In the year 2020, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo chaired a committee tagged the Anambra Vision 2070, stating that the Vision was a strategic plan that would effectively change Anambra into a model state “beaming with opportunities for all”.
Unfortunately, that so-called Anambra Vision 2070 Plan, from the benefit of hindsight, was simply a fraud designed to deceive Ndi Anambra, expend our scarce resources, and position the Professor of Economics as the Messiah that will lead Anambra to a phantom el dorado.
In 2022, shortly after Soludo emerged as the governor-elect, he presented a 180-page report of the committee to his predecessor, Chief Willie Obiano, and on March 17th of the same year, Prof Soludo was inaugurated as the 6th democratically elected Governor of the state.
In his 4000-word inaugural speech, Soludo stated inter alia: “Our contract with Anambra people derives from three seminal documents: (a) “Anambra Vision 2070—a 50-Year Development Plan” which I chaired the drafting”.
Today, the bogus report which was delivered with huge sums of tax payers money, appears to be collecting dust somewhere, while Prof Soludo continues to major in the minors and expending state resources in media warfare against political opponents.
One of the short-term deliverables of the report is that Anambra should attain a minimum average economic growth (in terms of real GDP) of 10% annually between 2022 and 2030, through economic growth in the following sectors: Agriculture, Manufacturing, Trade and Commerce, Solid minerals and Creative sectors.
Today, Anambra yearly GDP growth is still averaging less than 2.5%.
In agriculture for example, Soludo’s administration, in 2023, budgeted N1.5 billion for the provision of coconut, palm and other seedlings to farmers. In the 2024 budget, N2 billion was earmarked for the same purpose.
Based on the Soludo’s administration’s Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), the government intends to spend N8.12 billion on the provision of coconut and oil palm seedlings to farmers between 2023 and 2026.
Meanwhile, there has not been any tangible evidence to suggest that the N1.5 billion worth of seedlings the Soludo-led government budgeted for farmers in 2023 and the N2 billion for 2024, has led to the planting of seedlings that would drive the 10% GDP growth in Anambra, as captured in the utopian Vision 2070 plan.
The Anambra Vision 2070 document also captured plans of bridging the housing deficit by delivering affordable social housing schemes to the people.
However, the Soludo government is not even looking in that direction, instead, the government had announced plans to build a N66.2 billion 10-storey hotel in Awka which, according to them, will serve as a standard hotel where “investors” would stay.
Investors in a state where security of lives and property are not guaranteed? The government should prepare to house investor SABINUS and friends, in such white elephant project!
The Anambra State Government’s efforts in manufacturing, transportation and solid minerals sectors, as captured in the “fraudulent” plan, do not show that the document was ever designed with any purpose for its implementation.
Manufacturers and young business owners are groaning and leaving the state, under the watch of the Professor of Economics.
At best, the document was just another waste of state resources and verbose rhetorics by the theoretical professor and friends!
In contract, Prince Nicholas Ukachukwu, Ikukuoma, the APC governorship candidate in November 8 election is a man of few words but much action.
Anyone who knows him would bear witness that he would never say or promise what he would not do. Anambra state does not need a clueless talkative anymore but one who walks the talks like Ikukuoma.
Anambra is badly broken but the Ikukuoma/Ekwunife government will fix it.
Kingsley Ubani is a native of Enugwu-Ukwu, Njikoka LGA, Anambra State.
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