Former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Charles Chukwuma Soludo was on Thursday sworn-in as the new Anambra State Governor in a low-key event at the state’s capital, Akwa.
Only about 50 people were invited to the swearing-in ceremony.
Soludo took the oath of office alongside his deputy, Onyeka Ibezim at the Government House.
The ceremony was attended by the National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Victor Oye and wife; Speaker of the Anambra State House of Assembly, Uchenna Okafor and wife; Senator Victor Umeh and wife; Bianca Ojukwu, clergymen, traditional rulers, among others.
The newly sworn-in governor told the people of Anambra State that he would deliver on his campaign promises.
He promised to make the state an economic hub and called on indigenes of Anambra to join hands with him to actualise his mandate.
The inauguration followed his resounding victory at the poll held on November 6 and 9, 2021, across the 21 LGAs that make up the state.
Soludo won convincingly in 19 out of 21 local government areas and consequently returned by the returning officer, Florence Obi, as duly elected.
The total number of registered voters in Anambra was 2,466,638 but only 253,388 voters showed up for accreditation. Still, out of the accredited figure, only 249,631 voters persevered to cast their votes.
Amid these odds, the majority of the voters endorsed the renowned Professor of Economics, Charles Soludo, of APGA to succeed Willie Obiano.
Looking at Soludo’s blueprints, right from the campaign, the former CBN governor assured of a paradigm shift, to run an all-inclusive government in Anambra that would usher in robust changes into the polity in a transformational approach.
Expressing confidence in him, President Muhammadu Buhari in his congratulatory message over his victory elatedly looks forward to his cooperation.
The president said, “I look forward to working with you for peace, security, and development of Anambra State and the entire country.”
“Looking at Soludo’s blueprints, right from the campaign, the former CBN governor assured of a paradigm shift, to run an all-inclusive government in Anambra that would usher in robust changes into the polity in a transformational approach”
To walk the talk, Soludo immediately constituted an 80-member transition committee chaired by Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former minister, and prominent Nigerians with stout profiles notwithstanding of state-of-origin as members though on pro bono.
Members included Pat Utomi from Delta State, a professor at Lagos Business School; Alex Otti from Abia State, former managing director of Diamond Bank who through radical innovations took the bank to an enviable height, and Olisa Agbakoba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.
Many wondered why such a long list for a mere transition committee and, with some non-Anambra indigenes.
To assemble experts in various fields as a kind of pre-inauguration symposium strongly pointed to Soludo’s determination to usher in an economic revolution. Understandably, the long list was more or less a leaders’ summit and suggests that the new governor is determined for exploits, and set directions and targets for his administration.
Deductively, Soludo fathoms leadership from previous engagements.
At the inauguration of the transition committee, Soludo gave an insight of his forthcoming administration and profoundly announced that he would work with experts from any place not minding the state-of-origin and reiterated his priority is service-delivery.
Remarkably, he avowed that his administration is not for jamborees, hence, no fanfare during inauguration.
In fact, Soludo proceeded straight to the field immediately after swearing-in for work, and out rightly threw away ‘His Excellency’ title into the abyss and preferred to be addressed as ‘Charlie Nwamgbafor’ or at most Mr. Governor.
By the demonstrated openness, zeal, teamwork, knowing his roots and onions, Soludo realistically is expected to take Anambra to enviable heights and change the face of leadership in Nigeria.
This is the revolution to strive for. As Soludo argues, if capable hands could man various states that make up the country, national growth will be certain.
After a career at the highest levels of academia and technocracy outside Anambra and beyond Nigeria, Soludo will be confronted rather with profound challenges at the retail end of life-and-death significance.
One is insecurity. Anambra, the smallest state in South East Nigeria and the second smallest in Nigeria after Lagos, is nevertheless the epicenter of Igbo enterprise economy.
Second, is a crisis of human ecology. Anambra is losing land to arguably Nigeria’s most rampant crisis of erosion and human survival with over 900 active erosion sites.
Entire villages in places like Nanka have vanished, swallowed by an angry earth, the inhabitants displaced eternally never to return. The Ecological Fund, a federal facility for these kinds of situations, has been dissipated by a tradition of grasping malfeasance.
Reimagining human settlement to precede the deployment of Soludo’s vision of a ‘One-City Mega-State’ will require the skills of a brain surgeon to stop further loss of territory first.
Third, is a crisis of energy. If Anambra is to realise the promise of powering up enterprise within its territory and in adjacent states of South East Nigeria, it will need energy on a scale that is presently absent.
Evacuating power and getting it to the homes of the people and factories in the Nnewi-Idemili corridor will be a challenge. It will not be enough to sell people the promise of solar energy. Apart from being beyond the reach of most, the factories in Nnewi will not power up their production margins on solar.
Soludo is clearly a man whose every career platform has been defined by audacity. An academic of considerable distinction; a serial ideas-preneur and a Professor of Economics since he was 38. Soludo is also the youngest ever governor of the CBN.
As the chief economic adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo before becoming CBN governor, he was the architect of the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, which drove Nigeria’s economy through its most promising growth spurt in the past four decades.
As CBN governor, he engineered an ambitious consolidation of Nigeria’s banking landscape, which “led to a remarkable reduction in the number of banks from 89 to 24 in 2005; changed their mode of operations and their contributions to the nation’s economic development.”
He has seen off murderous political hounds in one of the bloodiest elections in Nigeria’s history. These credentials inform the hopes of Ndi Anambra in the fruitfulness of Soludo’s history of leadership audacity.
All eyes are on Soludo to break the jinx.
