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HURIWA urges IPOB to cancel week-long sit-at-home order

By Innocent Anoruo (Lagos) and Ernest Nzor (Abuja)
04 November 2021   |   2:47 am
Millions of businesses may shut down and result in massive joblessness and a high crime rate in the South East of Nigeria, if the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) makes good

Tasks INEC on credible Anambra poll

Millions of businesses may shut down and result in massive joblessness and a high crime rate in the South East of Nigeria if the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) makes good its threat of enforcing its sit-at-home order from tomorrow.

This is the position of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) on the security situation in the South East, even as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) insists on holding the Anambra State governorship election on Saturday, November 6.

National Coordinator of HURIWA, Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, asserted this in a statement, yesterday.

According to the civil rights advocacy platform, whereas non-violent civil action such as sit-at-home is permissible in a democracy, shutting down an entire economy of a region as strategic as the South East of Nigeria is not in the economic, political and strategic interest of the Igbo nation.

It, therefore, asked IPOB to withdraw the order to avoid the imminent collapse of the South East economy.

Besides, HURIWA asked INEC not to manipulate the governorship election in Anambra, this weekend, but to conduct a free, fair, transparent election, to avoid unnecessary litigation or inconclusive election.

“It is our considered opinion that the week-long civil protest will only succeed in multiplying the economic pains of the extremely marginalised Igbo-speaking people and emasculate the economic well-being of the Igbo nation to a devastating extent that there would be hundreds of thousands of job losses, and these economic adversities will pave way for the unprecedented rise in organised crime.

“We plead with the leaders of IPOB not to precipitate the eventual commercial suicide of the Igbo nation, which is exactly what haters of Igbo nation have always wanted. The week-long sit-at-home will unleash grave consequences that may take two decades to recover. We appeal for greater restraint and urge that the order be withdrawn forthwith,” it stated.

HURIWA described the sit-at-home protest as an agenda designed to cripple the Igbo economy, and not an effective tool to lobby for the release of IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, “whose illegal incarceration amounts to a crime against humanity.”

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