01/04/2026
Your Excellency, Governor Peter Mbah,
My heart is heavy as I write this letter to you today, with tears welling up in my eyes for the countless families in Enugu State who are silently suffering under the weight of your administrationâs tax enforcement. We have barely stepped into this new yearâbarely three months inâand already your tax agents are moving from shop to shop like storm troopers, locking up businesses, sealing doors, and crushing the dreams of hardworking men and women who only want to feed their children and stay alive.
Your Excellency, have you walked through our markets lately? The once-bustling streets are now dry, dull, and heartbreakingly empty. Some days, traders open their shops from morning till night and not a single soul buys anything. Not one. People are still struggling to recover from the heavy Christmas spending of Decemberâschool fees are staring them in the face like a mountain they cannot climb, yet your men have come with padlocks and demands before the year has even found its feet. How can this be fair? How can this be just?
We are not rebels. We are not criminals. We are the poor people you were elected to governâthe mothers selling vegetables, the fathers running small provision stores, the young men and women trying to make an honest living. We are already battling outrageous house rent increases, and when we ask our landlords why, they point straight at the governmentâs heavy taxes and say, âWe have to recover what we are paying.â Now you are adding salt to our open wounds by locking our shops in the third month of the year?
Sir, with the deepest respect and the heaviest sorrow in my heart, I beg you in the name of God and the love you have for the people of Enugu: please, extend the tax deadline to at least the sixth month of this year. Give us breathing space. Give us time to sell, time to recover, time to pay our childrenâs school fees, time to eat, and time to hope again. Do not let your government be remembered as the one that killed small businesses before they could even stand.
We are not asking for free money. We are only asking for mercy and understanding. Governor Mbah, these are your peopleâflesh and blood, not just statistics. Our tears are real. Our childrenâs empty stomachs are real. Our locked shops and broken dreams are real.
Please, sir, listen to the cry of the poor. Extend the deadline. Let hope return to Enugu markets.
With a bleeding heart and desperate hope,
A concerned citizen and small business owner in Enugu State
(On behalf of thousands of suffering traders
