“Until the government governs and agitators stop weaponizing poverty, sit-at-home will continue to expose the South-East’s deepest leadership failures”
If authority were measured by obedience, then Monday morning in Onitsha Main Market delivered a brutal verdict on Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s administration: the state is still not in charge.
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Despite Soludo’s repeated declarations that the era of Monday sit-at-home is over, traders once again responded with hesitation, fear, and selective courage. A few shops opened. Many stayed shut. And in that partial compliance lies a damning indictment of both the government and the shadowy architects of an economic siege masquerading as resistance.
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Let us be clear: Governor Soludo has talked more than he has governed on this issue.
For months, he has issued ultimatums, press statements, and moral lectures about economic revival. Yet, when Monday comes, his authority evaporates at the gates of Onitsha Main Market. What traders see is not power, but paperwork. Not protection, but pronouncements. A governor who cannot guarantee security in the largest market in West Africa has no business pretending that sit-at-home has ended.
Commanding people to open shops without first dismantling the machinery of fear is not leadership—it is abdication. It is asking market women and apprentices to become martyrs for a state that refuses to show up decisively.
But if Soludo’s failure is rooted in weakness, then the sit-at-home architects are guilty of something far worse: economic vandalism and moral fraud.
Whatever legitimacy the sit-at-home once claimed has long expired. What remains is a hollow ritual enforced through intimidation, rumor, and terror—one that bleeds the South-East dry every single Monday. A “protest” that shuts down poor traders while its enforcers remain faceless, untouched, and well-fed is not a struggle for justice. It is exploitation.
Who exactly is being punished here?
Not Abuja. Not the political elite. Not the powerful interests allegedly being resisted. It is the roadside trader, the spare-parts dealer, the apprentice whose future is already fragile. A movement that claims to defend a people while systematically destroying their means of survival has crossed from resistance into economic cruelty.
The irony is savage: the same region crying marginalization is actively marginalizing itself—week after week, year after year.
Onitsha Main Market’s half-open shutters symbolize a region caught between two failures: a government that refuses to assert real authority, and agitators who thrive on fear but offer no pathway forward. Traders are not confused; they are trapped. And they are paying the price for the cowardice of leaders on both sides.
If Governor Soludo is serious, then symbolism must give way to forceful governance: visible security, sustained presence, arrests, prosecutions, and an unambiguous demonstration that the monopoly of violence belongs to the state—not to anonymous WhatsApp voice notes.
And if the sit-at-home merchants of fear still possess any conscience, they must answer a simple question: how much more poverty must the South-East endure in the name of an idea that has delivered nothing but suffering?
Until one side finds the courage to end this farce decisively, Mondays in the South-East will remain a day when governance collapses, fear triumphs, and hunger tightens its grip.
Editor’s Note
Partial compliance is not progress. It is proof that Anambra State is still negotiating authority with fear. Until the government governs and agitators stop weaponizing poverty, sit-at-home will continue to expose the South-East’s deepest leadership failures.
✒️ — The Nation’s Eyes Newspaper
