MAZI EJIMOFOR OPARA
Soludo from the very moment you meet him would take you through a heartfelt conversation into his deep conviction on education as the most potent tool for escaping the “cycle of poverty”. This, for him, flows from a personal experience as one whose Late Mother — Mgbafor — had consciously modeled after a Teacher, Ugoji. This Soludo’s thesis has been espoused by him at various public lectures and he has further practicalised it by adopting his village primary school about 13 years ago.
Thus, it would be very unthinkable to expect that such a man would not want to replicate his time tested experiment now that it has pleased God and Ndi Anambra to Employ him as the Governor of the State.
His commitment to human capital development is predicated on his firm belief that Anambra’s greatest resource is her human capital. This was made evident in his Manifesto when he stated that Anambra’s teaching system and curriculum, under his watch, would be such that is in tune with the 21st century pedagogy, making it possible to develop persons who are “productive at home and exportable abroad”.
This commitment is reminiscent of Zik’s radical educational development in Eastern Nigeria in the 1940s. Thus, between 1945 and 1965, a period of just 20years, ndi Igbo were able to close the gap of their educational handicap, and lead the rest of the country across strategic segments of the Nigerian State. Soludo’s effort in this regard is deliberate, time tested and latent with possibilities of a much needed social re-engineering and human capital development for ndi Anambra.
For Soludo, this is not about scoring political points, as he has continued to argue that no great and serious minded Society plays politics with Education. Neither is it possible for a Society to rise above its quality of Teachers and teaching. This is the Soludo Solution, one step at a time it will continue to unfurl.