The senator representing Abia North Senatorial District, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, yesterday, said the persistent insecurity in the South East was limiting the production capacity of the region.
Speaking in an interview with Arise Television, Senator Kalu said the region was facing significant challenges in achieving its full economic potential.
The former governor of Abia State said the region has lost its industrial and entrepreneurial capabilities over insurgency and banditry.
According to Kalu, President Bola Tinubu is working to address the situation but urged the President to release the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu.
He said: “I think President Tinubu is coming there. I mean, Rome was not built in a day. We are just battling with the insurgents in our area, and gradually we are coming up. And as we are coming up, we will now start thinking about the next step.
“Once we calm down the insurgents or banditry and unknown gunmen and all the rest of them, the President and his team and all of us will advise him to open chapter two of the book, which is development.
“Once you have no insurgents, you have no unknown gunmen and you don’t have any disturbances about our people, we will talk about page two of development.
“We have always asked the president, according to law, to find the best way of law to address the issue of South East, both the issue of the IPOB, the issue of everybody, to address this within the context of the law of Nigeria, so that possibly very quickly, Nnamdi Kanu will be released from prison, and then, we will continue to live a better life and produce everything.
“Let me be honest with you. Nigerians are suffering because of the problem we are having in the South East. The South East can produce everything you buy in China. We can make them in Aba, Nnewi and Onitsha.
“Just give us electricity, give us the way that we take, and give us the direction. We will produce everything that you produce in China. The technologies are there, everything, we have it, but we need a better atmosphere.
“We need to clean away properly, in agreement, the street at home, which has cost hundreds of billions of naira out of the South East. We need to bring back the ‘I can do it spirit’.
“We need to sing back ‘Enyimba Enyi.’ We need to go back to what we know how to do. When I was governor, a lot of things were being manufactured in Aba. People have begged Aba people to stop putting made in Paris, made in Spain, made in Brazil.
“They should start putting Made in Aba. We can supply the equipment this country needs from that region of the country. President Tinubu himself knows this because I can tell you twice he slept in Abia when we were governors.
“He slept in Igbere, and he saw it himself, and he respects that. I’m sure once we have a good atmosphere, the president will come back to do the needful in our zone. And I’m praying that both the lawyers of Nnamdi Kanu and the courts, they should speed up and make sure that he’s released according to the law of Nigeria because I’m sure President Tinubu will always live to respect the judiciary.
