Waking up on a Monday morning over the past five years has been a nerve-racking experience for many of us who live in the South East. I have known that familiar compulsion to remain locked indoors in obedience to the decree of Biafra activists, no matter how important or profitable the day’s itinerary might be.
The sit-at-home order and its many embarrassments have given government authorities sleepless nights as they grope for ways to bring it to an end. Gov. Charles Soludo of Anambra State once directed churches to hold prayers to mark the end of the sit-at-home on Monday, April 4, 2022, adding this to the amnesty he offered gunmen early in his administration. His optimism shone through a tweet in which he announced that following the unanimous agreement of leaders across board and the entire body of Christ, “Monday April 4 would mark the official end of the sit at home in Anambra State.”
Last Monday, January 26, the Anambra governor’s frustration blew open when he visited Onitsha market and found it a ghost town. Instantly, he ordered the market shut down until next Monday when he would return on another inspection. If it is still not opened on that day, according to him, it remains shut down again for one week. This came barely two days after he had ordered the pay of errant civil servants slashed should they be absent from work on any Monday. He calls it pay on pro rata basis.
Closely related to Soludo’s action was the measure taken earlier, just within the same period, by Hon. Pastor Chris Mbarie, chairman of Orlu Local Government Area in Imo State, a hotbed of the agitation. Mbarie constituted a task force to compel market leaders, business owners, traders, filling stations, supermarkets and other commercial operators to resume operations on Mondays. Refusal to open, according to reports, would attract sanctions, including the sealing of closed stalls and filling stations.
The puzzle is that despite such spirited efforts by these authorities in the region to stop it, we remain stuck with the evil. It means something is not right with the approach. Somehow, Soludo and Mbarie misfired in this brazen show of arrogance in power. If economy gets ruined by one day of shutdown, what help is there in shutting down for one week? The matter is not one to be handled by force. Granted that government can discipline its own staff who fail to show up for work on Mondays, it is anomalous to compel private business owners to open shop or close it. To open or not to open is the exclusive prerogative of every business owner. When a shop remains closed, the owner bears the loss, not the government. So why apply force?
Such threats and mindless closure of the markets are unhealthy for a population whose psyche is already brutalized, especially as government had become indifferent to their concern about security in those days. Certainly, they do not enjoy the sit-at-home. It feels to the people like a transition from the trauma of unknown gunmen to another ordeal in the hands of a known government. Nigerians are not rats to be herded in and out of their holes at the whim of officials or at the caprices of non-state actors.
Yes, the persistence of the problem has made it necessary to redirect people away from staying off the streets and markets on Mondays. But must it be by force? It appears those in government have forgotten the basics of public relations, where persuasion achieves far more than brute force. What if incentives were offered to businesses that open on Mondays instead of punishment for those that remain closed? What if promotions awaited public servants who showed diligence on those days? It is time government learned to deploy soft power in government dealings with the citizenry. In a while so long, the citizens have always had the stick and never the carrot from the governments that play god at all times.
In the past failed efforts of government at stopping the Monday freeze on activities, I see a struggle for supremacy between the government and the agitators, each testing power by gauging the people’s loyalty – to government or to the non-state actors? The shutting down of the market arbitrarily is a gross violation of the fundamental human rights and could be counted as terrorism. Government ought not to compete with the activists in acts of terror on the citizenry.
Our leaders should recognize the fear element and the self-preservation instinct propelling the people to seem to be obeying the agitators more. When the battle was at its peak, the people got the least protection from government and the authorities never thought of compensations for the families that lost their loved ones who went about their normal duties on those forbidden Mondays.`
They should also take cognizance that the people had, in the heat of the problem, reordered their itineraries to fit the times. For instance, some traders had chosen to ignore their spiritual obligation to do nothing but worship on Sundays and displayed their wares on that day of the Lord. Then, rest and contemplate on the ill-fated Monday. It might take some time to redirect them from this path.
The growing impunity in public administration has gone so far that citizens now feel trepidation whenever government officials clear their throats. Democracy is said to be perfected when government fears the people. When the reverse is the case, repression has displaced democracy.
My position should not be mistaken for an attempt to downplay the need to end the Monday sit-at-home, which has taken a heavy toll on business, education, health and social life. What began on August 9, 2021, as a peaceful protest against the extraordinary rendition of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu from Kenya quickly snowballed into lethal confrontations over the years. Armed factions joined in, as did criminals who used the IPOB canopy to mask robbery and kidnapping. By 2023, estimates showed that about N5.375 trillion had been lost to weekly shutdowns of markets, transportation and banks. The economy was badly crippled, livelihoods destroyed, education disrupted and investment discouraged.
Lives were lost. Particularly painful was the killing of a cleric in Orlu for conducting exams on a Monday. Policemen were gunned down. Prisons were attacked and hardened criminals set free. Fear gripped the region, leaving many with no option but to stay home in order to stay alive. Reversing such deeply internalised fear will require a planned and sustained campaign, one that relies on the carrot, not the stick.
For all its excesses, the agitation drew international attention to long standing grievances in Nigeria’s politics. While it did not secure Kanu’s release, it ensured that the international community now watches Nigeria’s judicial system and its entire political system closely, weighing the quality of justice and fairness they deliver.
At the outset, IPOB claimed to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence and passive resistance. It is my wish that the struggle returns to that state, never to veer off course anymore.
To governments eager to end the Monday sit at home once and for all, I say go ahead. Just do not leave citizens trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea. It’s time for the South East to pick up the pieces and mend what has been broken.
Dr Odu can be reached via [email protected], or SMS 07016722929
