Highly cerebral, adroitly detailed, he wears prudence like a cloak and though on the surface he looks apolitical, he adeptly strides with professional politicians, Governor of Anambra State, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo has consulted for many global bodies in areas of development and economies. After some attempts at governing Anambra State, he assumed office in March 2022, and insists he is not surprised by any of the obstacles such as insecurity in the State which still threatens to blight his achievements. He has however methodically mapped out and is implementing his programmes without borrowing, even rejecting a World Bank loan. He reels out his plans and projections for leaving a lasting legacy in Anambra State to Obinna Chima, Ahamefula Ogbu and David-Chyddy Eleke. Excerpts:
Can you outline some of your achievements in the last three years?
I have been in office for just two years and 10 months. I must say no surprises, no shocks. No regrets, no disappointments. What we saw is what we expected to see. We saw these challenges before we decided to run for the job. Since we came in, we have been very intentional, deliberate about executing our plans. These plans are put into five major buckets. Call it pillars if you like. The first is security law and order; the second is infrastructure and economic transformation; the third is human capital and social agenda; the fourth is governance and human value system then the fifth is environment. Since we came in over two years and 10 months, we have been deliberate in pursuing them. In the area of security, you may have heard of the Anambra Homeland Security Law, which we are using to restore law and order in the area of security. When we first came in, eight local government areas were in the hands of criminals, so much so that I and some candidates could not go to such areas to campaign. But we have intentionally and systematically dislodged the criminals and made the place safe. The second pillar is infrastructure and economic transformation, and there we have a huge agenda. It has been going on since the last two years and 10 months. On infrastructure, you can go from the basics, like roads, where we have over 700 kilometers of roads awarded and close to 400 kilometers of roads completed. We are constructing an average of 11 kilometers per month and the quality that Anambra has never seen before. They have not seen widespread use of stone base and sub-cement stabilisation and so on to build it to last. Not just that, it is being done, but it is crisscrossing the entire local government areas simultaneously. There is no local government that we don’t have one, two or even three road projects going on or even completed. And as you have that on going, there are many bridges and culverts ongoing and many have been completed. There is also the historic dualisation of major federal highways. Anambra has the second smallest land mass after Lagos, everywhere is getting fully built up quickly, and if we don’t have freeways today, in the next 20 to 30 years, it will be impossible to move around. We have drawn the master plan for our rail, the Anambra rail master is set. We hired the CPCS of Canada to help us with it, and we are now thinking of the combination for financing and how to do the first phase. It is very expensive. But unlike any other state, the number of buildings you may have to bring down, even to do the first phase will be over 6,000. So, we are chewing all of this, but the master plan is ready. The dualisation from here to the boundary with Imo State, almost 40 kilometers through Amawbia here to Agulu, through to Imo and the other from Agulu through to Nnewi, linking Okija and Onitsha-Owerri expressway. We are also doing some major dualisation too. Here in Awka, we are intentional about building Awka into a modern model capital city and one key thing about our infrastructure is that it has to do with erosion control. Anambra is the gully erosion capital of the world, and we have massive erosion control projects, where we have put in tens of billions.