Anambra State Governor, Charles Soludo, has said that he resolved to endorse President Bola Tinubu ahead of the 2027 Presidential election because of the economic reforms his administration has initiated and implemented in the country.
Soludo made this disclosure while fielding questions from State House Correspondents after a closed-door meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa on Tuesday.
Asked why he decided to endorse the President for a second term even though he belonged to the opposition Alliance Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), the Anambra governor, who called on all progressives in the country to work together, said: “I don’t have any apologies about it.
“President Tinubu is my friend. Has been my friend for 22 years now and counting. So, you don’t deny your friend. I began to be quivering about who he is. He is my friend.
“I support him, and I’m impressed by the bold steps he has taken, particularly in the areas of the economy, the structural reforms, and I have said so severally times, we’re taking the right steps and we need to stay the course.”
On what he has been doing to tame insecurity in his state, Soludo said: “If I have to tell you all the details about what we have done, it involved a holistic approach to the issue of security.
“If you realise, in January this year, we passed our Homeland Security Law, which is trying to deal with insecurity from the foundations. All the deadly native doctors are on the run from the state, because these are the guys giving false hope and so on and deceiving our young ones and luring them into criminality and all of that.
But very fundamentally, we’re approaching it very comprehensively, what they call the kinetic. And non-kinetic approaches. The Kinetic is gone and the usual, but the non-kinetic, especially with what we are dealing with, the youths, the empowerment, the job creation.
“We have a unique programme for one year through skills that is like no other; where we trained and empowered about 5000 of them, and another 8700 will be receiving some billions this month or next month. And we’re creating several thousand youth millionaires right away within the first three years.
This is cascading all over the state. The youths are very much involved. And we’re also dealing with the issue of hardship, beyond the massive infrastructural transformation, beyond fixing our schools, fixing our health and so on and so forth.
We’re also very intentional about the economic and social empowerment of the youth. So, we’re doing quite a whole lot; the kinetic, the intelligence gathering and those who run foul of the law definitely, will be decisively dealt with.”
