Chaos, fear, and anxiety ruled the streets of Enugu between the hours of eight and eleven, yesterday.
Weirdly dressed men, all wielding guns of various types, had stormed parts of Abakpa, GRA, Coal Camp, New Market and old Park, shouting and threatening to kill if people did not run away to observed the Simon-Ekpa declared week-long lockdown.
Eye witness accounts at Abakpa said that most traders at the community market had just settled down for the business of the day when, suddenly, the gun men clad in black trousers and vests, covered with red flowing gowns, appeared from nowhere and started firing guns in various directions.
They were said to be screaming, “You no hear say sit-at-home dey…what are you doing here?”, and fired their smoking guns in the air, while some aimed at objects on the ground.
Another observer said that the moment their presence was registered, traders and their customers scampered in various directions, screaming and pleading to be spared. Others said that they had left within 20 minutes of their arrival, but had left in their trails destroyed market wares, farm produces and limping men and women who had suffered fracture in the ensuing melee.
Bystanders, mostly street traders, commuters and traders had scampered for safety. The panic was so intense that travelers were jumping from moving vehicles to wherever they considered safe.
Since yesterday, some video clips had been circulating, where the same kind of ruthless enforcement of the sit-at-homeby members of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, (IPOB), in Ebonyi State had taken place.
Recently, the newly inaugurated government of Enugu State had expressed its displeasure at the continuing of the now two-year old sit-at-home exercises and demanded that it be stopped.
The government had followed this with the directives for people to go about their normal activities in total disregard to the orders of the Finland based Simon Ekpa and his cohorts. It assured the people that it had taken the necessary measures to ensure the safety of all.
