Anambra 2021: Interrogating the Soludo Personage

Anambra 2021: Interrogating the Soludo Personage

- By James Egbuna

Who is Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo is a rhetorical question.He is no masquerade that needs unmasking.His achievements and accomplishments announce him loudly.He has name- recognition.

Is he bottled in narrow prisms through which Anambrarians view him? NO! Therefore, John Ruskin's timeless thought: "When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package" is not applicable to Soludo for he proudly takes his place in the gathering of Umunna (kinsmen) and feels the pulse of his people.

Essentially, his life trajectory is an open book,widely read far and near.

Infact, there is no missing piece of puzzle in narrations and commentaries around his personage.

Here is serving you Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo uncensored as Anambra's 2021 governorship beckons on him.

The cap fits him. It is tailor made because he won't be coming to learn on the job, he is already imbued with the know-how, the nitty-gritty of management of people and resources by the virtue of his public sector experience, his academic erudition and vast knowledge of the primary kernel of governance especially as it applies to the peculiarity of Anambra.

With the permission of Anambra's electorates, Professor Soludo, as the next governor, will be bringing his wealth of experience garnered over a period of years spanning over three decades to bear on the governance of that state.

Soludo won't be scouting for proposals after election; he probably already has a master plan in his kitty.

The man who was hailed as "the Paragon" by admirers during his secondary school days due to his academic wizardry comes prepared, armed with innovative ideas as to how to take Anambra, in a quantum leap, to the next phase of socio- economic and infrastructural revolution.

As John Mason would say, "you cant travel the road to success without a puncture or two" ,  Soludo is a homeboy who tasted the vagaries of life at formative stages.Like any other child growing up in the post civil war East Central state, today's South east geopolitical zone, he experienced vicissitudes and obsfucations.

Life was not rosy and it even became grimmer for him following the death of his mother when the young Soludo needed her most.

Thus, from ground zero, Soludo struggled to make meaning out of life,rising like Phoenix to a photogenic achievements and accomplishments.

Born 28 July 1960, Professor Soludo is a native of Isuofia in Aguata LGA, Anambra State.

On completing his secondary school education with a Distinction grade, he proceeded to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he studied Economics. He graduated with a first-class degree in 1984.
Afterwards, he went on to obtain his Master’s degree (MSc) in Economics in 1987, and a doctorate (PhD) in Economics in 1989, from the same University, graduating as the best student on all levels of his study.
Upon graduation, he won the departmental and faculty prizes for the best graduating student. These were followed by the best graduating masters degree student prize and the vice-chancellor’s prize for the university’s best graduating PhD student when he finished his doctorate programme.

In 1998, Charles Soludo became a professor of economics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and in 1999, he became a visiting professor at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA.

Professor Charles Soludo was a visiting research fellow at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Warwick— all in the UK.
He lectured on multi-country macro-econometric modelling, techniques of computable general equilibrium modelling, survey methodology, panel data econometrics, money and banking, public finance and fiscal policy, mathematical economics, international economics and finance, macroeconomics etc. Also, Charles Soludo has authored, co-edited, and co-authored about 14 books,  scores of journal articles and hundreds of technical and conference papers. Prof Soludo lived in Ethiopia, UK, and the USA and traveled to 45 other countries as itinerant scholar and consultant to 20 international organisations including: the World Bank, IMF, European Union, AfDB, USAID, UK-DFID, UNDP, UNCTAD, etc.
Because gold fish has no hiding place, in 2003, the love for fatherland spurned Soludo into answering a national call as the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo had no problem fishing him out to serve in his government as Economic Adviser and Chief Executive of the National Planning Commission of Nigeria.
Soludo's superlative performance as Economic Adviser and Chairman of the National Planning Commission was to be a catalyst for elevation to a higher calling. Thus in May 2004, President Obasanjo appointed him into the exalted office of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, as well as Chairman of its Governing Board.
Over a decade after leaving office as CBN Governor, Professor Soludo is still hailed as the man who brought sanity to the banking sector through the clinical  consolidation of the Nigerian banking system in 2005, during which he presided over the consolidation of the country’s 89 banks into 25 as part of a drive to create a new banking system to power new prosperity in Nigeria.
Economists and other financial experts agree that the 2005 bank consolidation exercise was the elixir that continue to boost the Nigeria economy, ensuring that country’s commercial banks now have the asset base to fund manufacturing, agriculture, trade and the services. Unltimately creating millions of jobs and stabilsing the economy.
Essentially, experts opine that without the much needed Soludo bank revolution, multinationals and major economic players especially in the oil and gas sector, wouldn't have been in existence, as so many banks wouldn't have the capacity to fund such.
Global Trade Review in 2007 had averred: “Nigeria’s banking sector consolidation programme was necessitated by the pervasive weaknesses and uncertainty of the banking system and the need to re-engineer and fast-track a system that will engender confidence and power a new economy"
A grateful nation never forgets the patriotism and expertise of it's own.This explains why Professor Soludo was awarded the third highest national honour (CFR) in 2006 and again fished out by the current President and saddled with the task of reinventing  the economy.
Notedly, on 16 September 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari appointed him as a member of a newly formed 8-member Economic Advisory Council (EAC), that will be reporting directly to the President.
Professor Soludo is a valuable  asset and catalyst for quality governance. He has proved so beyond doubt.Anambra needs him to supply oxygen to the socio- economic and industrial development of the state ignited by Chris Ngige, given quick acceleration by Peter Obi and expanded by Willie Obiàno.
Thankfully, indications are that he may offer himself once again, as he did in 2010 under the PDP and 2014 under APGA, to serve his dear state as governor.
Though the two previous attempts at the Anambra governorship, owing largely to pervasive intrigues, did not come to fruition, the general consensus in today's Anambra is that for the state to continue on the tracks of uninterrupted development, Professor Soludo is the man whom the cap fits.

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Egbuna wrote from Onitsha, Anambra State.