YPP Stalwart, Okagbue declares Soludo’s closure of market over sit-at-home appropriate

By Kenechukwu Ofomah

The deputy governorship candidate of the Young Peoples Party, YPP, in the November 8 2025 Governorship election in Anambra State, Mr Uzuegbunam Okagbue has leaned his weight behind Anambra State Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo over the one-week closure of the Onitsha Main Market and the adjoining markets for flouting his directive to end Monday sit-at-home in the state.

Soludo had on Monday, announced that the market will be closed for an initial one week, after he observed, during a visit, that the market was still observing the Monday sit-at-home despite his repeated plea for them to open shop.

Some quarters have condemned the governor’s directive as being too harsh, insisting that it will inflict more pain on the already suffering masses of Ndi Anambra.

But, in an exclusive chat with the News Chronicle correspondent in Awka, Okagbue observed that the continued insistence on the Monday sit-at-home in Anambra State has moved beyond protest, beyond symbolism, and beyond reason.

According to him, what remained was “an empty, self-inflicted paralysis, an exercise in economic self-harm sustained by habit, fear, and intellectual laziness.”
Okagbue said Soludo’s decisive action against the sit-at-home deserves not just commendation, but emphatic support, noting that by keeping the affected market closed until next Monday, the Governor has drawn a firm line between legitimate civic expression and outright economic sabotage.

“This is not an emotional response; it is a calculated governance decision rooted in logic, history, and an understanding of how economies actually function.

“Let us be honest, if only for a moment: what exactly is the sit-at-home achieving? No concessions secured. No coherent demands met. No strategic leverage gained. Year after year, the same script; markets shuttered, streets emptied, fear recycled, while the supposed beneficiaries grow poorer and the state bleeds revenue.

“To call this sacrifice is generous, and to call it strategy is dishonest,” he said.
Okagbue, who served as deputy Chief of Staff to former Anambra State Governor, Chief Willie Obiano observed that leadership requires the courage to say what others will not, insisting that the state cannot repeatedly shut down its own economy and expect progress.
According to him, it is foolhardy, for the Southeast region to voluntarily switch itself off one day every week while its peers surge ahead.

“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; that is regression.

“There was a time when this argument would have sounded absurd. Over 40% of imported goods into Nigeria once passed through Onitsha, feeding markets across the federation and beyond; Lagos, 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.

“Those few traders who still choose to participate in this charade must understand that the world has moved on, and so has the Anambra State Government.

“Prof. Soludo has made it clear that governance will no longer indulge economic hostage-taking cloaked in sentiment.

“By temporarily shutting markets to enforce discipline, the government is saying, in plain terms: if you will not protect the collective economy, the state will.

“This is what leadership looks like when it refuses to be bullied by incoherence. Leadership is not about indulging every loud position. It is about defending the silent majority whose livelihoods are destroyed by these Monday shutdowns; the transporters, apprentices, artisans, daily traders, and families who pay the real price for this nonsense,” he said.
Okagbue posited that the sit-at-home has become a retrogressive ritual with no destination.

He continued, “It answers no urgent question, advances no credible cause, and solves no real problem. Its only measurable outcome is economic loss; weekly, predictable, and cumulative.
Prof. Soludo’s action is therefore not just justified; it is overdue. It signals a reset, that Anambra will be governed as a serious economic entity, not as a theatre for performative disruption.

“The message is unambiguous, that economic sabotage, whatever language it hides behind, is no longer acceptable in Anambra State.

“This is not tyranny. This is not insensitivity. This is leadership reclaiming reason from ritual, and Ndi Anambra will be better for it.”
PIC DESCRIPT
Former Anambra YPP Dep Gov’ship Candidate, Mr Okagbue