1 week Ago By Guardian Nigeria
Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo has been driving the ship of Anambra State with uncanny rational principles, critical thinking and scientific method that extols human dignity, reason, compassion, morality, ethics, democratic participation: no affirmation to any religious or Christian sect. He grapples with enlivened pragmatic interceptions of all the above humanistic principles in his pilot governs schemes. The four mainstays or pillars of humanist science are a concern: the interdependence of morality and wellbeing, normative theory, and the prevalence and efficacy of ideals or standards.
Despite the macroeconomic challenges, he has remained imbued with strength of character —delivering on all the five fingers of the Solution Agenda: Security, Law & Order; Infrastructure and Economic Transformation; Human Capital and Social Agenda; Governance and Value System; and Environment, against moral odds ravaging the society. “We believe in one United, strong and progressive Nigeria where equity, peace and justice reign “(Soludo, 2024), he said. Soludo’s humanism is both a sublime of moral rejuvenation and entrepreneurial revivalism among the youths.
It is a humanism that extols the virtues of hard-work instead of get-rich-quick syndrome prevalent among the Igbo Millennial and Gen Z who stealthily operate neopaganism underground economy but fret with the religious institutions in open society who recognize and exalt them as saints. Humanism as a blend of moral and strength of character required the church leaders to reclaim their role as a moral compass in the society. For the Governor whose strength of character is worth an academic thesis, moral decay is incongruous with hard-work, resilience and progress.
Therefore, moral decadence and idolatry are unacceptable in a society where the clergy men of all hooks insouciantly hold sway with little or no impact on the moral fiber of the society and lives of the youths. A critique of the church for its failure to strengthen the moral and secular characters of youths is the pivot of Governor Soludo’s prism of hard work and equality in the society. For him, “get-rich-quick” mentality and ill gotten wealth must not be acceptable in the household of God.
The trend of seeking wealth against the church tenets with the wealth spread on the alters of yielding religious denominations is not acceptable in postmodern African society. “The ideology of acquiring wealth by any means necessary has become a cancer eating away the fabric of our society..
.This pursuit of wealth, often without regard for its source, has led to a moral crisis, with young people increasingly turning away from the church and its teachings, and heading to the bush to join cults and kidnappers for power and money.”(Soludo, 2025).
The governor, short of Karl Marx lampooning the church as the opium of the soulless in the society, argues that religious institutions have failed to question the origins of the wealth donated by their congregations; they endorse unethical practices and turn a blind eye to the source of donations, and loses its moral authority and becomes part of the problem, even as the “capitulation of the Church to the allure of materialism is at the heart of the moral decay in society”(Soludo,2025). With the touch light of equity and equality, he has not only made education compulsory but also structured the school system to be the same for both rich and the poor . With the prioritizing of competitive recruitment of the best teachers for Anambra schools he raised the bar of human dignity in Nigeria.
The inhuman categories of the poor, the under privileged and the down trodden must give way in a society undergirded by fairness, justice and equity. Education must, in principle, level the space and landscape of inequality and leverage humanistic principles for a better society. It is concomitant to building of capacity, strength of character and empowering the youths to shape their future without moral and religious bias.
Within the spectrum of Soludo’s audacious humanism, the religious institutions must bend backwards to reassert their God’s calling and conscience and return the abandoned table of morality and ethics for security, meritocracy, social order and human progress. With the minimum wage settled for a living wage the government has galvanized the fiscal and Human resources to obviate the economic hardship currently plaguing the nation. Humanism as human progress is therefore, a means of fighting injustice and criminality.
” We must have a society that is fair, where everybody gets justice “ ( Soludo, 2024) . Campaign for a return to nature’s wealth through palm and coconut revolution, along with “Farm-to-Feed” programs, is a humanistic and natural approach to wealth creation. It is a survival instinct that places man at the centers of the earth, an enduring humanism that promotes excellence and banishes hunger and poverty.
On the social plane, it is a vigorous pursuit of human happiness, even as roads infrastructures have made travels, trading , entertainment, recreation and business the pivot of human survival and happiness. “Our vision is to make Anambra a preferred place to live, learn, invest, work, relax and enjoy!”(Soludo, 2024) • Prof. Dukor is the President/Editor-in-Chief of ESSENCE LIBRARY(Cultural and Scientific Developments Centre( Department of Philosophy, UNIZIK.
.
