Residents of Enugu, the state capital, have lamented the negative impact of non-state actors’ frequent sit-at-home orders in Nigeria’s South-East geopolitical zone.
They expressed their feelings in interviews on Tuesday in Enugu.
The residents, who include traders, artisans, and legal practitioners, said their various means of subsistence were severely impacted.
Mr. Jude Uwazurike, an Ogbete Market trader, stated that his business was gradually declining by the day due to the market’s frequent closures.
He said: “I sell clothes (abada) at Ogbete Market, and I can say without mincing words that I was doing well in my business before now.
“However, as I speak, I am just managing to survive because this issue of closing shop every Monday and sometimes just ordering people to remain indoors for days is no longer a joke. “
He said that he used to travel to Aba, in Abia, weekly to buy goods but lamented that he rarely travelled these days due to a lack of sales.
“The truth is that after these lockdowns, people tend to be famished, tired, and withdrawn for the rest of the day,”” he said.
Uwazurike appealed to the relevant authorities to do something by either releasing Mazi Nnamdi Kanu or, in the alternative, reorganising the security apparatus in the region.
In the same vein, Mrs. Nnena Okpo, a perishables vendor at the Holy Ghost Market, said her business had nearly collapsed due to sit-at-home.
Okpo stated that she was losing hope in the South East zone unless something was done immediately to change the situation.
“It is no longer funny; the whole thing looked like a joke when it started in 2021, but today you can count a number of businesses that are still standing strong.
“I deal in perishables, apart from the Monday sit-at-home order by IPOB, and now someone stays in Finland and gives a directive for seven days of lockdown, not minding what people go through,” she said.
She said it had been difficult to survive in the business because of its perishable nature.
“I have to eat from the business and watch the rest perish. I see my goods, my money rotting, and there is nothing to do,” Okpo sadly said.
A legal practitioner who did not want his name published also stated that the lockdown in Enugu State and the entire Southeast was having a significant impact on the legal profession.
He claimed that many people believed that only businessmen and women experienced the negative effects of staying home.
“The truth is that we in the legal field, suffer it more. Litigants also suffer as a result of the postponement of cases.
“It may interest you to know that each time there is disruption of activities in the public space, it affects the courts too, even when some cases require urgent attention,” he said.
Emeka Agbo, an intrastate bus driver, also lamented the circumstance and called the ongoing sit-at-home directive dangerous.
“We know that we are fighting a cause, but I think some people are really going too far by impoverishing the people with hunger, ” he said.
According to him, declaring seven days of sit-at-home was inviting hunger into his family.
“I don’t have any other work to do than drive from Obollo-Afor to Enugu and come back, and the management pays me my little commission, which I take to my wife and children.
“But denying me what to eat for seven days is nothing but wickedness,” Agbo said.