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From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, has said the free, fair and credible Anambra State governorship election of November 6 was the greatest tribute on this year’s posthumous birthday of Nnamdi Azikiwe.
The minister said the election of Chukwuma Soludo “at a material time Anambra is nearly overcast by the shadows of a second term governorship fatigue, clearly aligns with Azikiwe’s emancipative vision of showing the light so that the threatening darkness begone.”
He said Nigerians were positive that this trend of credible election shall continue.
In a statement by his Media Office in Abuja, yesterday, Ngige said he was not surprised President Muhammadu Buhari did not allow Anambra to sink into chaos, especially in the backdrop of threats of election boycott, reinforced by a spate of violence and killings, because, according to him, the president was just like Azikiwe, a quiet promoter of peaceful elections and co-existence.
Said Ngige: “President Buhari has paid an immeasurable tribute to Zik with the conduct of the Anambra governorship election widely acclaimed as credible. The president appreciates the place of Anambra as the cradle of Igbo civilisation, as well as the fulcrum of its republican entrepreneurial spirit. With Anambra down, the president knows full well, the entire South East will be in disarray.
“I recall it took President Buhari to give Zik a deserving resting place by completing the long abandoned mausoleum and library at his Inosi Onira residence in Onitsha.
“It is the same President Buhari who started work at the Second Niger Bridge, currently nearing completion. This is a project that was made a vanishing bait by successive governments at every general election.
“As a Zikist myself, I often reflect on Azikiwe’s philosophy of economic determinism that Africa should look inwards, ‘that nobody except Africans can determine the future of Africa and that black is not synonymous with lack; and being black, not an eternal confinement to backwardness.’”
