SUNDAY OSUOKWU EZECHUKWU
Every election season, charlatans return to the village square with their bag of tricks. They know they have no record, no blueprint, no philosophy beyond the pursuit of power for power’s sake. So, they dust off the same tired gimmicks: tribe, pulpit, rice, wrappers, and hollow slogans. It is the theatre of the absurd, and Ndi Anambra must not mistake it for governance.
Ethnicity is their first refuge. “He is one of us,” they chant, as if being born in a place automatically builds roads. Did their “sons of the soil” tar the 12.8km stretch from Mmiata Anam to Nzam? Did they dualize roads or raise hospitals in Okpoko and Enugwu-Otu? Soludo has shown that competence, not birthplace, is what paves streets and lights up schools.
Religion is their next costume. Some of them rehearse scriptures more than they read budgets. But Soludo’s catechism is practical: 8,000 new teachers, modernized hospitals, telemedicine reaching the riverine sick, and free maternal care so no woman dies giving life. This is gospel in brick, mortar, and medicine — not in chants designed to hoodwink the gullible.
Then comes the most degrading insult: stomach infrastructure. They toss rice like feed to chickens, wrappers as if Ndi Anambra were mendicants without dignity. Yet their rice finishes in days while Soludo’s Solution Innovation District trains tens of thousands of youths in coding, robotics, and fintech — winning global recognition in Beijing as one of the top transformative tech hubs in the world. While they dangle crumbs, Soludo is laying the feast of tomorrow.
On security, the difference is a chasm. Where lawlessness once strutted unchecked — kidnappers claiming shrines as their armour, gunmen tormenting riverine communities, and touts reducing commerce to a gauntlet of extortion — Soludo drew a bold line. With the creation of the Ministry of Homeland Security and the launch of Operation Udogachi under Agụnechemba Security, the state reclaimed its right to order. Criminal gangs are smoked out of forests, fake dibia who arm them with charms are licensed out of existence, and commerce flows again without traders bleeding at every checkpoint. Is the war finished? Not yet. But unlike his rivals, who thrive on chaos, Soludo confronts insecurity as an existential duty, refusing to mortgage Anambra’s destiny to thuggery and bloodletting.
Let us speak plainly: these men have nothing. No ideas. No plans. No courage. Only tricks. Godfathers whisper in their ears; propaganda drips from their lips. They traffic in shadows because light exposes their emptiness. Soludo, by contrast, owes no godfather. He pays salaries and contractors as due. He refuses to borrow even when Abuja waves billions in loans. He has anchored governance on prudence, vision, and discipline — the marks of true leadership.
So the question before Ndi Anambra in November is not difficult. Shall we surrender to jesters armed with rice and slogans, or continue with a leader who secures our homeland, equips our youths, builds our hospitals, modernizes our markets, and steadies our economy without a kobo of debt?
To abandon Soludo now would be lunacy. It would be to quench the lamp in the middle of night, to cut down the tree just as it begins to fruit. Ndi Anambra must not trade their banquet of progress for the crumbs of impostors.
The masquerade of lies has danced long enough. Let us unmask it, laugh at its nakedness, and march forward with Soludo.