Kalu: Sit-at-home order forcing businesses out of South East

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.