Consolidated Ebonyi Quarry Owners Association, has shot down its operation following the arrest of the chairman, Chief Chikaodiri Ojimba.
Ojemba was said to have been arrested on Saturday by police on instruction of agent company over his refusal to remit government money into a private account .
When Blueprint visited the quarry site in Ezillo in Ishielu local government area of the state on Wednesday, one Mr. Mbam Sunday noted that the owners of businesses there were not ready to function until their chairman is release unhurt.
According to him, their interest is to support Governor Francis Nwifuru, achieve his heart desires of lifting the state out poverty and as such, will not allow any individual to defraud the state of it’s generated revenue from the mining site.
Also, Mr. Emeka Nwodom, who also frown at the unlawful arrest and detention of their chairman by the Agent company ,called on Ebonyi State Governor, to intervene and facilitate the release of their chairman that was unlawful arrested.
“Quarry is a solid mineral in the exclusive list of federal government and as such, we cannot accept any imposition of Agents.
“Our chairman called us for a meeting and there we resolved that we shall not by any means, pay our money to any individual account but Government account only, so that our government will get exactly amount of money generated from the mining site but regrettably, on Saturday , we heard that our chairman was arrested by the Agent company that has been forcing themselves on us maybe because it is owned by a highly place person in the South east, they want to intimidate us.
” I want to assure this people to be ready to arrest more because we from Ebonyi are ready to sacrifice everything to see our State money is not transferred to anyone personal account.
” As you can see, we are not operating today because we don’t know the way about of chairman if he is alive or not and we shall not operate until we see our chairman ” he said
However ,efforts to reach the agent company allegedly owned by an Anambra business mugul, Arthur Eze, was not fruitful.
Not being able to contact the state Commissioner of Solid Mineral, the Special Assistant to Governor on solid mineral Chief David Ajah, urged the quarry dealers to be calm promising that Governor Francis Nwifuru will attend to their problem.
“Whoever that arrested their chairman will release him because our Governor is not a crisis Governor. I want to urge them to embrace peaceful dialogue to settle the crisis than shutting down the business operation which will affect economy of the state”.
