Ebonyi Condemns IPOB’s Sit-at-home Order

Ebonyi Condemns IPOB’s Sit-at-home Order

Ugo Aliogo

Ebonyi State Government has explained that what appears as a total compliance with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) sit-at-home order by South-easterners is more out of fear of attack by IPOB operatives.

Giving the clarification in Lagos recently, the Commissioner for Information, Barr. Uchenna Orji, who condemned the order by IPOB describing it as illegal and costly to the economy of the region, said government would continue through advocacy to establish confidence in the people to go about their legitimate business without fear of molestation or attack.

“I must say that our people must understand that the sit-at-home order is not giving us any help, even in all the issues that we are raising that is not the way to go, because it is sabotage to economic, social life and it is also illegitimate in all its ramifications.

“In Ebonyi State, people go about their businesses, except that out of fear, some people will not open their business places. We have been on advocacies and sensitization to let them know that they have to come out to do their business without hindrance and security is up and doing in ensuring that they are not molested and victims of violent attacks,” Orji stated.

He said: “We are taking the advocacy to our people especially those carrying out these violent attacks to let them know that we are undoing ourselves, and not Mr. President or the Governor, when we take arms to destroy ourselves and public and private property, and we are going to be ultimately affected.”

He regretted that despite the assurances from government, “the people don’t obey government directive that they should come out and do their business, instead they comply with people that will kill them, so it is an act of fear from the people in a bid to run away from danger, not an act of compliance from the state government.”

Speaking on the recent decision by the state government to cancel all existing Certificate of Occupancy (CoO) Orji said: “We have had a lot of cases, fraudulent issues over the sale of land, issues of CoO. What happened was that the officials of the Ministry of Land, who had left office continued to issue CoO to revalidate people’s land without having any government authority and that has brought conflicts between individuals.

He said the cases were so bad that “sometimes there will be two persons laying claims to one particular land. Again, the issue of neglecting the developmental masterpiece of the state reared its ugly head. So government feels that by this new initiative of issuing or revalidating all CoOs, that it will take care of some these issues and it will generate revenues to the state, then it will give a clean CoO that nobody can fault.”

He said with the new initiate, “We had to automate the process such that once you are captured no other person can come and lay claim to that land. We believe that through this process, fraudsters will be detected, those who have been issuing CoO fraudulently and despite the methods that they are using to issue the CoO, I can assure you that nobody will game the system this time around. I think this is what gave rise to the government action on cancellation of the CoO.

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