IPOB: S/East loses over N30billion any day the region is shutdown for activities for Sit-At-Home – Dr. Anarado
A development expert, Dr. Chigozie Anarado, says southeast loses over N30billion any Monday the zone is shut down for activities.
According to Dr. Anarado, while the economies of other geopolitical zones are growing, that of southeast is being decimated as a result of the sit-at-home.
He said both the public and private sectors record huge losess every Monday the southeast zone was shut down.
The scholar reiterated that, should the trajectory be left to fester for too long, the ripple effect would be destructive, which ultimately could lead to job losses, leading to more restiveness and insecurity which in turn will further destroy the zone the more.
“Anyday South-East observes the sit-at-home on Monday, or any other day as it’s often the case, we loose a lot of things. The incremental addition we would have had on the economy of the zone would be lost, and it has been quantified to be in the range of N30billion on every Monday that we sit-at-home.”
“These monies are not just government money. This is aggregation of both public and private sector finances that should have come out as the economic productivity of the region.”
“First of all, the economy does not grow at the rate it supposed to grow, and if the economy is not growing, mind you, population will not stop growing, and if the economy is not growing at the rate above the population growth, there’s bound to be a lot of problem.”
“Instead of having an expanding economy that will take care of those who are coming out of school and those who are ready to work, you will be looking at an economy that would be shedding the workforce thereby putting more people into unemployment and you know the implication of that.”
Dr. Anarado, further highlighted other sectors the zone incur losses.
“We incur losses in the educational sector because people who go to school are not able to go to school on that day.”
“We incur losses in the fact that, because we loose money on Monday, the economy is no longer growing at the rate at which it supposed to grow and it would worsen the gap between the economic growth and population growth. The result is that, unemployment will increase.
“The unemployment will result in restiveness and insecurity because there are bulge of persons that would be looking for work. Apart from those we’ve not employed, those who already have jobs are at risks and could certainly lose their jobs because organisations are not keeping up to their revenue and budget targets.”Dr. Anarado stated.
He went further to observe that as a resilient people, if the situation was reversed, and the people go back to work, while leaders with imaginative, visionary, and revolutionary mindset were elected, the zone had the potential to rule the country economically.
Dr. Anarado went further to appealed to the agitators to look for more objective and progressive method to go about the struggle, emphasizing that shutting down the zone for socio-economic activities is an obsolete form of agitation and detrimental to the growth of the region.
Corroborating the views of Doctor Anarodo, a youth advocate and school administrator, Mr. Chukwuma Ephraim Okenwa, explained that the sit-at-home had a cumulative impact on the education sector, and the economy of the region especially those that depended on daily sales for survival.
“If the sit-at-home is allowed to continue, certainly that would mean more cumulative impact which would be destructive.”
“You’re talking about almost a collapse of 20 percent of the curriculum, collapse of 20 percent of the economic potential of the zone and this is happening in a time where the nation’s economy is struggling at all tiers of government.”
“So, that will increase the struggle and almost making the economy of the southeast helpless, thus the idea could be said to be ill advised.” Okenwa said.
Mr. Okenwa, called on members of IPOB to look for more constructive strategy, without destroying what the region recovered after the civil war.
Recall that the leadership of the Indeginous People of Biafra, (IPOB) had repeatedly announced that it had cancelled the alleged sit-at-home directive, however, some yet-to-be-identified persons had continually enforced the order.