MAZI EJIMOFOR OPARA
If you’ve ever walked through Onitsha Main Market at 8 a.m., you know what I mean. The noise, the movement, the sheer volume of trade happening every minute. Anambra doesn’t just have markets. We live off them. They’re where traders build wealth, where families eat, and where the Southeast’s commercial reputation is made.
That’s why the Anambra State Government’s 2026 Market Law makes sense. By designating 41 major markets as zones of significant economic and security interest, the state is finally treating these hubs like the critical infrastructure they are.
For too long, we’ve pretended that markets can regulate themselves while ignoring the reality on the ground. Fragmented leadership, multiple illegal levies, and constant disputes have made trading more stressful and expensive than it should be. The new law creates a framework to fix that. Clear management structures mean less extortion, faster resolution of conflicts, and better coordination between traders and government. When markets run better, traders keep more of what they earn.
But the most urgent reason for this law is security. Markets have become targets for proscribed groups looking to extort, intimidate, and disrupt. When violence or illegal levies creep into a market, it doesn’t just hurt traders. It shuts down supply chains, scares away customers, and erodes confidence in the state’s ability to protect commerce.
Calling these 41 markets zones of significant interest gives security agencies the legal backing and mandate to act quickly and decisively. It’s not about harassing traders. It’s about removing the space where criminals operate and making sure that a woman selling fabrics in Nnewi or a spare parts dealer in Nkpor can do business without looking over her shoulder.
Some will call this overreach. I call it overdue. Every serious commercial state protects its economic arteries. Ports, airports, and industrial zones are secured everywhere else. In Anambra, the real arteries are our markets. If we want to keep our title as the commercial capital of the Southeast, we have to defend that status with more than rhetoric.
Governor Soludo’s “livable and prosperous homeland” agenda can’t succeed if the places where money circulates daily are unsafe and chaotic. The 2026 Market Law aligns market governance with that vision. It’s about order, predictability, and protecting the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Ndi Anambra.
The law won’t solve every problem overnight. But it gives us a foundation to build safer, better-managed markets that attract more trade, not less. And that’s worth defending.