Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, says the South-East lost about N4 trillion to the sit-at-home order of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra in the past two years.
Kalu said the order being enforced every Monday across the five states of the region, has strangulated economic growth in the region.
The Deputy Speaker, while delivering a keynote address on Friday at the, “All Markets Conference 2023” with the theme: “Catalysing Partnership with Traders through Innovation, Technology, Analytics & Sustainability” in Lagos, said the situation had driven potential investors out of Igboland.
Kalu, therefore, called for collective efforts by all Igbo sons and daughters to bring the menace to a quick end.
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.”
The lawmaker called for the revival of Igbo apprenticeship system, which he said had produced successful business men and women, stressing that it should not be allowed to go into extinction.
