How IPOB’s sit-at-home order is impoverishing us. Young entrepreneurs in Southeast tell Neusroom

The Ariaria International Market in Aba, Abia State, is an impenetrable market with unending truckloads of sugar cane, beans, watermelon, yam, and tomatoes. These are mostly goods from the Northern part of Nigeria. 

With over 37,000 shops forming a huge cluster of about 90 sessions, Ariaria International Market is often considered the Japan of Africa. Here, animal skins are turned into footwear, and many other finished goods are churned out from local raw materials. 

The market boasts of millions of young men and women learning trades known locally as Igba boi (Igbo apprenticeship), who, after their stipulated years of service, will be settled by their masters by giving them money to establish their own trade.

 

One of the most popular sections of the market, the Aba shoe industry, the biggest in the country, produces approximately one million shoes a day, 48 million pairs in a year and the market size is estimated at ₦120 billion, according to recent research by Business Day. This makes the market one of the biggest and busiest in West Africa. However, on Mondays, the state, not just the market, goes into a total lockdown in compliance with the sit-at-home order declared by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group agitating for the secession of the southeast region from Nigeria. 

With an estimated population of 21 million people in the region forced to stay at home on Mondays, young business owners in the region, who have taken to entrepreneurship due to the rising unemployment in the country, told Neusroom how the order is impacting their enterprises and making life difficult for them.

 

The sit-at-home order came into effect on August 9, 2021, after the Nigerian Government’s extradition of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu in June 2021. According to the group’s media and publicity secretary, Emma Powerful, the sit-at-home is to show solidarity with the separatist leader and protest against his arrest.

It’s been over a year since the order has been effective, and young business owners in the region continue to count losses.

“Have you been to Ariaria?”  Izuchukwu, a 29-year-old fabric dealer in Ariaria who does not want his last name mentioned, asked a Neusroom correspondent.

Izuchukwu has been selling clothing materials popularly called ‘Senator Material’ for over a decade in the market. With a customer base from across Nigeria, he sends clothing materials to his customers across the country through courier service.

Explaining the market’s architecture, Izuchukwu said, “There are different sections for fabrics, finished clothes, footwear of all kinds and a section for making shoes. There’s nothing you can’t find here. Nothing. But on Mondays, the market is always dead.”

In Owerri, the Imo State capital, 66.7km away from Ariaria, Oluchi, a mother of two and a widow, had been suffering losses since the sit-at-home order became effective. Oluchi runs a fruit business to fund the education of her two daughters, one of them is a fresh student at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri.

“Mondays are a sort of weekend for us now. Like today, I did some laundry, and my daughter is preparing soup. We didn’t go to market today.” She told Neusroom over the phone.

“You know I’m a widow, but I swore to put my daughters through higher education. I didn’t go to school, but my daughters must have the life I wasn’t given.” 

But it is not only the perishable goods business that the sit-at-home has affected in the South East. When a Neusroom correspondent visited Douglas, one of the busiest areas in Owerri one Monday morning,  there were no commercial activities going on. The streets were taken over by young boys playing football. 

 

“My mum has stopped going to shop on Mondays. Sales on Mondays are usually very poor, coupled with the risk of being attacked by IPOB members who periodically cause chaos on Mondays to punish the defaulters,” Uchechi, a 24-year-old, who helps her mom manage her clothing business in Owerri, told Neusroom while narrating how the sit-at-home order is affecting her family’s finances.

The Unmeasured impact of the sit at home

In 2021, Ebonyi State Governor David Umahi estimated that the region loses more than N10 billion whenever the sit-at-home order is observed in the region.

 A 2021 survey by SBM Intel showing how residents across the region’s five states admitted the sit-at-home economic impact, revealed that 84% of respondents in Ebonyi State conceded that the order had affected them economically. The figure hovers around 74% for Enugu respondents, while Abia residents are slow to acknowledge the impact of the sit at home, having a percentage less than 43.

It appears that small business owners, though impacted negatively by the sit-at-homes, do not have the metrics to measure their losses.

“You know we just have five days to go to the market. I can’t tell you for sure how the growth has reduced, but yes, it impacted negatively on sales; therefore, finances are also negatively affected,” Uchechi said.

Izu Material believes that while sitting at home on Mondays impacted his business, the nation’s economy, in general, has more devastating effect on his business.

There has also been a ravaging spread of insecurity caused by the separatist movement that has further strained the economy of the region and created fear among the people

Data from the Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker (NST) – a website that tracks violent incidents, revealed that 287 people died within the first five months of 2022 (January 2022- May 2022) as a result of insecurity in the Southeast. The deaths resulted from the activities of the Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB), Eastern Security Network (ESN), armed robbers, kidnappers, unknown gunmen, and security operatives.

In May 2022, gory footage of Linus Audu, a retired Master Warrant Officer, with his partner, Gloria Mathew, being beheaded surfaced online. The couple were reported to be travelling to Nkwerre Local Government Area of Imo state (Gloria’s hometown) to fulfil their marriage rites when they were attacked and killed by unknown gunmen. On July 19, 2022, 14 youths coming back from a traditional wedding were allegedly killed in Awo-Omamma in the Oru East Local Government Area of Imo State by Ebubeagu, the Southeast security outfit established by Governors in the region in 2021.

As fear due to occasional gun battles between the Nigerian security operatives and the unknown gunmen believed to be elements of the Eastern Security Network (ESN) established by Nnamdi Kanu, residents in the region continue to nurse their loss from the sit-at-homes.

 

Oluchi complained about how her family resorts to eating their goods to avoid spoilage because most of the perishable goods will not survive until Tuesday. 

 

The sit-at-home: out of solidarity or out of fear?

It is a sensitive issue. In buses and parks, the people hardly discuss or openly criticise the activities of IPOB.

Although the sit-at-home order has been revoked by the group’s leadership, stating that sit-at-home is to be observed only on days Nnamdi Kanu will appear in court, the fear and threats by a faction of IPOB believed to be inspired by Simon Ekpa, a self-acclaimed Biafra spokesperson, has continued to ground economic activities on Mondays.

Uchechi said that the reason her mother does not go to the market on Mondays is not out of fear but because of the very low patronage recorded on Mondays which is as a result of residents preferring to stay indoors over fear of being attacked.

 

Uchechi said his father, who sells motor parts in Owerri town “will definitely head to the market. He just can’t stay at home for a whole day. On several occasions, we have heard shooting at strategic places in town while he was in the market, and you can imagine the trauma he would be putting us through. Whenever he returns home, he would still complain of poor or no sales since many customers are scared to leave their homes.”

Nigeria has witnessed similar uprisings in other parts of the country which sometimes start as harmless campaigns before becoming difficult to manage. In 2002 when Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf started a political goal of creating an Islamic state, he leveraged the high unemployment in Northern Nigeria to spread his propaganda against police and the corrupt political elites in the region. 13 years after he was killed in 2009, Boko Haram has become one of the world deadliest terrorist groups, responsible for the killing of over 300,000 children. Government and other relevant bodies should, as a matter of urgency, seek various means to end the Monday sit-at-home order in the Southeast and checkmate the activities of IPOB. This will not only save poor and struggling entrepreneurs in the region from unbearable hardship, but will also prevent the total breakdown of order, and loss of lives and property.