This Is Not Professorial Leadership: Forcing an End to Sit-at-Home While Traders Remain Unsafe Is Reckless Governance

 This Is Not Professorial Leadership: Forcing an End to Sit-at-Home While Traders Remain Unsafe Is Reckless Governance

By Daniel Nduka Okonkwo

Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s decision to shut the Onitsha Main Market for one week is economically equivalent to more than one month of sit-at-home losses, given that the enforced shutdown effectively mirrors the estimated impact of one lost trading day per week. Rather than resolving the crisis, this action has deepened it. A market closure of this magnitude further deprives Anambra State of vital revenue and denies traders and families financial inflows running into billions of naira.

As a professor and public intellectual, such an approach does not befit Governor Soludo’s academic standing. As a leader, it reflects a crude, coercive, and outdated method inconsistent with modern governance, dialogue-driven leadership, and human-centred economic management. The consequences of this action have been severe.

The result has been catastrophic. Conservative estimates place economic losses arising from sit-at-home disruptions at over ₦5.4 trillion, a staggering figure for a region powered largely by small and medium-scale traders whose daily earnings determine survival. Even more troubling is the human cost. Residents live in constant fear, aware that defying sit-at-home orders in the past has resulted in violent attacks and loss of life. This reality has entrenched a culture of compliance driven not by ideology or loyalty, but by self-preservation.

The Igbo business ethic, often described as a powerful mix of grit, communal solidarity, and calculated risk-taking, remains one of the strongest pillars of Nigeria’s formal and informal economy. It is a culture founded on self-reliance and the deeply held belief that “no one should leave their shop closed.” Within this worldview, business is not merely commerce; it is dignity, survival, and collective progress, sustained only within a secure environment.

Yet across Anambra State and the wider Southeast, this entrepreneurial spirit has been held hostage, either by fear or by sympathy with the plight of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.

For over three years, the Monday sit-at-home order has strangled economic life in the region. Markets, banks, schools, and transport systems routinely shut down, not necessarily out of political conviction, but out of fear. What began in August 2021 as a protest by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), demanding the release of their detained leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has morphed into a ghostly, fear-enforced mandate imposed by non-state actors.

The economic and social toll has been devastating. Businesses hemorrhage income weekly, workers lose wages, students miss school, and transport networks grind to a halt. More critically, the persistent threat of violence has created a self-reinforcing cycle of fear, where traders comply simply to stay alive.

Governor Soludo’s recent order closing the Onitsha Main Market for one week, reportedly due to traders’ continued observance of sit-at-home, raises serious questions about priorities. The governor justified the action as a drastic move to determine “who controls time and economic life in Southeast Nigeria on Mondays.” While the assertion of state authority is understandable, the method fundamentally misunderstands the problem.

The real adversary is fear, long-standing, weaponised fear that thrives where trust is absent, dialogue is minimal, and security assurances remain unconvincing. Traders are not challenging government authority; they are reacting to a lived reality in which security promises feel abstract, while threats are immediate and personal. No trader willingly closes their shop every Monday, risking insolvency, unless the alternative appears far more dangerous.

At the heart of this crisis are unresolved issue the persistent perception of inadequate security across the Southeast. These are compounded by the widespread belief that Southeast governors have failed to demonstrate sufficient collective resolve, either through sustained engagement with federal authorities or through rebuilding public confidence in regional security structures.

In moments like this, leadership demands empathy before enforcement. What traders expect from the government is not punishment, but protection. Dialogue with market leaders, transport unions, and community stakeholders must precede sanctions. Security must be visible, credible, and sustained, not symbolic or episodic. Until traders are genuinely convinced that their lives and property are protected, official directives to “open markets” will continue to clash with the brutal logic of survival.

Governor Soludo’s economic vision for Anambra State is widely acknowledged. However, economic revival cannot be decreed in an atmosphere of fear. Commerce thrives on confidence, and confidence cannot exist where lives are perpetually at risk. The sit-at-home crisis is not merely an economic challenge; it is fundamentally a human security issue.

If Anambra State is to reclaim its historic commercial vibrancy, the path forward must prioritise the safety of traders over the optics of control. Ending sit-at-home through force, without first dismantling the fear that sustains it, risks deepening mistrust and prolonging the very crisis it seeks to resolve.

In the Southeast, business is life.

Protecting that life must come first.

Daniel Nduka Okonkwo is a seasoned writer, human rights advocate, and public affairs analyst renowned for his incisive commentary on governance, justice, and social equity. Through Profiles International Human Rights Advocate, he champions accountability, transparency, and institutional reform in Nigeria and beyond.

With over 1,000 published articles indexed on Google, his work has appeared on Sahara Reporters and other leading international media platforms. He is also an accomplished transcriptionist, petition writer, ghostwriter, and freelance journalist, widely recognised for his precision, persuasive communication, and unwavering commitment to human rights.

📧 Contact: dan.okonkwo.73@gmail.com

Signed:

Daniel Nduka Okonkwo