Soludo, MI Okpara and Awolowo bunched in progressive welfarism

The governor of Anambra state, Prof. Chukwuma Charles Soludo, applies the underlying principles of progressive welfarism as his strategic approach to governance. Progressive welfarism entails giving pride of place to the well-being and progress of the people as intrinsic values of a humane administration.

Fully defined, progressive welfarism combines progressive structures with a welfare state. It aims to redistribute wealth through taxation and social programmes, ensuring a higher standard of living for all, especially those with lower incomes. This approach seeks to create a society where everyone’s basic needs are met while generating revenue to fund public services like education, healthcare, and infrastructure, as Soludo, MI Okpara and Awolowo have done, as we will see shortly.

An example of progressive welfarism policy by Soludo was when, in late 2024, its government announced tax exemptions for Ndi Anambra, whose business capital was below N100,000 (One hundred thousand Naira). Soludo knows that no state or country can develop by taxing its citizens beyond their capacity to pay.

In the chequered political history of Nigeria, such progressive welfarist approaches to governance had been espoused by Dr Michael Iheonukara Okpara, the premier of the old Eastern Region, and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the premier of the then Western Region in the First Republic. In the case of Dr Okpara, who was popularly hailed as MI Power, the focus was on agro policies and industrialisation, which made the Eastern Region of the First Republic to be rated as having the fastest-growing economy in the world in the 1960s following an international peer review, a feat that was botched by the Nigeria-Biafra war. Admirably, Governor Soludo is following Dr. Okpara’s cherished example in aggressively pushing ahead with his agro policies that will, of course, make Anambra State the primus inter pares in agriculture in the foreseeable future.

The other dimension of Governor Soludo’s progressive welfarism is replicating Chief Awolowo’s focus on free education, which has propelled the Western states to take leading positions in virtually all spheres of governance in today’s Nigeria. It is based on this ennobling background that one can see that the applauded inauguration of free, compulsory education from nursery to SS3 by Governor Soludo has institutionalised a progressive welfare state in Anambra State. Mr Governor has also instituted free antenatal care and child delivery up to caesarian sections for all pregnant women in the state with near-zero mortality. Indeed, women and children have never, ever had it so good in Anambra State.

Governor Soludo has lifted a heavy burden off the shoulders of the breadwinners of Anambra families, particularly through free education. Solution is now a way of life in Anambra state, justly lionised as the Light of the Nation.

In his drive toward a progressive welfare state, Soludo has put into full throttle, the Anambra Mixed-Use Industrial City (AMIC), a flagship infrastructure project aimed at accelerating industrialisation and economic development by focusing on enlarging industrial infrastructure. This will serve as the new industrial hub for Anambra and the Southeast.

It needs to be recalled that during the First Republic, the regional governments depended almost totally upon taxation to deliver development. For instance, the Eastern Region, under the exemplary leadership of Dr Okpara, built the cities of Onitsha, Owerri, Enugu, Aba, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Uyo, and Umuahia, etc., with taxes and the money generated locally from oil palm produce. The government was able to supply electricity and pipe-borne water all over the urban centres. It also established industrial corridors and built the University of Nigeria with three campuses, and so on, with taxes collected from peasant farmers.

The coming of the so-called oil boom in Nigeria after the civil war created a rentier culture that destroyed the incentives and institutions for taxation. Now the oil boom has turned to oil doom. States can no longer get adequate allocations from the federal purse in Nigeria’s accursed “feeding bottle federalism”.

Governor Soludo is taking the matter forward without borrowing a kobo from anywhere. He is providing needed infrastructure for the underserved and abandoned parts of Anambra State; for instance, building five brand new general hospitals in Anambra State where the greatest need exists.

Soludo is following the charge of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria, who said, “Show the light and the people will find a way.” As Soludo is showing the light, what needs to follow in due course is for celebrated Anambra State personages of high net worth to follow the lead of Mr Governor’s welfare drive by undertaking public works such as the construction of roads and the building of schools and hospitals in their various communities. The buy-in from the great numbers of Anambra’s captains of industry scattered all over Nigeria and the world will instantly project the state in line with Governor Soludo’s plan of enacting the African-Dubai-Taiwan-Silicon Valley (ADTS) miracle in the homeland and make Anambra a destination and not a departure lounge.

As Leo-Stan Ekeh, the CEO of the trailblazing Zinox Computers, who is not from Anambra State, once said, “The wealth, energy and knowledge per square metre in Anambra do not exist in any other part of Africa.”

Anambra State is poised to turn from being a departure lounge to a destination point, as Governor Soludo has always propounded. The liveable and prosperous homeland planned by Governor Soludo will, in due course, become a reality before our very eyes. The dawn of Anambra as a welfare state is here.

Like MI Okpara, who focused on people-centred development and industrialisation, and Awolowo, who also focused on education in the Old Western Region, among other people-centred policies, Soludo is, through intentional and transgressive leadership, transforming Anambra into a welfare state.

Law Mefor, PhD , is the Anambra state commissioner for information