MAZI EJIMOFOR OPARA
Like Vice President Kashim Shettima remarked at the opening ceremony of the Southeast Development Commission Vision 2050 event, “Gov. Soludo is not normal, he is a man with great penchant for doing the impossible and succeeding at it.”
Factually, Soludo did not end the self-defeating Monday sit-at-home this year. He actually did much earlier just shortly after assuming office in 2022 — at a time no Southeast Leader could dare say a word about the sit-at home scourge for fear of deleterious reprisals.
Like a Marathoner that he is, Soludo understood the importance of his early steps and the place of such consequential proclamation. As a thorough-bred leader and an unblemished Igbo man, Soludo is now recorded in history as that leader who openly and for the first time looked at the rampaging neo-Biafran “secessionists” in the face and declared clearly that the Southeast was under siege by a few who had converted genuine struggle for self determination into a “lucrative criminal enterprise”.
The re-opening of the Onitsha main market, and indeed the Southeast, last Monday for the first time in five years, was just Soludo breasting the tape after a successful marathon that many Southeast leaders could not do beyond the first lap. Soludo stayed true and focused, this last lap left the entire Nation breathless. If Soludo had failed last Monday 2nd February, 2026, the fall would have been of historic proportion. Now that he has succeeded, he is getting his deserved flowers Nationally!