Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo CFR is, by all standards, a man of excellence. To him, the excellence is never an accident; it is the result of high intention, sincere effort and intelligent execution.
Born on July 28, 1960 by village parents at Isuofia in Aguata, Chukwuma Soludo, who transited from grass to grace, to the glory of God, is a Nigerian Economics Professor and a former Governor And Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). He is also a member of the British Department for International Development’s International Advisory Group.
Soludo has been a visiting scholar to many local and foreign institutions such as: the International Monetary Fund (IMF); the University of Cambridge; the Brookings Institution; the University of Warwick, and the University of Oxford as well as a Visiting Professor at Swarthmore College (USA).
Professor Soludo has also worked as a consultant for a number of international organisations, including The World Bank, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and the United Nations Development Programme. Soludo is a core professional in the business of macroeconomics.
With a Distinction Grade in the West African School Certificate (WASC) at the Uga Boys Secondary School, a first class honours in Economics, MSc, PhD in economics at UNN and promoted professor at the age of 38, though he met requirements to be professor at 32, Soludo has proved to be a gifted solution provider to the myriad of social and economic problems of the world, Nigeria and Anambra state.
Chukwuma Soludo has been trained and involved in research, teaching, and auditing in such quantitative disciplines as multi-country macro-econometric modeling, techniques of computable general equilibrium modeling, survey methodology, and panel data econometrics, among others. He studied and taught these courses at many universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, and Warwick. Soludo has authored a number of books on this subject matter.
In 1998, Soludo was appointed to the position of professor of economics at the University of Nigeria; the next year he became a visiting professor at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA. He joined the federal government of Nigeria in 2003.
Prior to his May 2004 appointment to the bank chairmanship, he held the positions of Chief Economic Adviser to former President Obasanjo and Chief Executive of the National Planning Commission of Nigeria. In January 2008, in a speech to the Nigerian Economic Society, Prof. Soludo saw Nigeria become Africa’s financial hub and considered microfinance important to the government’s economic policies.
President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Soludo on September 16, 2019, as a member of a newly formed 8-member Economic Advisory Council, which is reporting directly to the President.
In February 2021, Prof. C.C. Soludo officially declared his intention to run for the position of Governor of Anambra State under the banner of All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA). On June 23, 2021, Soludo won the Governorship primaries of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, amassing 740 of the total 792 delegates’ votes cast – thus emerging the party’s gubernatorial candidate for the Anambra State.
With his perceived solid performance as CBN governor, Soludo remains a respected economic policy authority in Nigeria. Political commentators, while urging an issue-based campaign in the November 6, 2021 election, calls on Ndi Anambra to give the respected economist chance to give an acceptable economic plan for the state.
“Mr. Solution”, is an exceptionally gifted “onye Anambra” whose life has been characterized by excellence, integrity, and performance. President Obasanjo once described him as “one of the leading lights of our nation whose leadership qualities are admirable and his willingness to listen and learn is simply infectious”.
There is no doubt that excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. For Anambra to continue to achieve excellence, we can get there with Professor Chukwuma Soludo because excellence is not a skill, neither is it an exception; it is a prevailing attitude.
WRITTEN BY COMRADE OBI OCHIJE
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