Soludo’s emergency laurel

Festus Adedayo

 

The governor of Anambra State, Chukwuma Soludo, is currently earning his epaulettes the wrong way. Surrounded by accolades and garlands, I wonder if he realizes that the honorific hung around him is second fiddle?

Recently, Soludo stormed the Onitsha Main Market. In his characteristic guttural voice, he articulated his government’s resolve to stop the Monday Sit At Home. August 8, 2021, when it began, the Sit At Home met me in my Upper Chime apartment in Enugu, Enugu State. It was one of the craziest things I had ever seen. The fear of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) which decreed it as protest for the incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu was the beginning of wisdom. Even goats and hens feared to walk the streets on Mondays.

However, months morphed into years and the craziness of the exercise became very glaring to even the blind. This weekly lockdown began to take its toll on the economy of a people known all over the world for their commerce and industry. It resulted in widespread disruption of academic activities, transportation and businesses. Choosing Mondays, a sacred business opening day, was a further testament that it forebode evil. It was almost like desecrating the Eke market day in Igboland. Market days are associated with creation, trade and commerce, as well as renewal in Igbo cosmology. One of the four market days in the Igbo traditional calendar, the Eke is the Diokpara Ubochi – the first born – of the other market days which are the  Orie, Afọ, Nkwọ. Choosing that day as the day to idle away was almost like sacrificing a first son. On the Eke sacred day, an Igbo connects with his Chi – personality.

So, for five good years, the Igbo could not connect with their personality. Unfortunately, the man who was in the saddle when the Sit At Home was declared, Muhammadu Buhari, was too deaf to the humanity of the southeast and its people to bother about the self-destruction that underlined it. He had earlier called them a dot in a circle. Economies of Ndigbo thereafter stagnated, leading to businesses relocating to neighbouring Delta State where there existed greater sanity.

But, thank God, reason prevailed and IPOB itself announced its cancelation recently. However, the aim of this piece is to remove the emergency medallion Soludo seems to be wearing. If it also removes from his shoulders the patent for the epaulettes of a supposed bravery of stopping the Sit At Home malady that adorn his shoulders, I will be glad.

About three years ago, I was again in the Coal City. My visit coincided with Enugu State government’s resolve to stop the Monday Sit At Home. As articulated in a broadcast to his people, Dr. Peter Mbah, the governor, said it was an anathema. At this time, Simon Ekpa was like a mascot, enjoyed widespread notoriety and it was almost a self-immolation for any southeast leader to think up the idea of stopping the Monday nonsense. Not only did Mbah breast the death tape, his bravery to dare the dreaded IPOB rebounded round the region.

Coming from the corporate world and being a businessman, Mbah told the world that what he had in mind for Enugu State’s economy could never be achieved by an atmosphere enveloped by fear of attacks from non-state actors. In partnership with the National Security echelon in Nigeria, the very first day he began the Operation No To Sit At Home was acrid in the state. There were pushbacks from Ekpa and his notorious cells of evil. Death threats for the governor and his lieutenants hovered in the firmament. Mbah was resolute and determined. Civil servants immediately complied. Corporate organizations connected to his decisive grits and in less than a month, the seemingly impregnable walls of the anti-development Sit At Home collapsed in Enugu State.

I’m writing this because, answering to Nigerians’ selective and short memory, Soludo must be the new kid on the block who patented this bravery. Mbah patented the rout. Already, Soludo is being garlanded for this “unusual bravery”. The truth is that, long before Soludo woke up to the destructive virus parceled for the Southeast by its internal enemies, one man rose like a matador to stomp on the vermin. To its death. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah is his name.