IPOB and the future of southeast

Sir: Four years since the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, declared an illegal sit-at-home order in retaliation to the arrest and prosecution of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, the now outlawed organization has held the entire east and their socio-economic and political well-being at the jugular.

Like a child play, the sit-at-home order has ballooned into a fixtual phenomenon, creating embarrassment and diversionary to people’s socio-economic wellness, including education, where schools and universities presently stand the severe threat of calendar derailment. The Nigerian Civil war ended over 50 years ago, but the monumental ripple effects of colossal damages to lives, properties, economies and human psyches, still litter the entire gamut of south-eastern states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo.

Even if members of IPOB were either too young or not actually born during the war, today, they could see the extent of runs and degradations to which the once viable and prosperous patrimonies of their forebears have become, owing to the avoidable war. More than 50 years since the end of the civil war, lots of older Nigerians, not to talk easterners, seem to be scared of anything likely to remind them of the war or any war whatsoever.

Now,  the four years of IPOB Monday sit-at-home is already crippling and making mockery of whatever gains the people have made in their strive to recoop years of loses and dehumanization caused by three years of an unfortunate civil war.

Now, unable to bear it anymore, university students who initially pretended not to see anything wrong in the IPOB sit-at-home order are now crying about the woes the order is inflicting on their studies with the possibility of derailing and truncating their future educational trajectory and development.

IPOB is an outlawed freedom fighters but their hold on the whole southeast in the past four years has become a great burden. It behoves the governors of the five states of southeast to unite with a view to finding a lasting solutions to the IPOB menace and excesses now fast becoming the nemesis of a whole race to guarantee their people peace and tranquillity, being their inalienable rights as a citizen of Nigeria.

The former Biafran war lord, late Odemegwu Ojukwu, the Ikemba of Nkewi, not only regretted the Nigerian civil war, but also admitted that the Igbos, his own people, do not need a second war. IPOB order is like a war that is self-inflicted and now ravaging and erupting like an active volcano. Nnamdi Kanu would invariably be released, but will the east be able to regain and recall their untold loses these past four years?

A stitch in time saves nine.  

•Sunday Olagunju,

Ibadan, Oyo State.