HURIWA Decries Tinubu’s Silence On South East Economic Crisis

A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA), on Monday, described as disturbing, the silence of President Bola Tinubu on the continuous economic haemorrhage in the South-East geopolitical zone occasioned by the heightened situation of insecurity in the five states in the zone as well as the sacrilegious and illegal sit-at-home enforced by some so-called Biafran agitators, especially those led by Finland-based Simon Ekpa.

HURIWA, in a statement by its national coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, urged the president to fulfill his campaign promise to dialogue with agitators including the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), as a way of restoring lasting peace in the country, especially in the South-East geopolitical zone.

The group urged the former governor of Lagos State not to follow the path of his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, who refused to free detained IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, despite an Appeal Court judgement granting freedom to Kanu.

The group asked Tinubu to prove to Nigerians that he is a democrat by respecting the rule of law and the dispensation of justice.  HURIWA implored the president to respect the sanctity of his promise made on November 24, 2022 during the presidential campaign of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State capital.

The then-APC presidential candidate had promised to dialogue with agitators to end the insecurity in the zone.

It lamented that by August 2023, it would have been 730 days since the South-East zone began to observe the weekly sit-at-home exercise as declared by proponents of separatist state of Biafra, to press for the release of Kanu who has been in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS).

According to them, for 730 days now, every Monday, beginning from August 9, 2021, sit-at-home had been consistently observed in the zone, grounding economic activities and causing an estimated loss of N7.6 trillion in productivity, potential investments as well as loss of lives and properties.

While stressing that since the commencement of the exercise in 2021 and this year, 105 Mondays of the 520 working days have been lost in terms of productivity or any real economic activity. Been