• Scores administration high after three years in office
Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State has urged Ndi Anambra and the entire Igbo to return to the tribe’s cherished culture of hard work as a means to honest wealth creation.
Soludo, who spoke on Saturday in Lagos during the presentation of his three-year scorecard as governor, said Anambra people “must go back to the first principles of hard work, enterprise and integrity by which they are known” to regain what they have lost.
The governor noted that Ndi Anambra and the entire Igbo are known for painstaking and enduring business life, which yields wealth over time, rather than sudden wealth without good work.
He insisted that the Anambra people could not continue to dominate the areas of commerce with the new philosophy and ideology that was fast enveloping their homeland.
Citing the Igbo entrepreneurship scheme, which incubates business skills and capital, Soludo explained that “it is a unique business model in which someone happily trains his future competitors and afterwards empowers them on graduation by setting up the same business for them.”
However, he regretted that Anambra youth have now abandoned that culture for sudden wealth through cybercrime, known in local parlance as yahoo yahoo, ritual wealth and kidnap-for-ransom, while people from other states are taking over the apprenticeship scheme.
On the economic sphere, he assured that Anambra, under his leadership, will prudently manage its resources with its “doing more with less” mantra while positioning the state for future growth and advancement.
He disclosed that the government spent 65 per cent of what was spent in 2013 in the past three years and has refused to borrow since inception. According to him, the state government has also been reducing the inherited debt.
Explaining why he rejected the recent World Bank loan of about N44 billion, Soludo said the facility failed his two criteria for taking a loan: “It has to be concessional, and it has to be project finance.”
As part of an effort toward making the Anambra attractive, Soludo listed his administration’s remarkable projects in view, among which is the ambitious Sky Train project.
He said, “The first bit of it linking the Onitsha-Nnewi-Ekwulobia-Awka axis costs about $1.4 billion. The comprehensive feasibility study is completed, and some funding arrangements are being looked into.
However, he explained that because it affects a fully built-up area, about 6,000 houses will have to be demolished. He further disclosed that part of the master plan is that all Trunk ‘A’ roads in the state are being gazetted and dualised because “in the next 50 years, that place is estimated to be home to about 38 million people.”
He urged Ndi Anambra to come in by way of investments, adding that the government was also working on a Free Economic Trade status to the industrial city, for which relevant approvals were already being received.
The governor listed his landmark achievements in the past three years, including the restoration of peace and security in the land through the establishment of Agunechemba security and the launch of Operation Udo ga chi, alongside other related security improvement initiatives.
Among the road infrastructure and urban renewal projects are the Okpoko Road, an award and flag-off of 700-kilometre roads in 21 council areas, with 410 kilometres of it set for commissioning by the third anniversary.
There are also erosion control projects covering Ebenator, Nnobi, Ezi-Oko, Awka, Onitsha-Owerri Road in the Oba axis, as well as the Ozubulu axis of the Onitsha-Owerri Road.
Others include the new Government House Complex, five hospitals in Anambra North Senatorial District, five urban water schemes at Awka, Otuocha, Nnewi, Obizi and Greater Onitsha, and facilitation of the establishment of a 1.4 million-capacity/year private electricity meter manufacturing plant in Oraifite, among other achievements.