By George Omagbemi Sylvester
The closure of Onitsha Main Market is not merely an administrative decision taken in response to a lingering security dilemma. It is a defining moment that exposes the fragile balance between authority and survival, between the state’s obligation to enforce order and its moral duty to protect livelihoods. What is unfolding in Anambra State is a microcosm of a broader African dilemma: how governments respond when insecurity collides with commerce and when policy enforcement risks punishing the very citizens it seeks to protect.
Onitsha Main Market is not an ordinary trading space. It is one of the most important commercial arteries in West Africa, a marketplace whose influence stretches far beyond the banks of the Niger. For generations, it has functioned as a nerve center of distribution, employment and informal finance, sustaining traders, transporters, artisans and families whose survival depends on the daily rhythm of exchange. To shut such a market is to interrupt a living system not merely to lock gates.
Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s decision to close the market followed continued observance of the Monday sit-at-home practice, a phenomenon rooted in fear, coercion and unresolved political tensions in the South-East. The state government has repeatedly declared the practice illegal, arguing that it sabotages economic recovery, weakens investor confidence, and hands victory to non-state actors who thrive on paralysis. From the perspective of authority, the market closure was framed as a corrective measure, a show of resolve against economic intimidation.
Yet governance does not operate in a vacuum of theory. It operates among human beings who must weigh compliance against survival. Traders in Onitsha did not close their shops out of ideological defiance. They did so largely out of fear, shaped by years of violent enforcement of sit-at-home orders by shadowy actors who punish disobedience with destruction and death. To ignore this context is to misread the psychology of a population trapped between official directives and existential risk.
The traders recent public appeal to the governor represents a crucial turning point. Their declaration that they are prepared to abandon the sit-at-home practice entirely is not an act of surrender but a plea for partnership. It is an acknowledgment that prolonged economic shutdown is unsustainable and that the market cannot survive as a battleground for competing authorities. This willingness to reengage commerce openly should be treated not with suspicion, but with strategic empathy.
Economists have long warned that markets are social institutions before they are physical spaces. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen famously argued that economic deprivation is both a cause and a consequence of political instability. When people are stripped of the means to earn, insecurity deepens rather than recedes. Closing a major market in a region already grappling with uncertainty risks amplifying the very conditions that give rise to non-state coercion.
From a development perspective, informal markets like Onitsha are the backbone of employment across Africa. Scholars of political economy consistently note that formal policy tools often fail when they do not account for informal survival systems. Professor Hernando de Soto has written extensively on how the informal economy sustains social order where state capacity is weak. Disrupting such systems without providing viable alternatives is not reform; it is displacement.
Human rights advocates have also raised alarms about the optics and implications of sealing off a market through heavy security presence. While the state has the right to enforce lawful orders, the use of force in economic spaces must be proportional and dialogic. Markets thrive on trust. When traders are treated primarily as suspects rather than stakeholders, that trust erodes and with it, the legitimacy of governance.
The broader implication is reputational. Onitsha Main Market is watched not only by local traders but by regional partners who depend on its supply chains. Prolonged closure sends a signal of instability that no investment summit can easily counter. In an era where African economies compete for capital, predictability is currency. Policy actions that appear punitive rather than corrective risk undermining years of economic diplomacy.
Governor Soludo himself is no stranger to economic theory. As a former central bank governor and respected intellectual, his reputation is built on structural thinking and reformist ambition. This moment, therefore, is not just administrative; it is philosophical. It calls for a synthesis of enforcement and inclusion, of firmness and flexibility. Authority, when exercised without social consent, hardens resistance rather than dissolving it.
The traders’ appeal opens a narrow but vital window for recalibration. Reopening the market under clearly negotiated conditions, supported by visible security guarantees and sustained dialogue, would demonstrate that the state is capable of adaptive leadership. It would signal that compliance is rewarded, not ignored, and that the government recognizes courage when citizens choose productivity over paralysis.
There is also a moral dimension that cannot be ignored. Markets are places where dignity is earned daily. For many traders, the loss of a trading day is the loss of food, medicine, school fees, and rent. Political theorist Hannah Arendt warned that when economic participation is stripped away, citizenship itself becomes hollow. A society that forces its people into idleness through fear or policy failure courts long-term instability.
This is why the call to reopen Onitsha Main Market resonates beyond Anambra State. It is a test case for how African governments confront hybrid threats that blur the line between crime, protest, and insurgency. It challenges leaders to move beyond binary thinking that frames issues as either security or economy, when in truth both are inseparable.
Dialogue is not weakness. It is strategy. The most successful conflict-affected economies rebuild trust by bringing traders, unions, community leaders, and security agencies into a shared framework of accountability. Comparative studies from post-conflict regions consistently show that economic normalization is one of the strongest deterrents to violent relapse.
Ultimately, the market must not be treated as collateral damage in a wider struggle for authority. It must be recognized as a stabilizing force in its own right. When commerce flows, communities breathe. When markets are open, fear loses ground to routine, and routine is the quiet enemy of chaos.
The traders have spoken. They have chosen work over withdrawal, courage over coercion. The question now is whether power will meet them halfway. History is unforgiving to governments that mistake silence for control. But it often rewards those that understand when firmness must yield to wisdom.
Reopening Onitsha Main Market would not signal capitulation. It would signal confidence. Confidence that the state can protect its people, confidence that productivity is stronger than intimidation and confidence that economic life remains the surest foundation for peace.
In the end, the measure of leadership is not how loudly authority is asserted, but how effectively society is kept alive.
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