By Charles Ogbu
The real tragedy of the suspended but still operational Monday Sit-At-Home in the Southeast is that the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the organisation that initiated it has not only suspended it but has equally gone ahead to denounce and issue several threats against the terrorists still k!ll!ng and m@iming innocent Igbos and burning their cars and shops over the same Sit-At-Home.
Yet,
The Enforcers are still not relenting in their acts of terror.
This, here, is the scariest part of this whole thing; the realization that even IPOB appears to have lost control of the STREET.
I mean, from day 1, the Southeast governors were never in charge of even their own govt houses. To be fair, they no longer pretend about this. On Mondays, they hide in their govt houses for obvious reasons. Even their shopping malls, warehouses and filling stations don’t open for business.
The security agencies were never in charge of the Southeast, their modest effort at curbing the current security challenges notwithstanding. Truth is, since after the EndSars protest which criminals hid under to attack and burn police stations and steal their weapons which have been used to wreck havoc on them in recent past, the morale of the security agencies in the Southeast has been hugely depleted. Most police checkpoints are actually deserted on Mondays like say dem too follow dey observe the forced sit-at-home.
So in essence, on Mondays, the Southeast is not controlled by any governor or politician and certainly not by the security agencies nor IPOB whose several threats against the Sit-At-Home enforcers have been resoundingly ignored. Every Monday, the region is firmly in the hands of criminals, bandits and terrorists who can target anyone, burn any shop or car and take any life in the name of enforcing a sit-at-home already suspended by the initiators.
This is now our new normal.
The implication is that in the unlikely event that the Abuja high court decides to give the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu an EXTRA-ORDINARILY speedy trial by fixing the case every work day seeing as he was EXTRA-ORDINARILY renditioned, the entire Southeast will be on lockdown EVERY WORK DAY throughout the duration of the trial.
No student will be able to go to school
No business will be opened
Not even health emergency will be attended to.
And the so called leaders we elected and are paying outrageous salaries and allowances will pretend like it is just a phase. The Security agencies whose primary job is the protection of lives and property will just look on. IPOB, the group that promised us FREEDOM, the group that introduced the Sit-At-Home and its violent enforcement will be unable to do anything. (Giving a cup of water to the M0nkey has never been a problem. Retrieving the cup is where the problem lies) I guess IPOB has now seen that it is far easier to start a fire than it is to quench it.
Quite frankly, Ndigbo need to go inside and summon themselves to a meeting.
Outsiders have done us so much harm but whatever harm we’ve suffered from outsiders pales into insignificance when placed side by side with the unhealable wounds we have inflicted on ourselves. The effect of this current demon we summoned but which we can no longer now dismiss will be felt for generations to come. Eventually, we will see the full impact of the interruption in the academic calendar of our school kids. We will feel the impact of the disruption in our businesses and daily jobs and in no distant time, we will start feeling the impact of the normalisation of crimes and clear acts of terrorism.
A society that has lost its capacity for INTROSPECTION is a society that is headed for Golgotha.
A shame, isn’t it?
