By Joe Chukwudi Anatune

THOUGH my friend and brother Emeka Okoli has the height and gait of Rangers’ and national team’s former indomitable goal keeper, Emmanuel Okalla; he often wonders why people expend so much time and energy watching the beautiful round leather game of football. Nothing I say will change his stance.

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But football is a game of passion, a game of suspense, a game of skill and to its lovers, a game of sweet and unalloyed joy. Yes, if you are an attacking football maestro like Pele, Ronaldo or Messi or our own Kanu Nwankwo, you are, no doubt a nightmare always to defenders and coaches who stay awake on several nights to plan containment strategies and tactics.

Naturally, you hold and control the ball most of the time and it is expected that both the attacking midfielders, the defensive ones, the wing backs and central defence will all be at you. As the saying goes, it is the person that holds the ball that the other players pursue. Ball possession and control can be uncomfortable and frustrating to the opposing team.

Notwithstanding and in spite of “packing the bus,” the football greats find the space to score to the excitement and exhilaration of their fans. In Nigeria, tribal, religious and other primordial sentiments evaporate in such thrilling moments.

Chukwuma Soludo is to economic development what Pele, Messi, Ronaldo and Kanu Nwankwo are to the beautiful game of soccer. He scores not once but always in any assignment he is given or chooses to undertake. He is a prodigiously gifted thinker and doer. Both his foes and fans admit this truism and like the Brazilian fans, they are beating the samba for him to take to the pitch figuratively speaking.

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A snippet of the essential Chukwuma Soludo will suffice for this intervention. Now imagine the skyline of Awka without the CBN edifice on the Enugu-Onitsha Expressway. He was Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, governor 2004-2009.

Before then, there was no CBN office in Anambra State despite the status of Onitsha as a banking hub. Countless armed robbery attacks of bullion vans were witnessed during which precious lives were wasted in the course of moving cash from Anambra State to Enugu in Enugu State.

Soludo provided a swift solution; first by using a Union Bank building at Zik Avenue, Awka as temporary CBN branch office and within his tenure, built the edifice along the expressway. The story of what he attracted to Anambra and the South East will be told another day.

Today, Soludo is occupied with his assignments of pulling Nigeria on the path of prosperity with his team in the Presidential Economic Advisory Committee and leading another team with solid and variegated experiences to envision the security, prosperity and happiness of Ndi-Anambra for another 50 years. These are in addition to his numerous international engagements.

I did ponder in a previous piece why the world keeps looking in his direction especially when the going is tough and rough. Former President Obasanjo says it in the simplest of language that “he understands development.” I totally agree. Happily, he is not a prophet without recognition at home as he remains the home boy who is rooted in his local underpinnings seeking to improve life. The only difference is that the Soludo we know well is a gentleman in a hurry to get things done well and pronto.

Understandably, the foregoing are sending the cold shivers down the spines of the prospective opposition. They are consequently gasping for breath, in part due to the’ samba’ like clamour across party lines that he joins the race for 2021 Anambra governorship election and his global reputation as first class economic thinker and doer post the Keynesian era.

In their bids to throw mud at him, Governor Obiano and APGA, they ended up looking awkward, pitiable, absurd and ludicrous. His stellar performance in office was and is still world acclaimed and was the reason the Aguata and Orumba communities gave him the title of Odenigbo.

Soludo had left office for 10 years now and it is in the public space that the EFFCC gave him a clean bill of health. Of course his Isuofia community is enjoying unprecedented reign of peace, progress and happiness, thanks to his sagacity.

In all these, the discerning people of Anambra see the macabre dance of shame of the desperados as pure sophistry. APGA remains their own – nkea bu nkeanyi. At a recent wedding with a preponderance of Ndi-Anambra in Onitsha, the consensus was that the 2021 governorship election will be between candidate Soludo and a motley crowd of also ran candidates, that is if he decides to answer the clarion calls of his teaming supporters to do so.

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They know that he is preoccupied with charting an amazing future for the children, men and women of Anambra while the others are prancing around sharing poorly cooked bowls of rice as if Anambra is a colony of beggars. Tufiakwa!

So it is beyond doubt that Soludo will, like Pele, Ronaldo or Messi score for the sweet joy of Anambra and to the glory of God irrespective of the mudslinging and desperation of the motley crowd of the also ran. And the goaaaal ….African Dubai Taiwan, ADT

Vanguard