By Chuks Eke
Last Mondays closure of Onitsha main market for a period of one week by Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra state has continued to generate reactions from groups and individuals.
As at the time of filing this report, a visit to the main market showed that it was not only the market that was shut but all the adjoining markets and Plazas and street markets close to it, such as Emeka Offor Plaza where phones and accessories are sold and distributed to other parts of the country and beyond.
The armed security personnel guarding the market and it’s environs, including the army, police, operation Clean and Healthy Anambra, OCHA Brigade, State Anti-Touting Squad, SASA who parked Armoured Tanks Bullet Proof vehicles and then encircled ropes and barriers all round the premises indicating ‘No go area’.
Reacting to the development in a press statement, IPOB lawyer, Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor Esq. said: “my position on the so-called Monday sit-at-home has been unambiguous, consistent, and a matter of public record from the very outset”.
“For the avoidance of doubt, and for the benefit of those who persist in convenient amnesia, the sit-at-home was formally, expressly, and unequivocally cancelled by the global peaceful movement – Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). That cancellation was neither implied nor tentative; it was categorical. From that moment, the directive ceased to exist in law, in logic, and in moral persuasion”.
“What followed thereafter was not civil disobedience, not political protest, and certainly not ideological resistance. What followed was a criminal resurrection of a dead directive, hijacked, grotesquely distorted, and violently enforced by lawless elements, ably led by Simon Ekpa , who thrive not on principle but on fear, extortion, and bloodletting”.
“It bears repeating: this violence is not a continuation of any IPOB policy. It is a parasitic enterprise, feeding off intimidation, coercion, and the deliberate manufacture of terror among innocent citizens. My position has therefore never wavered”.
“I have consistently maintained that the continued “enforcement” of a directive that no longer exists, kept alive solely through threats , rests on no ideological premise, no legal footing, and certainly no moral authority”.
“It is against this backdrop that the decision to shut down the Onitsha Main Market must be interrogated with sobriety, proportionality, and an unflinching fidelity to the rule of law. Collective punishment of traders and law-abiding citizens, who are themselves hostages of fear, cannot, and must not, masquerade as security policy. It is neither strategic nor just”.
“Security governance, if it is to deserve the name, must be precise, intelligence-driven, and squarely targeted at the actual architects and executors of violence. To shutter an entire economic nerve centre in response to criminal threats is to punish productivity while emboldening lawlessness”.
“Any response that collapses the distinction between criminality and commerce risks achieving the perverse: legitimising the tactics of violent actors while penalising innocent enterprise”.
“My position, therefore, remains firmly and irrevocably unchanged:
The Monday sit-at-home enjoys no legitimacy, commands no authority, and possesses no justification whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise”.
A legal practitioner in Onitsha, Chris Ajugwe Esq., in his own reaction, suggested that Governor Soludo’s should have first and foremost, contacted all the non state actors and Biafran agitators, hold a round table with them, grant them amnesty and agree with them on a crate fire.
Ajugwe said with the cease fire agreement reached between the government and the agitators, banks would start opening on Mondays, commercial vehicles would operate in full capacity and followed by opening of the markets as according to him anything short of all these processes is authocratic in nature.
Meantime, traders at the Onitsha Main Market and environs who were sanctioned by having their markets shut down last Monday by Governor Chukwuma Soludo, for observing the Monday sit-at-home exercise, had in a closed door meeting held Tuesdat at Onitsha Main market Secretariat, (White House), resolved to meet with the governor.
The meeting it was gathered was well attended by the executives of the concerned markets and stateholders who expressed optimism that the governor will give them listening ear.
Fielding questions from newsmen shortly after the meeting, the chairman of the market, Chief Chijioke Okpalaugo, said, “A letter has been written, we are going to see him, (governor), and appeal to him for forgiveness.
“We have just finished the meeting now, we appeal to him to consider reopening the markets .We are losing a lot because of the Monday sit-at-home. We, Onitsha market traders resolved to see the governor within the week and plead for forgiveness.
“Soludo is a progressive minded governor and his decision is welcomed because we are losing what we are suppose to be getting because of Monday sit-at-home. He loves his people, his decision is a nice one because he took it at the right time.
“What he means is to push us to stop observing the Monday sit-at-home exercise and he has done that.Some people want to hijack the situation via embarking on illegal protest.
“We urge him to reopen the market before coming Monday. I am not aware of any protest they said was going on against the closure of the markets, they are miscreants.
“Government officials came to us earlier, last Monday and told us to reopen or the markets will be shut, and the governor has shut the Main Market and other adjoining markets,” Okpalaugo stated.
Recall that Soludo while shutting down the markets for one week in the first instance, vowed to shut the markets for one month if the traders fail to comply.
