By Sam Omatseye
Soludo is primarily an economist, and a brilliant one at that. He deals with market forces. He is steeped in the writings of Adam Smith, Ricardo, Mises of the Austrian school, Friedman and his Chicago school, and Hayek et al. He understands why they would spar with men like John k. Galbraith and Karl Polanyi, who believe that human virtue takes precedence over a wild ride of time and resources.
Well, Governor Chukwuma Soludo, the boom of Anambra orchestra, sounded the alarm to the literal markets of Onitsha. Soludo means follow peace. The name might have come from the words of Paul, who exhorted Timothy “to follow peace with all men…” This time, he warned the market men against the stay-at-home order and its violence to the market, to prosperity. It is an irony that Igboland should be a place where traders shun trading. They are the birthplace of entrepreneurs, if there is any. To rephrase how an American president, Calvin Coolidge, described his fellow citizens, “the chief business of the Igbo people is business.” Yet, we cannot escape the paradox today as traders shunned profit, either for IPOB fear or fidelity. Soludo did not want peace without plenty. He took them on. He forced the market to be free. This is the economic equivalent of philosopher Rouseau’s admonition.
It is a different kind of market forces. It was actually not market forces, but market force. This may be a good subject for PHD thesis, and a how to approach a conflict between a market and belief. Karl Marx would meet a conundrum here. Marx believed that men would choose bread over faith. Jesus was wiser when he warned that man does not live by bread alone but by every word…What it means is that faith supplants matter.
Soludo, however, is making the case for bread in this instance, not against faith but bad faith. And he seems to have prevailed. The market may yet boom.
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected columnist with The Nation
