By The Progressives Media
With fanfare and grandiose rhetorics, ndi Anambra was regaled with a stage performance in early 2022 as a largely utopian plan cobbled together by a committee headed by Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo, then Governor-Elect of Anambra State was presented to the then outgoing governor, Chief Willie Obiano. The plan known as the Anambra Vision 2070 was touted as a plan for the total transformation of Anambra State.
However, halfway through the tenure of the APGA-led government of Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo, it is safe to surmise that the Anambra Vision 2070 report is now gathering dust in the archives of the Anambra Government House record room. The Soludo administration has shown no sign that it remembers such a plan even existed.
Even though, the 180-page Anambra Vision 2070 report was light in terms of short-term deliverables, a quick look at the direction the Soludo administration is heading shows no significant correlation with the short-term deliverables contained in the plan engineered by the governor himself. One begins to wonder why Mr. Governor would abandon a development plan he superintended over its creation.
I would like to highlight a few areas where the Soludo administration is showing disinterest in crafting and implementing any coherent strategy or plan for the medium term to long term.
PRODUCTIVITY, TRADE AND COMMERCE:
On page 96 of the Anambra Vision 2070, the Soludo Committee projected that Anambra should attain a minimum average economic growth (in terms of real GDP) of 10% annually between 2022 and 2030. The report went further to name the sectors that would drive this economic growth to include: manufacturing, trade and commerce, agriculture, solid minerals and creative sectors.
Nice plan on paper. But that is where it ends as far as the Soludo administration is concerned. If there is any stark reality that Anambra has come to live within the past 23 months of the Soludo administration, it is the fact that the posturing of the state government is anti-productivity or anti-trade. It is no longer a hidden fact that traders and businesses are now operating under a highly hostile environment across many cities, towns and even villages in Anambra State thanks to the Soludo tax ‘army’.
Today in Anambra State, simply being a petty trader is now a crime. The Soludo tax army is stifling small businesses with a litany of taxes and levies that do not even have any rate/structure or put into consideration the turnover of the business not to talk of net profit. Once they see a human being selling anything, all they begin to see is tax, tax and tax. Soludo does not only tax the profit or net income of businesses, his government taxes both operating expenses, debts and losses! How do you grow trade and commerce with this mentality? Let’s not even remember his abolition of taxes/levies for petty traders, barrow pushers and artisans – a directive that was never implemented for one day.
In the agricultural sector, there is nothing to suggest that the Soludo administration remembers it exists beyond talks of distributing ‘millions’ of oil palm and coconut seedlings to farmers no one can recall seeing. I am tempted to believe that the agricultural sector is one big avenue the administration uses to fleece Anambra of its resources. For example, in the 2023 budget, N1.5 billion was budgeted by the Soludo administration for the provision of coconut, palm and other unnamed seedlings to farmers. In the 2024 budget, N2 billion was earmarked for the same purpose. As part of the MTEF, N2.2 billion and N2.42 billion are also proposed for coconut and palm seedlings in the 2025 and 2026 budgets respectively.
In essence, between 2023 and 2026, the Soludo administration intends to spend a whooping N8.12 billion on the provision of coconut and oil palm seedlings to farmers. Meanwhile, no one has seen any tangible evidence to suggest that the N1.5 billion worth of seedlings it provided to ‘farmers’ in 2023 have been cultivated anywhere in Anambra. Is this how agriculture would drive 10% GDP growth in Anambra? Let me not even go into the solid minerals angle because zero activity is going on in that sector in Anambra State (at least officially).
So, it is easy to see that under Soludo, productivity cannot be said to be thriving. Existing manufacturers are groaning under a heavy tax burden. Potential investors in the manufacturing sector are scared to set up shop in the state due to unfriendly tax regimes and security concerns. Amidst all these, to show how out of tune from the reality the administration is becoming, plans to build a N66.2 billion 10-storey hotel in Awka seems to be Soludo’s solution to attracting investors into Anambra (so that investors will have a standard hotel to stay in).
HOUSING AND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
The Anambra Vision 2070 brushed the issue of bridging the housing deficit by delivering affordable social housing schemes to the people. The plan also highlighted the provision of modern transport infrastructure comprising road, rail and water transportation. As of this moment, the Soludo administration has not indicated any posture to suggest they are interested in investing in social housing schemes or engineering a modern transportation architecture for Anambra State.
The Soludo administration has earmarked N41.78 billion as capital expenditure for the Ministry of Housing between 2023 and 2026. Out of this amount, no single kobo is budgeted for the construction of the social housing scheme rather N22.86 billion out this amount would be channelled to complete the Government House in Awka and the governor’s lodge in Onitsha. The rest are for the renovation of Alex Ekwueme Square, the construction of residential quarters for political appointees etc.
It is necessary to point out that the N2.48 billion Soludo wants to spend to build residential quarters for political appointees and the N1.05 billion he intends to spend in ‘upgrading’ Alex Ekwueme Square can construct 18 blocks of flats with at least 10 units of two-bedroom flats in each block. This means 180 flats for people. This is how you gradually bridge the housing deficit and drive down rents. But this is not on the agenda of the Soludo administration.
On transportation, after two years there is still no coherent plan to bequeath to Anambra a transport solution for the future. When the governor wants to mesmerise his audience, he will talk of a monorail from Awka to Onitsha but nothing suggests there are any plans to even carry out a design of the project, map out routes or conduct feasibility studies. Even the easier task of procuring modern mass transit buses and building modern bus stations or bus stops seems a difficult task for the Soludo administration to commence. They are more interested in taxing the hell out of shuttle buses, tricycles and commercial bus operators.
From the foregoing, it is not difficult to conclude that the Soludo administration is just governing Anambra State as the ‘spirit directs’. The Anambra Vision 2070 Committee, that Prof. Charles Soludo chaired was just a jamboree. One would expect that being the Chairman of that Committee, Soludo would have been eager to adopt the report since it’s a product of his renowned intellectual capacity. By consigning the report to the dustbin, his government is passing a message to Ndi Anambra that they lack direction.
The Progressives Media_, Anambra.
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