By Kamsi Anayo
Christmas and New year holiday makers, travellers and visitors to Anambra state, who wanted to embark on journeys on Monday, obeyed the weekly controversial sit-at-home exercise, and postponed their travel to Tuesday to avoid unexpected embarrassment from street urchins and miscreants.
The roads and streets were deserted particularly in Nnewi, Ekwulobia, Ndiowu, Onitsha metropolis and environs sequel to the sit-at-home exercise.
Reacting on the sit-at-home, in his Nteje country home Monday, the National President of a human rights organization “Human Dignity Restoration Association (HDRA), Rev. Jude Achebe, said sit-at-home has become an ill wind that blows nobody good, adding that it has to be stopped.
He condemned the hardship and attack being meted out to innocent Igbo citizens and non Igbos, lamenting that criminals capitalized on the situation to maim, assault, and rob.
“Our people are not happy and because we are grieved, that is why we agitate, why must we shoot ourselves by this sit-at-home that causes economic hardship to us,” he stated.
He called for the election of a President that will listen to the cries of the aggrieved agitators in the next general election for peaceful co-existence.
The rights advocate stressed the need for synergy between the government, security operatives and the people to help beef up security.
Meanwhile, the pupils and students who went home for the first term holidays would instead resume classes on Tuesday.
Also Banks and major markets in the state were as usual shutdown for businesses to avoid crisis over the sit-at-home which has held south east region in captivity for months now, even when the state governments in the region had urged the people not to obey the unpopular order.