For years, Mondays in the Southeast have been reduced to ghost towns. Streets lie empty, shops remain shut, schools are locked, and the hum of economic life is silenced. The so-called ‘sit-at-home’ order has crippled business, strangled education, and eroded confidence in government’s ability to guarantee normal life.
Yet, in public, leaders insist there is no sit-at-home. Governors say citizens are free to go about their businesses, but their own actions tell a different story. They avoid scheduling important events on Mondays, quietly conceding to the very fear they deny.
Even at the highest level of power, this contradiction is glaring. When late President Muhammadu Buhari visited Imo State in September 2022, it was on a Tuesday, not a Monday. The calculation was obvious: avoid the optics of empty streets and deserted markets that define Southeast Mondays.
By avoiding Monday, the President has, knowingly, reinforced the silent admission that sit-at-home is still real. Leaders dodge Mondays because they fear the photographs of ghostly roads, thin crowds, and absent fanfare. But what they avoid is precisely what true leadership should confront.
Imagine if President Tinubu had chosen Monday. Imagine the symbolism of a President landing in Owerri on a Monday morning, cutting ribbons in front of cheering crowds, walking confidently on streets that have for years been surrendered to silence. That single act could have gone beyond just cutting ribbons to cutting through fears that has for long griped our people, given ordinary citizens the courage to step out, to open their shops, to send their children to school, and to reclaim their Mondays. It would have been remembered as the turning point that broke the psychological chains of fear.
Instead, another opportunity has been lost. Another Monday has been conceded to emptiness. Another chance to restore dignity and courage to a people has slipped away.
Leadership is not only about commissioning flyovers, decorating cities or digital learning centers. It is also about building confidence in the hearts of citizens. If Tinubu truly wants to be remembered as a friend of ndi Igbo, he must move beyond staged ceremonies and confront the deeper realities that keep the Southeast shackled.
The empty streets our leaders avoid are not just empty, they are symbols of a shutdown. And history will not be kind to those who had the power to end it but chose convenience instead.