The Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, on Saturday expressed worry over insecurity challenges in South East, describing it as tragedy while revealing that the sit-at-home order, which has almost paralysed the South-East economically was never ordered by leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu.
Abaribe, who stated this in Enugu on Saturday while speaking during the investiture of the 16th President of Enugu Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (ECCIMA), Barr. Jasper Nduagwuike, on Saturday called on Ndigbo to concentrate on making the Southeast as the economic hub of Nigeria, irrespective of the outcome of their 2023 presidential quest.
He also lamented the negative effect of Mondays sit-at-home on the economy of the region, saying rather than achieving anything good, the exercise had ended up driving businessmen away from the region.
“We want to turn the Southeast into the Catalonia of Spain, the biggest industrial area in that country. It doesn’t matter that they are seeking for their own self-sufficiency.
“They still become the industrial hub of that place so that at the end, even if you are going anywhere, you are going to become a viable country.
“If you destroy your place, where are you going to be when everything is destroyed.
“We want to turn the Southeast into the Bavaria of Nigeria. Bavaria is the industrial hub of Germany today. No Bavarian has been made president of Germany because they are the people that are holding the economy.
He said that the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, told him while in detention that he neither ordered, nor knew about the Monday sit-at-home which had continued to be observed in the Southeast.