Onitsha traders woke up to rubble. A court had said wait.

At midnight on Saturday, soldiers sealed off Onitsha Main Market.

By Sunday morning, shops along Johnson Street were rubble. Over 10,000 shops had been marked for demolition. Traders who rushed to salvage their goods found security men demanding ₦500 to let them pass. One woman said she'd paid over ₦2 million for her shop less than six months ago, and had just finished renovating it when the demolition notice came.

There was a court order. Justice J.I. Nweze of the Onitsha High Court had directed all parties to maintain the status quopending a substantive hearing fixed for March 16. Traders thought the court order would stop it. They woke up to bulldozers.

Governor Soludo's argument isn't nothing. The market has structures built on drainage channels, on spaces not in the original masterplan. He's not wrong that Onitsha Main Market needs restructuring — it's one of the largest commercial hubs in West Africa, and parts of it are genuinely chaotic. But there's a difference between urban renewal and urban punishment.

The question TNL keeps returning to isn't whether the market needed intervention. It's what it means when a governor uses soldiers to bypass a court injunction. Because if that can happen in Onitsha, with thousands of traders watching and a formal court order in place, it can happen anywhere. The precedent is the point.

Igbo Elders Council has called for a halt. They said it plainly: "Behind every shop are families, children in school, women running households, youths learning trades." The March 16 court hearing is still scheduled. Soludo has not indicated he'll stop.

And this week, Anambra also won the Top Fan Vote at the 2026 Google Maps Platform Awards for digitising its property tax system. International recognition. Genuine governance innovation. The state that builds and the state that bulldozes wearing the same face, in the same week. That's not irony. That's Nigeria.