Anxiety As IPOB Declares Monday, Feb 2 As Sit-At-Home All Across Southeast

The South East states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo are gripped by renewed fear for the safety of life and property following a call by the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) for a sit-at-home protest across the region tomorrow.

The group branded it Biafra-wide solidarity lockdown to show support for Onitsha traders in the aftermath of the closure of the city’s main market for one week by Anambra State Governor Charles Soludo.

The planned sit-at-home is also meant to press for the release of leader of IPOB Nnamdi Kanu from jail.

In a swift reaction to the IPOB statement yesterday, lead counsel for the group, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, asked South-East residents to completely ignore the strike.

He called it fake and fraudulent.

Governor Soludo ordered the market shut for one week last Monday following the traders’ continued compliance with the IPOB sit-at-home directive.

He expressed disappointment that the traders chose to obey “the long-standing, fear-enforced Monday sit-at-home order; a ghostly mandate from non-state actors that has strangled businesses and normalised weekly Monday sit-at-home for years.”

He described his closure order as the latest and perhaps most drastic approach to determine who controls time and economic life in Southeast Nigeria on Mondays.

Soludo said government would not stand by while a few individuals willfully undermined public safety and disregarded official directives meant to restore normalcy.

He said if the market did not reopen for business after the one-week shutdown, it would be sealed for a month.

On Friday, the governor, accompanied by some of his commissioners, undertook another visit to the market to map out areas for remodeling in the complex.

The market, according to him, has lost much of its functionality owning to years of unplanned development and the crippling effects of the Monday sit-at-home.

“The Onitsha Main Market, in its current state, is no longer functional. We have done the study. The main market is no longer what it was designed to be. It has literally died,” he said.

Soludo recalled that in the late 1970s, the market operated with wide streets, organised stalls and ample parking space, allowing smooth movement of trucks and shoppers—conditions he said no longer exist.

He said persistent adherence to the Monday sit-at-home order has “further worsened the situation with billions of naira lost weekly and customers diverted to neighbouring states.”

“Leadership requires taking inconvenient steps to secure the future. The closure of the market is a corrective measure to reclaim the state’s economic life,” he said.

“This remodeling aligns with our manifesto to build planned and sustainable markets, communities and cities. Leadership beckons us to take these difficult but necessary steps.”

He told the traders that he would be back there tomorrow to supervise resumption of business.

Chairman of the Onitsha Main Market, Chief Chijioke Okpalaugo, said the traders were in tune with the government’s vision, but appealed for a brief grace period to secure their goods.

“After careful consideration of the proposals presented by the state government, we, the leadership and traders of Onitsha Main Market, have chosen Option 2 (remodeling and stop sit-at-home) as the preferred path forward,” he said.

However, IPOB did not take kindly to the governor’s action in shutting the market.

It said the market closure amounted to economic strangulation of the Igbo and called for a “Biafra-wide solidarity strike” tomorrow.

It said: “This total shutdown is a direct, peaceful and unified response to the tyrannical actions of Governor Soludo, who shut down the Onitsha Main Market and threatened further closures, demolitions and revocation of land ownership.

“Soludo’s war on Onitsha traders is a war on all Biafrans. Touch one, touch all.”

It asked traders, public transport operators, banks, schools, civil servants and residents across the region to observe the  peaceful “solidarity lockdown.”

The group said the sit-at-home was a voluntary act of civil disobedience and warned that Soludo’s actions could provoke wider resistance.