Travellers across the South-East states who were returning to their various destinations after the Yuletide celebration were on Monday stranded and unable to make return journeys as the roads and motor parks were deserted because of the Monday sit-at-home order declared by the Indigenous People of Biafra.
Most of them who had wanted to embark on their return journey had to sit back, thereby postponing their travels to Tuesday as economic and commercial activities did not hold.
Our correspondent who visited the major cities of Onitsha, Nnewi, Ekwulobia and some parts of Awka, in Anambra State, observed that markets, motor parks, petrol stations, banks and offices remained shut. Schools did not also open for academic activities.
The Second Niger Bridge which had witnessed an appreciable increase in vehicular movements on a daily basis, since the opening of the lane for Westbound traffic, was also quiet as motorists avoided the place.
The ever-bubbling Onitsha motor parks and environs remained quiet and devoid of activities which the area is noted for.
A traveller, identified as Chioma Daniel, who came to Onitsha park, hoping to get a vehicle to Lagos, expressed surprise that there were no vehicles available at the parks.
Daniel said, “Our people started sitting at home again at the beginning of 2023. I did not know that this sit-at-home is serious like this. I came to the park hoping to get a vehicle going to Lagos as work has resumed, but the parks are under lock and key. I will have to go home and come back tomorrow.
“This is absolutely senseless, our people should realise that this is a destructive exercise that is causing economic hardship to us. It does not do the region any good. Inasmuch as the state government had pleaded that people should ignore the sit-at-home, they have refused to listen.”
Also reacting on the development, which seemed to worsen on Monday, the National President of a human rights group, Human Dignity Restoration Association, Rev. Jude Achebe, said sit-at-home has become an ill wind that blows nobody any good, which has to be stopped immediately.
Achebe decried the hardship and attack being meted out to innocent indigenes and non-indigenes, lamenting that criminals have capitalised on the situation to maim, assault, and rob.
He called for an election of a President that will listen to the cries of the Igbo and other agitators from other tribes in the coming general election for peaceful co-existence.
The rights advocate stressed the need for synergy between the government security operatives and the people to help beef up security with a view to tackling the sit-at-home.
“Our people are not happy and because we are grieved, that is why we agitate, why must we shoot ourselves by this sit-at-home that causes economic hardship to us,” he said.
