Excerpts Of Governor Charles Soludo’s Extempore Speech On Anambra State’s 33rd Anniversary

Welcome to this very important occasion

Today, Anambra celebrates its 33rd anniversary since creation.

On the 27th of August, 1991, the current Anambra state was created out of the old Anambra and today, as we celebrate the 33rd anniversary of its existence, I want to use this opportunity to felicitate with ndị Anambra all over the world, those at home and in the diaspora.

Anambra state was created out of an aspiration that resembles the vision and the mission of the current administration to create a liveable and prosperous homeland. Thirty-three years on, it is safe to say that Anambra is truly on the rise.

Anambra today ranks among the top six largest economy, among the thirty-six states. Anambra state, obviously in terms of poverty indicators , ranks as one of the lowest in Nigeria.

About 65-70 per cent of Anambra state is largely urbanized with four major cities subsisting, and one of them housing the largest industrial and commercial hub and, as they say, the largest market in West Africa.

And so, Anambra today, be it in the social sector, economically, sports-wise, etc, has been rising as a major lead. If you take in the social sector; in education, Anambra is certainly rated as one of the best.

Our students are representing Nigeria all over the world, winning all the laurels and certainly always in the first three secondary school performances.

Today, due to our free education programme in public schools in Anambra, the state currently ranks as number one in terms of having the lowest out of school children.

If you take in terms of technology and innovation, infrastructure revolution, and rural transformation, we are number one. In the area of health, we are second only to Lagos in terms of having the smallest infant mortality rate in the country, and so on and so forth.

The simple message today is that Anambra; the dreams of our forebears, founding fathers and heroes past of creating a land of opportunity and prosperity- a liveable homeland; I want to say that everything put together, that Anambra is largely on the rise.

The state of our State is very strong indeed and all ndị Anambra wherever you may be, despite whatever may be the challenges, everybody has cause to be proud of our homeland- Anambra state.

I want to use this opportunity to REMEMBER several of our heroes past who actually gave Anambra brand names, including the late Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of blessed memory, the founding father of Nigeria (the Zik of Africa), Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (Ikemba Nnewi), the late Dr. Alex Ekwueme, late Chinụa Achebe, Kenneth Dike, Jerome Udoji, Chuba Okadigbo- the list is quite long. And other Eminent ndị Anambra who have contributed, not only to the growth and foundation of our dear state, Igbo land, South East, and Nigeria, generally.

You also have countless other thousands of ndị Anambra in Anambra and all over the world, who are champions. They deserve to be celebrated – those who are still alive and those who started the journey thirty-three years ago but have died. We remember you all today.

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We use this opportunity as well to celebrate our today and our future, celebrate our children and youths who happen to be our bridge to the future, for the wonderful work that they are doing in schools, excelling in Anambra and all over the world.

We celebrate our youths. Recently, much of Nigeria was enveloped in protest, and so on, but our youths did what we are known for – go to work, find a solution, do something. Our youths decided to do something about the challenges rather than occupy the streets to complain

We celebrate our women who bear quite a large chunk of the burden of building the family- raising the families and building our society. Anambra is one state in Nigeria, where, in fact, the women dominate the public sector and various aspects of our lives, and we celebrate our women today.

Our primary school teaching enrollment is about ninety seven per cent dominated by women, our secondary school teachers, eighty nine per cent of the teachers are also women. Our civil service is dominated by over sixty per cent women. So, they constitute the foundation of our society.

Our men also work extremely very hard, our entrepreneurs, we use this opportunity to celebrate all of you.

To the residents of Anambra- non indigenes of Anambra state who are flooding into Anambra as a land of opportunity, as well as those who are contributing positively to the economy and social development of Anambra, we use this opportunity to celebrate you.

And to all our friends and all our partners all over the world- the federal government, our neighbouring states, other states of Nigeria, the international community, the private sector, the investors who are flooding into Anambra as a land of opportunity, helping to create the prosperity that we desire. This is a moment that we celebrate all of you.

Anambra is on the rise. The challenges abound, but our resolve is to continue to work extremely very hard every day to ensure that we continue to take Anambra higher and higher and higher. We are fully on course

We do not have big parties for celebrations, but we are still working very hard – dealing with the issues of security and our environment. We’ve been receiving all manner of warnings for Anambra to deal with the expected massive flooding. Anambra is preparing as one of the states that will be most badly hit.

The last time it happened, about two years ago, 8 local government areas were totally swamped with flooding, damaging goods and wealth and assets, worth into hundreds of billions of naira, displacing hundreds of thousands of persons. This is going to cost the state a humongous amount of money.

The federal government, for example, sent some 24,000 bags of rice, which we are keeping for this particular major emergency that is expected to happen any moment from now.

This is not a day to drink and dance, even though we have millions of things to celebrate, but we are off to work as usual.

I say to ndị Anambra, we are ndị Anambra. We constitute some of the best entrepreneurs we have in the world and we beckon on you to use our enterprise which we use to excel all over the world, but more importantly, we must deploy our God-given enterprise, resourcefulness, intellect and capacities to transform Anambra state.

Together, let’s build that liveable and prosperous homeland. Of course, we can. We have all that it takes to make it happen. We are hopeful and praying for many more years of Anambra moving from glory to glory, height to height in the attainment of our vision to create that liveable and prosperous smart megacity.

God bless you all

*_Extracted by Christian Aburime_*