Anambra State governor, Chukwuma Soludo, has lamented the lack of unity within the leadership of the South East, saying it inhibits the region’s growth.
This is as the region’s governors shunned the zone’s regional conference on human capital development hosted by Soludo.
Speaking at the event, Soludo advocated for a regional education board to fashion a curriculum for the region.
According to him, the Southeast could create a teacher certification institute to certify teachers for regional schools.
In the area of education, labour and health, he said the governors of the region could adopt them to grow human capital.
He maintained that the Southeast could not afford to lag in human capital development, adding that Anambra had the least land mass in the country and the least natural resources.
Soludo said: “Your recommendations are excellent. I will read them keenly and see which of them we can take.
“We have little land mass in the Southeast, and we are the smallest with Lagos State, but while Lagos is reclaiming land from the sea, we are losing our ground to gully erosion.
“Anambra is the world’s gully erosion capital. In the Southeast, we are landlocked and have the least mineral resources. Our only boost is human capital.
“Human capital naturally is our only dependable resource, and it has been so yesterday and today and will remain so tomorrow.
He described the conference as “pivotal to who we are.
“And if we do not mind about human resources, then we are going nowhere. We must work on that.
“I listened to your recommendations on education, but who said the Southeast cannot set up a regional education board to fashion a curriculum for students in the region?
“Must we always use what others are using? Who knows, you may fashion out a curriculum that will attract the interest of other people and the world at large.
“The various governments of the Southeast can come together and set up a teacher certification institute to certify teachers for regional schools too.”
Soludo lamented that in the past, some governments of the Southeast sent home some workers on the ground that they were not from their state. He added that Anambra had reversed that policy.
“We just recruited 5,000 teachers in Anambra State, but I told the ministry not to accept if I recommend anybody to them. We employed people from every state.
“All I need is for the best teachers to be employed. Our children deserve the best teachers, and all they hope to get is the very best, no matter where the teachers come from.
“In my own eyes, I don’t see those boundaries, and for the greatness of Nigeria, we must not see those boundaries,” he said.
The conference had the theme: changing the narrative – towards entrenching human capital development in Southeast Nigeria.
