IPOB: Mbah on the Fight to End the “Sit-at-Home Syndrome” in Enugu

IPOB: Mbah on the fight to end the “sit-at-home syndrome” in Enugu

NewsReport Nigeria reports that Peter Ndubisi Mbah, the governor of Enugu State, is currently the center of attention. The governor, who has just been in office for a week, is being closely observed not because he has improved governance over his fellow officials who took office on the same day, but rather because of his commitment to putting an end to the nearly annual Monday sit-at-home tradition in his state.

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Sit-at-home on Monday has become synonymous with the southeast region. This is because the greater part of the day is spent indoors while skeletal activities are observed at dawn. On 9 August 2021, the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) pronounced the order to pressure the federal government to release him from detention unconditionally. Kanu had earlier been arrested in Kenya and brought back to the country to continue his alleged criminal trials. The group had held that the manner of his arrest and attempt to try him was unfair and insisted that the order subsists until he was released.

However, pressures from leaders of the zone that sustaining the order would further wreak its economy made the group backtrack. In the same breadth, however, another splinter group of agitators led by Simeon Ekpa vowed to resist the counter-order and insisted that residents must abide by it. They had begun to terrorize the zone, killing and setting targets ablaze and in some cases abducting. These sent fear shivers down the spine of residents to begin to comply with the order and stay indoors every Monday.

During his campaigns, Mbah had promised “business unusual’ to achieve his transformation agenda for the state. Attacking the scourge of Monday sit at home never featured as part of his campaign promises and that was probably because the issue is delicate. Perhaps, if he had disclosed that it would feature among the few things he would pursue in the first week of his assumption in office; it could probably have been misread that he wanted power to be used against some pro-Biafra agitators who have sustained the sit at home mantra.

Last week Thursday however, Mbah had stunned residents when he declared a ban on Monday sit at home, promising that his government would do all in its power to sustain a peaceful and productive state.

Lending credence on why the ban should be supported by residents he had said: “There is no time to waste. The clock has started ticking on the mandate you gave me and the deliverables I promised.

“A time comes in the lives of a people when they must decide whether they genuinely want to move forward or remain stuck with the conditions of their underdevelopment.

“The creativity and sense of industry of Ndi Igbo are remarkable. Our DNA is wired with commercial and entrepreneurial prowess.

“If this is what we are known for, then it becomes inconsistent with reality that the spirit of entrepreneurship, commerce, and creativity are killed every Monday in our land. Our restless spirit of industry abhors laxity and indolence”

Mbah continued: “The idea behind sitting at home on Monday, the first working and business day of the week, is abominable and antithetical to greatness and the spirit of the industry we profess to have inherited from our forebears. This cannot be us. It does colossal damage to us.

“For us to transit from a public service economy to a private sector-driven one, we must free our markets from the shackles of restriction to commerce. If indeed we aspire and anticipate an influx of private sector practitioners and investors in Enugu State, we must know that this will not happen where the perception of us is that of unproductive people.

“Therefore, those that strike on Mondays, putting restrictions in the way of our Igbo spirit of creativity, cannot be our true representatives. They kill our spirit.

“We know that our land is a fertile ground for commerce. However, businesses, entrepreneurship, and commerce require a vibrant workforce and big markets where they can flourish and make money.

“To this end, therefore, from Monday, June 5, 2023, there will be no observance of any sit-at-home in all nooks and crannies of Enugu State.

“Government will enforce this with all the powers at its disposal. My charge to all of you – market men and women, the corporate world, industries, schools, civil servants, and all strata of workers in Enugu State is for us to take back our sense of industry, and pride of place and re-enact our glorious past. By heeding this call, you would have set us on the path of actualizing our mandate”.

He assured all-around protection for the residents and those ready to comply with the directive, stressing that there was a task force in place to monitor compliance with the directive.

Indeed, in moving that the sit-at-home should end and normal Monday activities restored in the state, Mbah may have realized that workers, especially civil servants will not go to work or open businesses on Monday in the guise that they could be attacked; will attend their religious activities, meetings and clean their surroundings on Mondays. He had realized that they would play football in the streets and engage in drinking sprees in the joints in the neighborhood and while the fuel stations are under lock and key, black market hawkers dispended in gallons among other activities that leave the masses at the mercy of profiteers.

To Mbah, he must break the chain because he had made humongous promises to the state during his political campaigns. He had promised jobs, restoration of potable water to residents in 180 days; development of infrastructure, and overall turnaround of the economy.

