Separatist agitators, politicians who benefit from their divisive politics and others filled with a permanent sense of grievance against other Nigerians and the Nigerian state, have been up in arms against Governor Charles Soludo. He ordered the closure of the main market in Onitsha for an additional one week after traders in the market observed the IPOB-imposed Monday sit-at-home order this week.

He has promised to extend the closure for one month should the economic boycott continue beyond next week. Those opposed to the governor have been hurling insults at him for taking steps to restore civil order in Anambra State. Not even his family has been spared from the attacks. Soludo’s son, Ozonna, has been placed on a table and dissected by the same people outraged by the subjection of Peter Obi’s son to social and political scrutiny a few months ago. 

It’s been a difficult time for governors and other state officials in the South-East to persuade their people to stop observing illegal sit-at-home directives that started as part of actions meant for the actualisation of a separate state of Biafra. It would have been a different thing if the effect of the sit-at-home orders was limited to restricting movements at particular time of the week and within a specific timeline. But this is not the case. The restriction has been indefinite and even worse comes with crippling economic consequences that have rendered the South-East economically prostrate. For a governor who has a state to run and an electoral mandate to fulfil, Charles Soludo can’t just sit back to watch. His mandate was only renewed in November 2025. He can’t fold his hands and do nothing. When all is said and done, the same people criticizing him will be the first to call attention to his failure to provide the so-called dividends of democracy to his people. 

According to the Anambra State government, the state loses about N8 billion every Monday the market is shut. No responsible government would allow this. Soludo, like his counterparts in other states of the South-East, has pleaded with their people to go back to work. There’s obviously no desire on the part of the market administrators to heed the governor’s advice. Beyond any fear of reprisals from IPOB and other fringe elements, there is an obvious attempt at playing politics by those concerned. They can spin the narrative in whatever direction they will, the long and short of the matter is that the governor cannot cede civil authority to non-state actors. Calling Governor Soludo names won’t make right what is wrong about the approach being taken by IPOB agitators and their obedient sympathizers. They are often the same groups of people, anyway, where Igbo politics is concerned. 

Normalcy is returning to the South-East. That is the truth that those vending trauma and outrage will never admit. To concede this basic fact is for them to admit that their strategy of promoting disorder has failed. Yet, the evidence is there before everyone not willfully blind to it. We see it in the number of South-Easterners that spent the December holidays in their region. The refusal of some of them to ditch IPOB’s sit-at-home orders is not just a matter of fear. It is a determination to ensure that the region is permanently tethered to the narrative of trauma and marginalisation that is fast losing relevance.  Even if there are still some criminal elements lurking in the shadows and waiting to wreak havoc should the traders return to the market, how would we know if the traders won’t try to open for business at all. 

Surely, a state government asking and now demanding, that traders return to the market won’t be saying so without already putting in place measures designed to ensure the security of the people. At a time like this when people are still skeptical if IPOB has been totally eliminated or not (although nobody can deny that the incarceration of both Nnamdi Kanu and Simon Ekpa has brought relative peace to the South-East), the least the state could do is to reassure the people by providing visible and adequate security that their lives are secured. Of what effect would such measures be if no one would heed the call to normalise things? What can the governor do other than to wield the big stick if traders feel more inclined to obey the orders of outlaw characters than ease the pressure they have been put under by anarchists bent on imposing their will on the majority? Like it or not, those tormenting the South-East are in the minority. 

Why is the case of Anambra and, indeed, Onitsha so different that people would rather stay at home than go out to earn a living on perhaps the most economically vibrant day of the week? Is it in solidarity for someone they would rather we don’t name? Things are easing up elsewhere in the South-East, why is the case of Anambra different? Why are some people bent on giving Charles Soludo and the government he leads a bad name in order to shame it? He was only recently re-elected into office by an emphatic mandate. He crushed the other party, the LP, that until lately pretends it runs the South-East even to the very ward of its putative leader and, for the noise makers, poster child of South-East politics, the ever-dissembling Mr. Peter Obi. Soludo silenced Obi and all but ran LP out of town before Obi jumped ship. Which is to say that he is very popular among his people. Why are hurdles being thrown on his path in Anambra? What more should he do to prove he is up to the task of governing his state beyond the divisive rhetoric of critics who never see anything good in all he does? 

Of course, he is a ‘sabo’, going by the logic of their bigoted politicking. He has not been playing the Klan’s man politics that many of his critics were weaned on. That doesn’t do much for their narrative of pain, marginalisation and collective trauma, both real and manufactured. It is not only that he is not a fan of their favourite politician, he applauds the economic policies of the present government and obviously supports the administration without having to abandon his party and by so doing give oxygen to the argument of those who cannot build their party but have nightmares about other people leaving their own party to form an APC-led one-party state. It is about time the South-East, its leaders or those who also have a say in the governance of that region, stand to be counted rather than leave the field to disgruntled figures, mere politicians and closet separatists, pretending to be statesmen.