The Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah, has cancelled Monday’s sit-at-home order in the state.
Mbah, who stated this at the end of his first meeting with the heads of all the security agencies at the Government House in Enugu on Thursday, lamented that the sit-at-home order had restricted creativity, entrepreneurship, and productivity in the state.
Mbah said: “There is no time to waste. The clock has started ticking on the mandate you gave me and the deliverables I promised.
“A time comes in the lives of a people when they must decide whether they genuinely want to move forward or remain stuck with the conditions of their underdevelopment,” he said.
“If this is what we are known by, then it becomes inconsistent with reality that the spirit of entrepreneurship, commerce and creativity are killed every Monday in our land.
“Our restless spirit of industry abhors laxity and indolence.
“The idea behind sitting at home on Monday, the first working and business day of the week, is abominable and antithetical to greatness and the spirit of the industry we profess to have inherited from our forebears.
“This cannot be us and it does colossal damage to us.
“For us to transit from a public service economy to a private sector-driven one, we must free our markets from the shackles of restriction to commerce.
“If indeed we aspire and anticipate an influx of private sector practitioners and investors in Enugu State, we must know that this will not happen where the perception of us is that of unproductive people.
“Therefore, those that strike on Mondays, putting restrictions in the way of our Igbo spirit of creativity, cannot be our true representatives. In fact, they kill our spirit.
“To this end, therefore, from Monday, June 5, there will be no observance of any sit-at-home in all nooks and crannies of Enugu State.
“The government will enforce this with all the powers at its disposal.
“My charge to all of you – market men and women, the corporate world, industries, schools, civil servants, and all strata of workers in Enugu State is for us to take back our sense of industry, pride of place and re-enact our glorious past.
“I also call on our newly sworn-in president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to consciously work towards the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
“It will also be a pointer to his administration’s extension of brotherly hands of fellowship to Ndigbo.”