The Managing Director of Afrinvest, Mr Ike Chioke, has called on Nigeria’s best and brightest brains to take courage and contest political positions in the country, as espoused by the manifesto of the All Progressives Grand Alliance.
APGA’s manifesto insists that the party must “attract the best and brightest into our politics and public service by aggressive recruitment of private sector people, academics and professionals within Nigeria and in the diaspora through internships, fellowships, executive appointments and special nominations to contest elective offices.”
In a write-up entitled ‘What Soludo’s Emergence as Governor-elect Means to South East Nigeria’, he said the emergence of Anambra State Governor-elect, Chukwuma Soludo, has changed the country’s political calculation.
According to him, the time has come to enthrone meritocracy and dethrone mediocrity in the Nigeria’s politics.
His words, “Soludo’s emergence is, therefore, the proverbial trumpet call.
“Word on the street is that Soludo is the trigger that will ignite a revolution in South East politics and the search for regenerated leadership.”
Chioke stated that, for too long, the South East region had suffered in the hands of career politicians and professional power-mongers, adding that the inability of the leaders to engage the future had not only caused the region huge economic and human loss but had also laid the region bare for “hotheads and anarchists” to rob the people of peaceful sleep.
Since the demise of the Owelle of Onitsha, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the region has grappled with the weight of uninspiring political leadership, he said.
“Igboland has lived in denial enough. Our destiny is in our hands. We are the change we seek. The time of pointing fingers at imaginary enemies is over. We must accept responsibility for our current situation and think our way out of it. We must roll up our sleeves to enthrone a new order of reality,” Chioke asserted.
He said further that Soludo’s landslide victory raised hopes of better days for Nigeria, more so for the South East region “afflicted by a crippling vacuum in political leadership for decades.”
The Afrinvest boss recalled that change came on November 6, 2021, when the people of Anambra voted Soludo, a professor of Economics and former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, as their governor.
“Soludo’s victory has set high standards for Anambra’s neighbours in the South East region of Nigeria and beyond,” he said.
The current political temperature of the South East, according to him, is amenable to change, and a re-invigorated and re-focused APGA is a major component of that change.
“It is understandable that Soludo’s victory should raise hopes…hope that tenacity would always pay off; hope that the Nigerian society has a capacity to redeem itself and hope that, given the right conditions, the best among us might get a chance to lead us,” Chioke added.
