State loses N8bn weekly from Monday sit-at-home
South-East economy down by N7.6trn due to 4-yrs sit-at-home
Onitsha market’s $5bn trade volume at risk
Ben Eguzozie
Economists and development analysts, while weighing in the one-week closure order of the Onitsha Main Market, recognized as the largest market in West Africa by geographical size and volume, with an estimated annual trade volume exceeding $5 billion. As a major commercial hub, the market features over 40 specialized sub-markets, draws millions of daily visitors, and handles significant international trade. The experts described the closure order by Governor Chukwuma Soludo, himself an economist, as employing a “sledge hammer approach to kill a tsetse fly perched on a scrotal sac”.
Governor Soludo, while ordering the one-week closure of Africa’s largest trading hub by geographical size, emphasised that it is the latest and perhaps most drastic approach to determine who controls time and economic life in south-east Nigeria on Mondays.
However, Maxwell Opara, a lawyer and current affairs analyst, while disagreeing with the governor, described his move as “executive recklessness”.
The governor said, the fear-enforced sit-at-home, which was placed by IPOB in protest of continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, its leader, as a calculated economic sabotage to bring down Onitsha, to bring down Nnewi, to bring down the economy of the state. He said his administration was unyielding in reclaiming the state from what he described as forces of lawlessness and fear.
“We are determined on behalf of the Anambra people. We must take back our state. We are going to take back our state, whatever it costs. We are determined. It’s not yet 100%”.
Elsewhere, Law Mefoh, the state commissioner for information, said, the state was losing N8 billion weekly from the Monday sit-at-home. Other statistics said N19.6 billion, with Onitsha market accounting for over 80 per cent of the loss.
Mefoh said, “The enemy is 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. In spite of repeated assurances of enhanced security and appeals to reclaim public spaces, many traders at the iconic market again chose to keep their stalls locked”.
For Governor Soludo, the traders’ absence was not just a quiet rebellion, but one that spoke volumes about the lingering climate of apprehension, explaining that the government could not stand by while a few individuals willfully undermined public safety and disregarded official directives meant to restore normalcy.
He warned that if the market did not reopen for business after the one-week shutdown, it would be sealed for a month, and so on. “You either decide that you are going to trade here or you go elsewhere. I am very serious about this,” the governor added.
The South-East region with an economy size in excess of N20.04 trillion has suffered multiple economic losses estimated at over N7.6 trillion for four years, due to the enforced Monday sit-at-home orders, severely crippling commercial activities in states like Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi, and Imo. The enforced closure of businesses, markets, and banks, aimed at protesting the detention of the IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, has caused profound damage to the region’s commerce, resulting in 776 deaths and massive capital flight. For example, the region received only 6 per cent of Nigeria’s foreign dorect investment (FDI) between 2020 and 2023, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
