Vice President Kashim Shettima has said that the people of Anambra State have renewed their covenant with competence and consolidation with the inauguration of the governor, Charles Soludo, for a second term on Tuesday.
Shettima, who lauded the governor’s contributions to nation-building, said he has helped in fostering unity and strengthening Nigeria’s political, economic, and social institutions with his practical commentaries on the state of the nation.
According to his spokesman, Stanley Nkwocha, Shettima described Soludo as a man of ideas and honour who, despite coming into office at a time many politicians had started mortgaging integrity for relevance, and sowing seeds of discord, has remained committed to national growth and development.
Shettima, who stated this on Tuesday when he represented President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the inauguration and swearing-in of Governor Soludo and his deputy, Dr Onyekachukwu Ibezim, for a second term in Awka, the Anambra State capital, noted that the President’s policies have benefited immensely from Soludo’s constructive advice.
“The policies of His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, have benefited from the candour, specialist insight, and patriotic counsel of this distinguished economist, this restless thinker, this public intellectual of uncommon range, both in open fora and in private conversations. And that is how it should be.
“That is what it means to be in the business of nation-building. It means placing the welfare of the federation above the vanity of partisan fences. It means understanding that Nigeria is too precious a vessel to be abandoned to the storms simply because the rowers wear different colours,” he stated.
Observing that Soludo’s convictions transcend seminar halls, Shettima said the Anambra Governor was “a reminder that leadership can unify without shouting, persuade without humiliating, and stand firm without surrendering its soul,” especially in a season of needless divisions.
“It is therefore no surprise that his people have welcomed him again and entrusted him with another term to hold the rudder of this great state and guide it farther into safe and prosperous waters,” he stated, declaring that “the people of Anambra renewed not just a mandate, but a covenant with competence.
“And as Dr Onyekachukwu Ibezim takes this oath once again beside him, the state is also affirming that leadership is not only about the brilliance of the man at the top, but also about the steadiness, loyalty, and discipline of those who help translate vision into order, and order into progress,” the Vice President added.
He identified some of the lessons learnt from Soludo, including “that differences in political parties need not be invitations to hostility” but opportunities for collaboration.
“Professor has shown, too, that it is possible to see beyond the dangerous shenanigans that so often pass for politics in our clime, and to keep faith with the higher calling of public life,” he said.
On the Governor’s “practical commentaries on the state of the nation,” Shettima noted that whether on the economy or political matters, they “have become such permanent tenants in the media space that, once the Professor clears his throat, half the country reaches for a pen and the other half braces for impact.”
He pointed out that Soludo’s maturity of purpose has nurtured a “cordial and productive relationship between Anambra State and the Federal Government.”
He said the outcome had been a stability of engagement that has allowed the Governor “to demonstrate that he came not to be consumed by the old habits of power, but to prove that genuine change is possible in a land where many others only gamed the language of change.”
Under Soludo’s watch, according to the Vice President, deliberate effort has been made “to restore order to public life, strengthen security, and confront the criminality that had cast a shadow over
