Danger: We are Destroying South East

By Chuka Nnabuife|ANCISRO

Trending now are tales of bloodletting, grounding businesses and persistent manipulation of facts to the extent that our people cannot decipher facts from sadistic manipulations of information on vital developments. The results are deaths and a populace that leave in fear.

Most worrisome side of development is the disheartening manifestation of the situation. On our streets today, one finds people so rattled and pummeled by persistent danger, anger and sense of uncertainty that our land is fast sliding behind in socio-economic development, as well as losing confidence in themselves.

The self confidence that was almost the general trait of Ndi Igbo has gone. Gradually, a defeatist mindset and a clime inferiority complex is overwhelming Igbo land. Sad and heartbreaking as this is, a bigger harm is what it bodes. A clime of fear and inconfidence can bring the entire South East down in a very short while. Economic activities would die. Social harmony would degenerate to disunity while we ‘headlessly’ and seductively hide under the never-redeeming shadow partisan politics.

Indeed, the consequences are dire and failure to sense the seriousness is a disastrous escapism.

We are already witnesses to the migration of corporations and investors from the South East Zone of Nigeria. Insecurity, unprecedented loss of man hours, increasing lack or total absence of required manpower, poor infrastructure and increasing hostility in the environment of operation have all contributed in killing businesses and sending prospective ones out of the region.

And who would dare blame the exiting? In a business clime where people are willy nilly forced to sit at home every Monday after observing a two-day weekend, what a business has for its use in one week is only four days out of seven. The business owner can only get his or her workers to work for those days. And that is not even sure because one disgruntled fellow can latch on social media or any relatively cheap platform of mass communication and declare more no-work days and get his blood thirsty thugs to enforce it.

Actually, there had been instances when there was a week long, two-week-span no-work order and it was observed. We have already used to having a plethora of unimaginably wicked destruction of vital business facilities and government establishments.

Do we need to be reminded that the criminals who deal these damning blows on our society, who are non-state actors, enjoy free reign because through their violence-marked antics, they have held our zone hostage, got members of our zone to have soft-spots for whatever they claim to be their purpose or ideology. By the aide of their wanton killings and their dastardly operations, they have forced themselves ahead as the defenders of our people. Sadly, a lot of our people believe them, hook, line and sinker without probing the consequences and strategically, projecting deep into the possible implication of such a development in future.

Business thrives on certainty which enables investors and enterprise managers to forecast effectively. Without correct information also, businesses may be hitting the rock while thinking they are navigating the turbulent tide of a harsh economy. Therefore, a zone harbouring a swelling clan of fake news vendors is not putting itself in situation that will favour entrepreneurship. Business is risk taking but plunging into avoidable risks is not in the character of most businesses.

Is it then a surprise that people are leaving our zone to cite their businesses in neighboring states?

Secessionists who serve mayhem in the region on the guise of seeking the manifesting of a new Biafra country are not helping the South East. Similarly, those of them who claim they are doing so to attract attention of the federal government on need to release the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPoB), Maazi Nnamdi Kanu, who is currently behind bars badly hurt the East. But the ones who do more harm are those of us who encourage them or condone them. They embolden the killers, odious propagandists and South East economy’s destroyers. They are the ones who give them illusionary hopes that the land welcomes and accepts them whereas the truth is that the bloods they spill curse them whilst the economy they kill today will ruin them and their supporters tomorrow.

Through out history, no land left in the hands of hoodlums and vagabonds ever does well. The South East is currently on the verge of being taken over by vagabonds. If men and women of good sense and conscience do not rise and resist, our land’s requiem is nigh.

This is the time, all responsible stakeholders (irrespective of political persuasion) should rally together to save Igbo land. We need to let the erring young ones understand that notwithstanding the said vexations, there is no wisdom in bringing crisis into one’s home. No society wins in a war it fights in its home because every destruction will be of its property and peace.

Onye adụlụ ọdụ, malụ! A word is enough for the wise.

• Sir Chuka Nnabuife is the Managing Director of Anambra State Civic and Social Reformation Office, ANCISRO