Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State, Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State, and other Southeast governors have boycotted Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s regional conference on human capital development.
WITHIN NIGERIA reports that Enugu Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, Abia State Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, Uzodinma, and Umahi all sent representatives to the two-day conference in Awka, the capital of Anambra State.
The conference’s theme was “Changing the Narrative” in order to entrench human capital development in Southeast Nigeria.
Governor Soludo chastised Southeast leaders for their lack of unity during his speech at the summit.
While urging the formation of a regional education board to develop a curriculum for the region, the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) suggested that the Southeast form a teacher certification institute to certify teachers for schools in the region.
Soludo stated that the governors of the region could implement policies in education, labor, and health to increase human capital.
He insisted that the Southeast could not afford to lag in human capital development, noting that Anambra had the smallest land mass and the fewest natural resources in the country.
Soludo said:
Your recommendations are excellent. I will read them with keen interest and see which of them we can take.
We have little land mass in the Southeast. We are actually the smallest with Lagos State, but while Lagos is reclaiming land from the sea, we are losing our land to gully erosion.
Anambra is the world’s gully erosion capital. In the Southeast, we are landlocked, and we have the least mineral resources. Our only boost is human capital.
Human capital naturally is our only dependable resource. It has been so yesterday and today and will remain so tomorrow.