Cash for Gubernatorial Seat: Anenih, Ogbulafor pester Soludo to pay up, as court gives final knock
Indications have shown that the political situation in Anambra State is getting messier by the day for the purported gubernatorial candidate of PDP Charles Soludo; sources close to Charles Soludo revealed that the former governor of the Central
bank of Nigeria is a nervous wreck, as shylock PDP leaders pester him to make good his deal of cash for the Anambra State gubernatorial seat. Information obtained by huhuonline.com shows that Soludo spent a whopping sum of eight billion naira (N8bn) to secure the PDP governorship ticket.
Moreover, Charles Soludo spared no expense in securing the PDP ticket, as his team spent money like it had an expiration date. Suddenly, he has run out of money, and his ticket has been torpedoed, but the PDP chieftains want the balance of what was initially promised them. Now, Chief Tony Anenih and Ogbulafor want the remainder of the five hundred million promised to each of them.
In another bizarre development which appeared to have given a final knock to the People's Democratic Party in Anambra State was the declarative judgement of the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja which finally laid all troubled waters to rest by restraining the former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) standard bearer. Huhuonline.com also gathered that the Court in a unanimous ruling ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), PDP and Soludo from presenting, recognizing and parading the ex-CBN governor in that order as the PDP governorship candidate in the Anambra polls.It would be recalled that the appellants, including Valentine Ozoigbo, Nkoli Imo, and Ferdinand Okoye, had earlier argued before an Abuja High Court that the PDP had violated its own rules and electoral law in choosing Soludo as the party's candidate but lost the suit.
Also Soludo who was doubly sure of his candidacy having been supported by the national leadership of PDP has been making some verbal attacks on his opponents especially the sitting Governor of the State who is also All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate in the Feb. 16 2010, According to Soludo, if Obi goes ahead with the election, he would fail, just as he has failed in the governance of the state.
“He did not do it when he was one year old in the office, he did not do it in his second or third year, is it now that he has less than three months that he would do it? His government has failed. All I know is that you cannot give what you do not have.. I promised to get him a second term, but I have seen that he cannot do any meaningful development in the state.” Soludo said.
The Economics professor went on to say that he is not surprised that Obi is unable to impact on a first class state like Anambra as he (Obi) is a third class student. He contended that only a first class brain like him would be able to move a state like Anambra forward. According to Soludo, a change would bring the state back to its glory.
“I want to put basic ideas to governance and unleash a momentum of change in Anambra. This government has the money; don't let them tell you that government does not have the money because we are not an oil producing state. We have been run down by bad government, and if this continues, Anambra would go into extinction. My dream for Anambra as the Dubai, Taiwan of Africa is real. People ask me why I came to soil my name in Anambra rather than going to the World Bank, UN or other places in the world? But I say to them that I want to come to my state and build it. Very soon I will compile a chart which I used in paying Anambra state and local government allocations in the past four years. I paid them myself. I can tell you that so much has accrued to the state in the last four years more than all the governments the state has had put together.”
Soludo affirmed that he got several appointments at the expiration of his tenure at the CBN, “but I left them all. What I thought is , if we who know what we are doing do not come to the state now to salvage it, is it our children who are being chauffeur driven to school today that would do it?” In four years, the governor has not been able to put even one state in a state where his children and my children can enrol in them. That is why his children and my own are abroad.”
Meanwhile, with these political realities playing out by the day, Soludo is naturally expected to thread caution and save his face from further disgrace, and also to work on placing himself on defence, because it won't be out of place if EFCC files fresh charges on him or invites him for discussions over abuse of office during his 5 years reign in office as CBN Governor. Again it cannot be easily forgotten that Charles Soludo messed up the oversight functions of the apex bank, the consequence which dragged the Nigerian commercial banks to the brink of collapse, until the timely intervention of Mr. Lamido Sanusi. With all of this Soludo has no moral justification to stand for any elective position in Nigeria having failed abysmally in the capacity trusted to his care as Chief Custodian to the bankers' bank.