Sit-at-Home: Soludo’s Closure of Onitsha Main Market for One Week Justified — Ex-YPP gubernatorial candidate

Former Anambra State YPP Deputy Governorship Candidate, Mr. Uzuegbunam Okagbue

By Kenechukwu Ofomah
Awka

The Deputy Governorship Candidate of the Young Peoples Party (YPP) in the November 8, 2025 Anambra State governorship election, Mr. Uzuegbunam Okagbue, has described the decision of Governor Chukwuma Soludo to close the Onitsha Main Market and adjoining markets for one week as a welcome and necessary intervention.
Governor Soludo had on Monday ordered the closure of the markets after observing, during an on-the-spot assessment, that traders continued to observe the Monday sit-at-home despite repeated appeals by the state government to resume normal commercial activities.
The directive has attracted criticism from some quarters, who argue that the closure is excessively harsh and would compound the hardship already faced by Ndi Anambra. However, Okagbue dismissed such concerns, insisting that the persistence of the sit-at-home has long transcended protest, symbolism, or rational dissent.
According to him, the practice has degenerated into “an empty, self-inflicted paralysis an exercise in economic self-harm sustained by fear, habit, and intellectual laziness.”
Okagbue argued that Governor Soludo’s action deserves not only commendation but firm public support, noting that the one-week closure represents a clear boundary between legitimate civic expression and outright economic sabotage.
“This is not an emotional or impulsive reaction,” “It is a calculated governance decision grounded in logic, historical awareness, and a realistic understanding of how economies function.
“Let us be honest: what exactly has the sit-at-home achieved? No concessions have been secured. No coherent demands have been met. No strategic leverage has been gained. Instead, year after year, the same script plays out—markets shut, streets deserted, fear recycled—while the supposed beneficiaries grow poorer and the state hemorrhages revenue.
“To call this sacrifice is generous. To call it strategy is dishonest.”he said.
The former Deputy Chief of Staff to ex-Governor Willie Obiano maintained that true leadership requires the courage to articulate uncomfortable truths, stressing that Anambra State cannot repeatedly shut down its own economy and still expect sustainable development.

He described it as foolhardy for the South-East to voluntarily “switch itself off” one day every week while other regions aggressively pursue economic growth.
“Nigeria’s GDP grows on Mondays. Lagos thrives on Mondays. Kano hums on Mondays. Yet Anambra—once the commercial nerve centre of the country—is expected to applaud its own immobilisation as ideological purity. That is not resistance; it is regression.
“There was a time when such an argument would have sounded absurd. Over 40 percent of imported goods into Nigeria once passed through Onitsha, supplying markets across the federation, Cameroon, and multiple West African trade routes. Mondays were not days of silence; they were days of scale. Onitsha was not a ghost town—it was a logistical engine.
“To deliberately suffocate such a system on a weekly basis is not principled. It is reckless.” he said.
Okagbue warned that traders who continue to comply with the sit-at-home must recognise that both the political and economic realities have changed.
“The world has moved on, and so has the Anambra State Government. Professor Soludo has made it clear that governance will no longer indulge economic hostage-taking disguised as sentiment.
“By temporarily shutting the markets to enforce discipline, the government is stating plainly: if individuals will not protect the collective economy, the state will.”Okagbue said.
He insisted that the governor’s decision exemplifies leadership that refuses to yield to incoherence or intimidation.
“Leadership is not about indulging every loud position. It is about defending the silent majority—transporters, apprentices, artisans, daily traders, and families—whose livelihoods are destroyed by these Monday shutdowns.” he added.
According to Okagbue the sit-at-home has become a retrogressive ritual devoid of purpose or destination.
“It answers no urgent question, advances no credible cause, and solves no real problem. Its only measurable outcome is predictable and cumulative economic loss.
“Governor Soludo’s action is therefore not just justified; it is overdue. It signals a reset—Anambra will be governed as a serious economic entity, not as a theatre for performative disruption.
“The message is unambiguous: economic sabotage, regardless of the language it hides behind, will no longer be tolerated in Anambra State.
“This is not tyranny. This is not insensitivity. It is leadership reclaiming reason from ritual—and Ndi Anambra will be better for it.”Okagbue added.