Prof Chukwuma Soludo is the governor of Anambra State. In this interview monitored on Arise Television, he speaks on his achievements in the last two years and the development in the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU writes

Anambra State is head and shoulders over others in primary healthcare; it won the 2024 Primary Healthcare Challenge Award. What did you do differently to achieve this milestone?

For me, with humility, that’s an encouragement for us to even get off the block because we think we’re just only beginning as it were.

We still have a very long journey ahead of us, but we’re putting the foundation in place and I think it’s beginning to show, but we still have a huge agenda in the area of human capital, generally health education and lifting the vulnerable up because of our focus on leaving no one behind.

So, yes, the primary health bit is one of those reform areas that we’re trying to put Anambra on the map.

Talk to us about the quality service delivery of your administration and what the motivating factor is for you and your cabinet in this quest…

We’ve got to put in the issue of primary health or reforms in the health sector within a broader context; a broader context of our vision to build a liveable and prosperous homeland, a liveable and prosperous smart mega city, where people will live, invest, work, learn, relax, and enjoy.

And for you to build all of these, we’re hitting reforms on five major pillars. The first is security law and order. The second key pillar is infrastructure and economic transformation and the third is our human capital and social agenda. And of course, the fourth is our governance infrastructure, while the fifth is the environment.

Towards having a planned, regenerated, planned and coordinated sustainable environment, markets, communities, and the cities, as it were. It’s within this ambit of our vision to have, if you like, a mantra of building, laying the foundation to have Anambra as the African Dubai, Taiwan and Silicon Valley.

The Dubai component of being a logistics, commercial, entertainment and leisure hub or Taiwan in terms of mining a huge human capital. Not having much of natural resources, but mining human capital for Industrialization and so on.

And then, of course, Silicon Valley, where we’re also mainstreaming tech potentials and so on. And we’re building our own Silicon Valley here.

So, you put it in this general framework and you see the pillar of human capital. That’s why we’re dealing with health education, vulnerable groups and lifting our youths together and empowering them.

The framework is for us to have a human capital that is productive at home and exportable abroad, be it in the area of education, be it in the area of health, and with a philosophy or an ideological bent because I come from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). We are progressives and our mantra is to leave no one behind. We are very intentional about it.

Therefore, when it comes to education, for example, that’s why we have free education, from primary through secondary in all public institutions, hiring 8,115 teachers qualitatively from 18 states of Nigeria, just to ensure that we deliver quality mainstreaming, smart, digital education, and of course, refurbishing the infrastructure and building a foundation that will last.

We still have a very long journey ahead of us, but we’re putting the foundation in place, and I think it’s beginning to show

Then on health, the system is as strong as the weakest link. And the primary health segment is the weakest in the chain. How do we ensure that out of the 326 wards in Anambra, every person living in a ward will have access to qualitative health facilities that they can access at a very affordable price?

So, in this area, we’re massively investing in infrastructure in all the 326 wards, refurbishing their infrastructure, building new ones, powering them with solar, furnishing them fundamentally, putting water, solar and so on.

Hiring over 1,000 medical personnel and making sure that each of them is powered with high qualitative personnel and deploying technology to link each of them to a secondary call centre that will consider that if you have access to a doctor. And then you get on to the legal framework, the monitoring institutional framework, and very importantly, access.

We are mainstreaming free antenatal, free delivery for all pregnant women in all public government institutions, from primary health through general hospitals and even the tertiary teaching hospital in the state. And this has benefited about 82,888 as of last week. Several pregnant women have also benefited.

You go through our system, you get free medical services, and you even get free antenatal drugs. And when you deliver, it’s free, including caesarean operations. About 400 women have now delivered through caesarean operations free of charge, some of them delivering triplets, quadruplets, and so on.

So, the summary is that, yes, we are powering on the primary health sector, as you’ve asked, but that is within the overall context of building this liveable and prosperous homeland.

For example, on infrastructure as part of the foundation we are laying, we are constructing almost 700 kilometres of roads and delivering about 12 kilometres every month even for the remotest areas, and connecting them to these remote primary health centres also.

Can you explain the idea behind the one world-class facility in the 326 electoral wards and well-equipped general hospitals in all 21 local governments of the state?

