By Chuks Eke
 Leaders of various markets in Anambra state, particularly within the commercial city of Onitsha have devised some measures to escape Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s hammer against those who close their markets on Mondays in respect with sit-at-home.
Soludo’s had. consistently warned market leaders in the state to stop closing their markets on Mondays to observe sit-at-home, adding that the era of sit-at-home was over because government could not fold it’s arms and allow the citizens lose billions of naira on weekly basis just to observe a meaningless and senseless sit-at-home.
In. Some of the occasions, Solution would summon a meeting of market leaders and threaten to remove any market leader in the state who closed his market any Monday to observe the exercise which he also described as illegal.
Despite complaints from some of the market leaders that some of their colleagues who opened their markets were abducted by unknown gunmen on a Monday like this, including the Chairman of Mgbuka Amazu Old Motor Spare Parts market located along the Onitsha/Owerri road at Onitsha who is yet to return as at the time of filing this report, Soludo was said to have insisted that markets must be opened on Mondays to avoid more colossal loses.
In what appeared to be weighing the options of losing their seats in the hands of the state government or losing their lives in the hands of the unknown gunmen, the market leaders resorted to opening the market gates and leaving them wide open from morning till 5 p.m. on Mondays which is the normal business hours.
A visit to some markets on Monday showed that the gates in such markets like New Auto Spare Parts Market, Nkpor, Ogbaru Main Market in Onitsha and Nkpor Main Market were thrown wide open but there was no single person around to buy or sell anything in these markets.
Reacting to the development, Chairman of Ogbaru Main Market, Chief Ndubuisi Ochiogu told newsmen that apart from opening the market gates, he himself usually stay at the market office till the end of market hours on Mondays, even as he regretted that the abducted Chairmen of Mgbuka Amazu is yet to return and nothing has been done by the appropriate authorities concerned to find out his whereabout till date.