He had promised to move the economy from its present $4.4 billion to $30 within the next eight years through an alternative financing model that would radically depart from dependence on the dwindling federal allocations to looking inwards, tapping into the abundant resources in the state, enabling an attractive environment for investors among others.

The other was the report released recently by the Centre for Investigation. The body in their report revealed that the southeast region loses an average of $ 10 billion yearly to Monday sit at home. Sources stated that was the figure anything to go, then any government desirous to make positive impacts in the life of her people must find ways to tackle the ugly mantra.

Enugu the source added is a civil service state which had relied on its Internally General Revenue (IGR), Grants, and allocation from the federal government to take care of its needs, adding that it needs to tackle the trend to deepen development and growth.

Last Monday however, despite the assurances and improvement in security in the state, several residents stayed off the streets. Banks, Markets, Businesses, and Schools remained under lock and key. The roads were deserted for the greater part of the day.

The development, however, did not deter Mbah who not only reported for work early but moved around certain places to monitor compliance and reassure the people of the intentions of his government to end Monday sit at home. Mbah who visited the state secretariat, Ministries, Agencies, and some markets had expressed joy that for the first time in many months, workers reported to work.

He had told workers who received him, “The truth is that everything we have promised our people in Enugu is anchored on getting the flow of private sector investments into our state, and the private sector cannot come into a state where the people are not productive. The private sector thrives on big markets and a vibrant workforce.

“Let it not ever be heard that we are going to be listening to people, who have no stake in our economy and social welfare dictate to us when we must come out to work. It should not be heard of.

“Think about it, we are here today because we got the mandate of the people. So, could you then have somebody make you inferior without your consent? Someone you have not given your mandate to lead you tells you to sit down and, somehow, you begin to sit at home. And he tells you to go, and you begin to go. That should not be acceptable. It undermines our dignity as a people and we shouldn’t endorse that”, Mbah declared.”

Still undeterred, the governor had since scaled advocacy on why Monday sit at home should end and had summoned a stakeholders’ meeting that was held on Saturday (yesterday), where he used the opportunity to try to convince them of the need to support his approval for change of attitude about Monday sit at home.

Those who know how entrenched Monday sit-at home has become in the state will gladly observe that the greatest challenge confronting Mbah in the quest to restore the state to normalcy on Mondays is its entrenchment in the people. Most people say it is the day for rest. Some say Mbah never declared it and as such has no right to end it. Others have also warned him to desist from it, accusing him of nursing to end it to impress power that- be of his capacity to end Biafra agitation. They also say that sitting at home was already subsiding and would fizzle out on its own and warned the governor not to aggravate it.

Some, however, stated that agreeing to be sitting at home on Mondays was a difficult thing to come by, saying they battled thick and thin to undermine threats and directives to the order by the pro-Biafra agitators who initiated it as solidarity to their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who is detained at the Directorate of State Services (DSS) facility by the federal government.

Mrs Nneka Okechukwu, a Civil Servant told the story of how she escaped by the whiskers on her way to work one of the Mondays during an attack near the new market axis.

“It was the same axis that they burnt a police vehicle stationed at a Checkpoint. It was after that incident that I vowed not to go to work again on Monday. Otherwise, before now, the government made us be coming to work. They circulated circulars to warn those who tried to avoid Monday work”, she said.

Ikenna Ugwu, a Civil Rights Advocate told The Guardian that leveraging the counter order by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) which initiated the sit-at-home, residents had started to return to their businesses on Monday, regretting however that a Splinter group of pro-Biafra agitators, who resisted the cancellation made life unbearable for the residents of the state with their activities, leading to the people recoiling into their shell.

“These hoodlums were everywhere. They either killed or had the wares of those who dared to come out on Monday destroyed. At the new market, Emene, Abakpa, Nsukka, Agbani road, and many places, innocent people were attacked and killed, even inside their streets; vehicles found on the road were burnt if the owners were lucky to escape with their life; people were waylaid on the road with their goods destroyed or carted away.

“Police officers providing security were not spared. A good number of them were attacked at checkpoints, killed and their guns taken away. It was a huge loss. From attacking people who went out for businesses, they started moving into homes to either warn or kill those who allegedly encouraged residents to ignore the sit-at-home directive. These were factors that fuelled fears in the residents to now insist on sitting at home in the state”, he stated.

As it is, however, all eyes are on Peter Mbah and his method to confront the challenge. The IPOB has confessed that those enforcing the order are not their members. Will this work in favor of the governor? Time would tell.