“Without sufficient funding, the 2024 budget estimates, just like those of the previous years, will perform below average.” —Ebuka Onyekwelu The Governor of Anambra State, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, has presented the 2024 budget to Anambra State House of Assembly. The Budget which was presented on Tuesday during plenary is the biggest budget by size, to ever be presented to Anambra State House of Assembly by any governor of the state. With a budget size of...

“Information Commissioner has also not facilitated any interface between the government and the media community.” —Ebuka Onyekwelu Recent developments, particularly political exchanges in Anambra State, have ignited concerns about how duly committed the government of Anambra State led by Prof. Soludo is on governance protocol or perhaps, if the government is merely using governance instruments as political tools. What is clear is that there is a mismatch of responses from the government, which raises the...

“Soludo’s letter, though realistic, was also an assault on the dominant feeling of the majority of Southeasterners at the time.” —Ebuka Onyekwelu By this time a year ago, there were ragging fireworks all over the media, ignited by an open letter written by Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, Anambra State Governor. The letter entitled “history beckons, and I will not be silent (part 1)” signified Soludo’s deliberate entry into the political ring of the 2023 Presidential Election....

“Right now, APGA, our party, has only one advantage left, and that is the advantage of ethnic privilege.” —Ebuka Onyekwelu For nearly one month since Sen. Ifeanyi Ubah joined APC, I am often amazed at how some members of our party, APGA, have continued to insist that Anambra cannot vote APC. This is, at best, laughable. Only as recent as in 2017, Sen. Tony Nwoye, then of APC, garnered over 90 thousand votes in the...

“In 2021, Governor Obiano signed the Judiciary financial autonomy bill into law, yet the House cannot recruit its own staff” —Ebuka Onyekwelu The Anambra State House of Assembly Complex has remained closed, following strike action by parliamentary staff, under the aegis of the Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria – PASAN, over the non-implementation of the Assembly autonomy, by the state government. It is worthy of note that section 121 of the 1999 constitution of the...