the South-East in the National Assembly for the benefit of the zone.