As I said, it is each sector that we focus on. On my second anniversary, I think my team put together what they considered to be the 100 sterling steps that we have taken on the road to laying this foundation.

Yes. In the area of health, as you probably just mentioned, we want to ensure that each of our local governments has at least one world-class general hospital.

That’s at the secondary level. And the 326 electoral wards we have, each of them to has a very well-equipped, functional health facility in terms of infrastructure, water, electricity, basic equipment, operating equipment, and well trained personnel in them. We’ve just built five brand-new general hospitals in the local governments that never had one.

Coincidentally, all five general hospitals are in the north senatorial zone. I am from the south, and my immediate predecessor comes from the north senatorial zone.

But we’re not, I mean, because our mantra is to leave no one behind, we’re not doing this. We’re just focusing on the areas of need.

For example, you wouldn’t believe that the whole Onitsha South never had a general hospital and Okpoko, the biggest slum with over half a million people never had one in their life, or a local government like Anambra West, and so on, never had general hospitals.

They’re not going to left out in this leave no-one behind concept. We’re also strengthening our nursing schools, building a new, brand-new one, and with a cancer centre that will become a branch of our teaching hospital, as the case may be.

We’re also strengthening our tertiary health facilities. So, we have a total ecosystem from primary through secondary through tertiary, but also emphasizing the whole chain in terms of supply of qualitative manpower to power them continuously. And, of course, many will be leaving for greener pasture as it were.

So, we must have a pipeline of a continual supply of well-trained medical personnel. In sum, we take a very comprehensive approach, leaving no aspect of it, Currently, we’re building a trauma centre that some people say might probably be the biggest. I don’t know many others to compare with, but people point to all kinds of things in terms of its size and where we’re heading to.

How is this going to be a stepping stone to achieving the healthcare demands of the state and the challenge of continuity when you leave office?

At the very beginning, I said we’re only just beginning. That’s why the award even came to me as a surprise because we’re not focusing on awards, we’re focusing on the job to be done.

And for me, each day, what I see is the millions of things not done. I hardly even notice the ones already done. For us, we’re at the foundational stage.

So, the award for me, it’s an encouragement that, okay, we’re on the right path. And the point is to continue to accelerate. The major thing is the benefit to the people.

When I see that about 82,888 pregnant women, I mean very poor ones, have received this free antenatal and free delivery service, that’s what makes me happy.

Or when I hear that our mortality rates, whether maternal or child under five have gone down. The mortality rate of Anambra State now is one of the lowest, if not the lowest in the country. I think we’re second lowest and so on.

These are the kinds of things that give me joy. But you know what? About what happens thereafter, of course, we’re setting up some legal institutional reforms to strengthen and deepen these reforms in what I call building to last. But again, like everything else human, you can only play your role.

And the important thing is, whatever it is, be it anywhere in the world, you can never finish and say that’s the end of history. People will come, either build upon it, retract from it, or even deviate completely. That’s the dynamic of society.

It doesn’t sound quite the same in security in the state. Some residents, for example, have declared that 15 out of the 21 local government areas as being insecure. Don’t you think that 15 is quite a high number?

I don’t know who is stating the numbers. Is there insecurity in Nigeria? Of course, the answer is yes. Do we have some insecurity here in Anambra? Of course, this is a fact. Coincidentally, today is the 33rd month that I have been in office. This is my 33rd anniversary here.

Before I arrived, eight local governments were under total siege by the hoodlums, taking over these entire places. As candidates, none of us could campaign freely anywhere. I mean, in those eight local governments. A governorship candidate then was abducted, while he was driving his convoy.

They stopped him and picked him up until today. He hasn’t been seen. Even, I was attacked in my village, while I was addressing youths and so on. I mean, they came there to take me out.

They killed three policemen instantly on the spot and went away with somebody that they thought was myself, as it were. So, we were, even in my local government, the day of my campaign there, that day was hell, so to speak. The kind of shooting that was rampant almost daily.

That’s the context in which we assumed office, and declared war on these criminals. And I want to say that these local governments are largely liberated, substantially. I mean, largely liberated. Ihiala remains a very dark spot and Orumba South but we’re all relentless. We have four free on-board camps, soldiers, police, navy, our vigilante, and so on.

