Small businesses carry the weight of Nigerian separatist blockades | Business and Economics

Lagos, Nigeria – For the past three months, Newman Nwankwo has heard friends, relatives and others in southeastern Nigeria every Monday, and for a few weeks at least on another day, complaining of a general disruption in life as a result of an order to sit in a house announced and enforced by separatists. in the region.

“Sitting at home is a pain,” Nwankwok told Al Jazeera.

The 34-year-old businessman runs a small chain of Point-of-Sale (POS) terminal operators operating as an informal bank across Onitsha, arguably the largest nerve center in Nigeria outside Lagos.

Everyone, including himself, is feeling the bite of being ordered to stay home, he said. “Onitsha is highly dependent on its market activities [so] everyone loses money every Monday, from the government to the tomato sellers. ”

Since July, the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), which has been agitating for the secession of an southeastern part of the Igbo ethnic group, has issued sit-in orders to people across the region. The restrictions were imposed after Kenya brought home the charismatic leader of the Nnamdi Kanu group to stand trial for seven federal lawsuits, including terrorism and treason.

Like Nwankwo, many residents of the region say the blockades are now having a serious economic impact on them. A survey of the region’s geopolitical consulting firm SBM Intelligence, based in Lagos, found that two-thirds of those surveyed were severely affected by their productivity as a result of the cuts. Of those surveyed who said their productivity remains the same, half were students and teachers who were at home for school holidays.

That was in August. In late October, Anambra Governor Willie Obiano announced that schools would be open on Saturdays to complete the usual business stop on Mondays. Charles Soludo, the state’s elected governor and former head of Nigeria’s central bank, said the state loses approximately 19.6 billion Nigerian naira ($ 47.70 million) in blockades every day. In Ebonyi, the governor was more conservative, putting the figure at 10 billion Nigerian naira ($ 24.34 million) in losses.

I don’t know how sustainable this is

small business owner in Enugu

In August, IPOB said it suspended orders to sit at home, even though stores were forcibly closed and goods burned or confiscated. However, many still comply, fearing retribution from the group, which has repeatedly denied violence to its members.

For weeks, the streets were empty and on Sunday evenings there were traffic jams to Kogi and Delta, two states bordering the region, on major roads. In a financial environment marked by high inflation, the fortunes of many have only worsened.

On September 6, unknown gunmen, allegedly members of the IPOB, killed a businessman and his apprentices in Ebonyi state. On the same day, a trailer with spare parts for motorcycles was razed outside the university town of Nsukka in Enugu state.

While the group canceled a week-long sit-in order at its home last month, the break was designed to force a boycott of government elections. Only 10 of the 2.5 million registered voters in Anambra state turned out to vote.

Bubble on the surface

Onitsha is one of the two markets in the region that are located among the largest foreign markets in West Africa. It is also a direct exit from a growing manufacturing cluster in the nearby town of Nnewi.

Together, the Onitsha and Abiriba markets account for two-thirds of what was undoubtedly the largest distribution network for films in Nigeria and pop music in Nigeria for decades. Abiriba is also responsible for the export of leather products to other places such as West Africa and Equatorial Guinea.

Neighbors said the relative entrepreneurial success is not due to federal government policy, but nonetheless.

This sentiment, along with claims that the people have been politically and economically marginalized, have fueled Kanu’s rhetoric at the head of the IPOB campaign to separate the region as a state breach in Biafra.

The idea of ​​Biafran was born almost six decades ago. After a pogrom against people of Igbo origin in northern Nigeria, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the military governor of eastern Nigeria, removed the Igbo region from the country. It lasted for 30 months, and by the end of the war in 1970, more than a million people had died.

For many years, there was talk of secession until 1999 when democracy returned to Nigeria. Since then, Kanu has peaked on the national stage about 10 years ago and the region is once again on the verge of increasingly violent unrest.

Kanu’s clumsiness and rhetoric have led to frequent clashes with the government and his followers over and over again in arrests. He also spent two years in custody before being released on bail, and is on trial after being extradited from Kenya in June. In 2017, an order from a Nigerian federal court banned the group as a “terrorist organization”.

“Self-inflicted pain”

Cheta Nwanze, a senior partner at SBM Intelligence, told Al Jazeera that IPOB is increasingly “losing support as a result of an order to sit in a self-immolating home.” He said the fear of the group’s paramilitary wing – more of a secessionist flair – seems to ensure compliance with the order to stay at home, and residents of the region said the group was inadvertently doing the kind of economic damage it was complaining about. against.

A small business owner in Enugu, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, said the order to stay at home may come from valid complaints to the Nigerian federal government, but in the end they are harming the wrong people.

“It’s all self-inflicted pain,” he said. “I don’t know how durable it is because it has led to a lot of uncertainty. A lot of compliance is due to uncertainty. The complaints we all have in Nigeria today are legitimate but this [action] it doesn’t affect people [in government] you have complaints. ‘