*Enugu Ban on Sit-at-home: Why Sealing of Noncompliant Business Premises is Corrective and not Punitive* 

By Ohayi Ugwueze

The government of Enugu State has taken measures to put paid to the illegal sit-at-home order by non-state actors and the debilitating socioeconomic circumstances it had engendered prior to its cancellation. It did appear the people had caved in to the whims of the enforcers of the sit-at-home order, and so allowed it to take a toll on themselves. It was like everyone had accepted the ugly fate of being terrorized by Simon Ekpa and his fellow bloodhounds who killed and maimed the people simply because they came out to eke a living. It was one terrible situation which the administration of Peter Ndubuisi Mbah of Enugu State would not accept.

Ad 

The essence of government is to maintain peace and order. No democracy thrives on anarchy. A situation where someone whom the people did not give their mandate order them about, and send vampires to spill their blood in order to obtain compliance to illegality is no longer acceptable in Enugu State. Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah is ready and committed to the restoration and maintenance of peace, progress and development in Enugu State. 

 The people of Enugu State gave Peter Ndubuisi Mbah the mandate to govern them, to lead them, to act on their behalf. By implication, the right to excessive power of governance is vested on him, and that is the legitimacy he enjoys. Governor Mbah in all intent and purpose thinks good for the people of Enugu State. His governance policy thrust on exponential economic growth and poverty eradication are emblems of good thoughts for the people. Mbah is passionate about making Enugu State the first choice of investment destination. His governing philosophy is to make Enugu one of the three states in Nigeria in terms of Gross Domestic Product, and achieve zero percent rate in poverty headcount index, leveraging transparency, traceability, accountability by also engaging disruptive innovation with a view to achieve optimal performance, while also engaging participatory monitoring and evaluation. 

Ad 

For a government with this value proposition, sit-at-home is apparently a cog in the wheel. Governor Mbah would naturally not waste time nipping it in the bud. That done, he engaged the people in a townhall meeting where all agreed the cancellation was in the interest of the people of the state. The townhall raised a 12-point communique in support of the ban of sit-at-home. Governor Mbah went on to engage traditional rulers and town union presidents-general on separate occasions where they all saw eye to eye with the ban on sit-at-home. The governor would go round the city to impress it on the people the whys and wherefores of the ban. He would visit major malls, banks and markets, monitoring the level of compliance and communicating to the people the need to buy into the project. The state government would issue many conciliatory press statements, appealing to the people with assurance of adequate security on ground to protect them.

Adamant as ever, out of unfounded fear, some would lock shops on Monday in the name of compliance with the sit-at-home order. Whose order would you obey: the order from your governor who holds your mandate or the one from some fugitive in foreign land whose intentions are self-serving, mercantile and murderous? The state government had sounded conciliatory to the people, and so would have to enforce the order in the interest of peace and economic wellbeing of the people. 

Ad 

The sealing of the shops of defaulters is commendable of Enugu State Government. It is not about the infringement on individual rights as some anti-establishment folks tagged it. Neither is it a punitive measure. It is rather the enforcement of law and order in the state. Locked shops on Monday in obedience to the order of non-state actors is a sign of anarchy. We must draw a line between freedom and anarchy. It is anarchical of anyone who abets illegality by the legitimatization of terror. Every locked shops on Monday is a sign of terror, a sign of insecurity, a scare to investors and a damage to the life and economy of the state. Anarchy is the absence of government. How would it sound that a vagabond, issuing orders from Finland overran Enugu State under Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah's watch? God forbid! And we also forbid.

The sealing of noncompliant business premises and shops is the binding of the wounds Ekpa and his vampires inflicted on the state. It is the pulling out of Enugu State from the dungeon, the restoration of the people, the beauty for ashes, the oil of gladness for the spirit of heaviness, a deterrent to the cowardly grounding of the state in compliance to illegality called sit-at-home. Sealed shops are corrective; they are not punitive.