Four groups of them massively combined. I had the opportunity to address Anambra people on what we consider to be the next level in terms of our fight against these hoodlums. And as a prelude to what we’re going to be launching after January, what we call Operation Udo Gachi.

We have about 163 vehicles we are rolling out. We’re massively deploying our vigilante service to work with them. And of course, I won’t discuss the full details of this kinetic onslaught against these people.

APGA is standing strong and standing firm. And don’t forget, APGA is the first political party in Nigeria to be registered as a progressive party in 2002

When we launch, we will also be coming up with non-brute force measures that we’re also putting in place. You see, we are facing a very unique kind of criminality, where agitation, some mixture of agitation and ideology has created an environment in which the security officers, the security agencies, are being seen as the enemies and the criminals being seen as the liberators.

That’s a very deadly combination. And that is the kind of thing that we are fighting. But we’re determined to cleanse them off and make Anambra the safest state in the country.

So, anybody, I mean, social media, people throw up all kinds of things. They sit in their home and make their own assessments. But that’s okay. The important thing is that we have grown our sleeves and that’s why we’re not relenting anywhere.

You said you want to carry everybody along but pensioners and some retired directors have given the government till mid-February 2025, to harmonize and upwardly review their pensions. What is responsible for the delay?

That would be very funny. It depends on whoever is issuing that. I also received letters of gratitude from pensioners thanking me.

There’s a proverb we have in Igbo of this tortoise that was in a hole for years, and people were defecating in the hole. And then, somebody comes around and announces that by tomorrow, we’ll bring you out. That’s when the tortoise now begins to tell you, you must hurry up because this thing is smelling down here.

I am the one who, without prompting, after last year’s fuel subsidy removal and everything, talked about palliatives and so on. I happen to be that governor that paid.

There are only very few states that did that. For four months, I declared non-taxable cash award of N12,000 that we’ll give to our civil servants per month, and we did that till the end of the year.

I had increased salaries and so on by 10 per cent without any prompting. When the shock came, I paid N12,000 to every worker. But guess what?

We also paid the same thing, and extended it to all pensioners. I don’t know anywhere else that such ever happened, not just the workers, but pensioners.

This year, we’ve just had many minimum wage conversations. I don’t know how many states, and you can check that out and find if there are, how many states the government has paid minimum wage, and then also had something for the pensioners. If there are two or three or whatever states, Anambra is one because we said we’ll leave no one behind.

We announced the minimum wage, and our minimum wage is not just the gross, it is after all deductions, including their union dues. After all deductions, the least paid worker goes home with N70,000.

We looked around and said, but there are some pensioners, what do we do about our pensioners? And we decided to have unilateral N10,000 a cash award to our pensioners. I mean, in addition to their pension month-on-month.

I want you to check this out and confirm how many states in Nigeria you have this, or anywhere else that you have this kind of goodwill and empathy. That is, compassion and empathy happen to be a driving force for us, subject to our resource constraints.

What do you make of the recognition of the Sly Ezeokenwa-led National Working committee of APGA by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and appointment of some Anambra into key positions by President Bola Tinubu?

The first you talked about is INEC rectifying the previous mistake of putting someone else’s name there. Barr. Sly Ezeokenwa has remained an undisputed national chairman of APGA.

So, the mistake made has been corrected, and I want to thank INEC for doing that. I also thank the courts; the Federal High Court, the Court of Appeal and now the Supreme Court for clarifying this matter once and for all. So, we’re very grateful to the judiciary for doing that.

APGA is standing strong and standing firm. And don’t forget, APGA is the foremost progressive party in Nigeria, and the first political party in Nigeria to be registered as a progressive party in 2002.

And then I get down to say when you talk about appointments and the magnanimity of President Tinubu for appointing for the first time, an APGA member as a minister of the Federal Republic, in the person of Her Excellency Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu. First of all, I think this is new and different.

It speaks volumes about the large-heartedness of Mr President, and his thinking about the nation, in terms of the government of national unity, as it were, by having an inclusive government, having people from other political parties take on very key roles in the administration of the country. So, I want to commend the President for his leadership in this regard.

And if I put it some other way, I think on a lighter note, I did say, when I was asked about it in a different forum, I did say that with APGA and All Progressives Congress (APC) at the federal level, it’s a common denominator. Both of them are the ‘All Progressives.’ I did say there that progressives are working together.