The time-revered adage says it all: There is no place like home. A man without a home cannot earn the respect of any community. The republican Igbo spirit makes the people to sojourn far and wide in search of opportunities. Even so, the homestead must never be abandoned.
Anambra State Governor, Prof Charles Soludo’s drive is to ensure that Anambra businessmen and women doing great business all over Nigeria and indeed, the entire world should start thinking home by investing heavily in the homeland.
The governor is intent on spreading The Homeland Gospel of the Think-Home project which he is taking far and wide through town-hall meetings in cities such as Lagos and Abuja.
It is, of course, in the best interest of Anambra and indeed, South-East investors to have a firm foothold within the homeland. A personality who does not develop his place of origin can hardly ever earn the respect of the owners of the land he is sojourning in. There is always the hardly hidden charge, to wit, if your homeland is good, why are you living in our land?
It is incumbent on renowned Anambra captains of industry to grow the home state by establishing factories and ensuring that a measure of their taxes are paid to the state, irrespective of where they reside or work. Governor Soludo has therefore enjoined Ndi-Anambra residing outside the state to join forces with him in the proactive responsibility to leave Anambra State better than we met it.
According to Soludo, “The homeland consciousness must be inculcated in the perceptual mind of every Onye-Anambra on the need to change Anambra State from a departure lounge to a vibrant destination lounge. Your host will never respect you if you don’t have a livable and prosperous homeland.”
Mr Governor has given sound assurance that his government is determined to resurrect Onitsha, the popular market town on the bank of the River Niger, by returning it to its former glory as the biggest commercial city in the South-East and beyond.
It is in the drive to make Anambra an investment-friendly state that the administration has drastically reduced the menace of killings and kidnapping to the barest minimum through the security architecture put in place by the government in alliance with the Army, Navy, Police, the state vigilante group and other paramilitary agencies.
For Ndi-Anambra to embrace the Think-Home project holistically, Governor Soludo has embarked on the pivotal duty of restoring law and order in the state as opposed to the impunity that held sway before he came into office.
Additionally, in the bid to boost the power supply in the state, the Anambra State government has signed an MOU with the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company for 24-hour supply of electricity in the state. Soludo has stated that anyone interested in collaborating with his government to set up an Independent Power Plant in the state is welcome on board.
The time has come for Ndi-Anambra and the Igbo people at large to stop seeing themselves as victims of persecution because they have an option. The Jews to whom the Igbo people are compared were victims of the dastardly Holocaust unleashed on them by Adolf Hitler of Germany. But since the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, the teeming Jewish Diaspora has always rallied to develop a homeland they can be proud of.
Ndi-Anambra, and indeed all Ndigbo all over Nigeria and in the Diaspora, have a bounden duty to come together to adopt Governor Soludo’s Think-Home philosophy by committing their resources to developing the homeland like the Jews of Israel – a Homeland that is more liveable and prosperous than their land of sojourn.
By Paul Nwosu
Nwosu is the Commissioner for Information in Anambra State
