Soludo and the IPOB ‘Sit-At-Home’ challenge
At a time Nigeria is grappling with daily increasing security challenges across the country, one of such is taking a new dimension with clearly anachronistic and ominous portends. For some time now, the governor of Anambra State, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, had been striving to end the Monday ‘sit-at-home’ order, which was imposed in August 2021 […]
At a time Nigeria is grappling with daily increasing security challenges across the country, one of such is taking a new dimension with clearly anachronistic and ominous portends. For some time now, the governor of Anambra State, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, had been striving to end the Monday ‘sit-at-home’ order, which was imposed in August 2021 and enforced by the now proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) throughout the five states of the South-East geopolitical zone of the country.
The order was imposed by the IPOB in order to apply pressure on the federal government to release their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who was ‘abducted’ in Kenya by Nigerian security agents and flown to Nigeria to face court charges bordering on terrorism and other offences.
Expectedly, the ‘sit-at-home’ order caused widespread disruption of life in the region as it fostered the shutdown of businesses, schools and transportation, with severe impact on the regional economy.
By the order, on every Monday, all businesses in the entire South-East region would shut down, leaving the streets and premises empty and idle. The imposition was justified by the IPOB as a protest against the prolonged detention of their leader, Mazi Kanu, who is currently serving a life jail sentence in Sokoto Correctional Centre due to latter conviction on terrorism charges. Enforcement of compliance was by fear as administered by often armed IPOB, who meted out severe penalties for offenders, including death by gunshots.
Expectedly, a huge and widespread outcry followed the order as most protesters against it argued that it was a suspect, futile gesture of self-immolation to exact concessions from a usually obdurate Nigerian political establishment that would be unmoved, even if the entire South-East region went up in flames. However, the severity of the penalties for non-compliance easily ensured compliance as those who complied did so out of fear of assault from the IPOB enforcers who were a law unto themselves. Meanwhile, courtesy of the order, most people who have businesses in the region confined their visits to the place outside Mondays.
On his part, Soludo had embarked on enforcing the termination of compliance with that order, initially through moral suasion, and later, by resort of coercion by assertive action against the affected business persons. For instance, he recently ordered the closure of the strategic Onitsha Main Market on the grounds that the traders are complying with the sit-at-home-order to the detriment of the economy of the state.
Soludo argued that the compliance with the order was illegal as it construes the existence of a parallel government in the state. Secondly, he claimed to have obtained the assurance of Nnamdi Kanu that the sit-at-home order was no more authorised by the IPOB. Yet, the market operators are unmoved to defy the order in spite of the assurances of safety provided them by his administration.
Eventually, the faceoff between the governor and the traders has degenerated into street protest by slogan-chanting youths in condemnation of Soludo’s stand.
While the governor is striving to break the grip of the compliance with the order by the society, the traders are resisting him out of fear of the lethality of reprisals for defying the order. And they have painful tales of instances of past victims of the IPOB enforcers to cite. Just as well, the Anambra State command of the Nigeria Police along other security agencies is on alert to ensure the security of lives and property in this tense faceoff.
Meanwhile, in several instances, the IPOB leadership, including Kanu himself, had declared its cessation of the sit-at-home order. This development puts up the question of who now drives the enforcement of the sit-at-home order in the South-East region. In the circumstance where nobody comes forth to own the exercise, the contention is to hold responsible, faceless unauthorised assailants who have hijacked the dispensation of sit-at-home order to ply their nefarious enterprise which qualifies as sheer criminality. It is in this respect that Soludo has a point in intervening to rid his state of the nuisance value of these underworld criminals.
Yet, such a battle is not one he will win fighting alone, nor even with a confrontational style. This is due to depth, which the Biafra conundrum had permeated within the Igbo cosmology. For Soludo to make progress in his ordinarily well-intentioned campaign, he needs to appreciate and accommodate the wider political and security connotations associated with terminating compliance with the ‘sit-at-home’ order as its enforcers have the advantage of a reign of fear over the citizenry.
To accentuate the situation fuller, there is the need to visit the comment of the commissioner of police for Anambra State CP Ikioye Orutugu, who pointed out that the duty of the security personnel and by implication Soludo and his government was not to drag the citizens from their homes to open their markets, but to ensure that the streets are safe for whoever comes out for one business or the other.
Soludo needs not be dissuaded in his enterprise to terminate the disturbing syndrome of the sit-at-home order, which for now is seemingly administered by unknown enforcers. In reality, he needs to re-strategise and strive until he secures the buy-in of as many stakeholders as possible in the entire South-East, comprising business and market leaders, traditional rulers, political leaders and community development associations, as well as committees.
These latter-day enforcers of the discredited sit-at-home order are not ghosts but humans whose identities may not be eternally mysterious. But unmasking and caging them require more than Soludo is offering for now.