Dr. Leonard Uguru is the Ebonyi State commissioner for finance and economic development, has in this exclusive interview with The Nations News Nigeria correspondent, Uchenna Okeh, said that there is no more over taxation and communal crisis in the state, since governor, Francis Nwifuru took over power, Excerpt:

Is there anything to celebrate in Ebonyi state, as governor Francis Nwifuru marks one year in office?

There are a lot of things to celebrate within the one year in office. A lot of things; infrastructure, human capital development, etc. within this one year, over six hundred kilometer of roads have been constructed and fully completed. 

Infrastructure:

The Ebonyi State Pipeline production industry is now working fully. Infact with different line of production outside it used to be. And the polarization machine has been produced. And recycling machine has been bought for our recycling company which will soon be installed and start operation. 

The Chuba Okadigbo international airport runway rehabilitation is now 99% ready, according to the contractor three days ago. And so, there are a lot of things to celebrate, but as a commissioner for finance, in my own area, we have too many things to celebrate as far this administration is concerned within this one year in office.

The administration of governor Francis Nwifuru has paid pension and arrays of gratuity since 1996 to 2023, worth #7.6billion. The arrays of pension and gratuities were owed by the former administrations in the state. 

Also, last year December 2023, the civil servants went home with Christmas bonus of one hundred thousand naria each irrespective of your grade level. Functional for them, when they came to the office of the governor at the centenary city Abakaliki to thank him (Nwifuru) and as usual, the governor gave them breakfast and launch worth ten thousand naria for each civil servants. 

On workers day, 1st May 2024, he equally gave civil servants launch with five thousand naria each. And a lot of things are ongoing, we have made a lot of headway in terms of NG-CARES program and at the last independent verification Agents, IVA, Ebonyi state government was able to generate $4.2m for NG-CARES. And we are still waiting the disbursement from the federal government.

The world bank projects and programs, we have signed different path with them and some of them, are already yielding fruits like the one called L-PRES (live stock productivity reliances economic support). The ministry of agriculture are already enjoining that now. 

The state government led by governor Francis Nwifuru has done a lot, and over 800kms road and many other projects are ongoing now. The greatest among them, is the modern flyover at the Vanco junction, and that when completed will be the signature of this state, because it will show how flyover use to be, and not overhead bridge.

Security:

We have a lot to celebrate in Ebonyi, the most important of it, is the peace we are enjoying. For the first time, there is nothing like communal crisis in Ebonyi state. We are celebrating peace, we are celebrating human capital development and a lot of Ebonyians have been sent overseas for scholarships. 

Six government functionaries have been sent to go to UK, Canada and USA to discuss with their universities to accept Ebonyians for masters program. And about one thousand Ebonyians will be sent overseas for masters program.

Revenue generation:

The ministry has done a lot in terms of IGR expansion. IGR consultant was appointed by the state government, in the name of IRS consulting. IRS was engaged since December last year, 2023 and they have already come out with a road map, on how to broaden the revenue base of the state through IGR. 

And what we started doing is to stop the use of taskforce in Ebonyi state, as far as revenue generation is concerned. We started using moral persuasion, and you have to discuss with the tax payer and two of you will agree and come to terms on what to be paid, and how to pay it. And not using force, and that is what we are doing now.

And with this, in no distance time, the IGR of the state will be hitting five billion naria per month. Right now, the IGR is still over one billion naria per month.

That doesn’t mean that the people of the state will be taxed more. In fact, we have stopped giving market tolls in the villages. Not when you bring vegetables to the market, and you will be taxed, no. The state governor, Francis Nwifuru has stopped that.

What we intend doing is to block the leakages. The money collected by what we called contractors, the tax agents and the money goes to the private pockets instead of coming to the government account. 

We start making effective and efficient use of the staff of the Ebonyi State internal revenue service in the collection of the IGR. And we employ the use of information technology through automated machines, we will get a lot of funds and at the lower cost per person or per organization.

Demolition of houses at the vanco junction, and ‘delay’ in paying compensation to the owners:

The ultra modern flyover at the Vincent Egwu Nwankwo junction popularly known as Vanco, is ongoing and it is one of the great signature of this administration. The ministry of lands and survey has enumerated the properties that were destroyed and the department of evaluation has evaluated them and came up with over two billion naria to be compensated to the owners. But the state government is still saying that it is too much, comparing the compensation the federal government is paying for the Lagos- Calabar coastal highway. 

This is because the total compensation for the over seven hundred and forty kilometers of road was #2.75 billion, and then, the construction of flyover at the Vanco junction is costing over two billion naria. We don’t know what is happening and the state government is saying no. We need to look back to it. Outside that, the property owners at the vanco junction would have been paid.

Mr. Peter Okala is the former gubernatorial candidate of the National Conscience Party, NCP, a human rights activist and now, the Anambra State Director, ASMATA Soludo Solution Group, SSG, has in this exclusive interview with The Nations News Nigeria’s reporter, Cyprian Ebele, said that the antics of the oppositions by blackmailing Gov. Soludo, through kidnapping, armed robbery, falsehood on gov’s good achievements especially on infrastructural development of the state, can’t work and other issues excerpt: 

Can I meet with you officially?

I am Peter Okala, from Uga in Aguata Local Government Area. I am the State Director, Soludo Solution Group, SSG, Anambra State Amalgamated Traders’ Association, ASMATA, I was the former gubernatorial candidate of National Conscience Part, NCP,, in the state.

What is the significanceof Soludo Solution Group, SSG?

The Soludo Solution Group, SSG is formed to create awareness of the many achievements of the governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, because most people may not know that his achievements in just two years, have surpassed the successive administrations who stayed for 16  years. His projects are scattered across the state. Some knew of the projects that are within their locality or environment, but do not know that all communities have benefitted in one way or the other. 

The issue now, is that the oppositions want to frustrate these achievements by using sponsored criminal activities to deceive the good people of the state, pretending that the governor has not done any meaningful thing in the state since he came on board and so, I choose this topic to explain more on the antics of the opposition, “THE FRUSTRATION, DESPERATION AND SACRILEGIOUS ATTITUDE OF THE OPPOSITION ELEMENT WHOSE ONLY OPTION NOW IS SPONSORING KIDNAPPING OF NDI ANAMBRA TO GET AT THE STATE GOVERNMENT HOUSE,  EVEN WHEN SOLUDO HAS NOT APPLIED FOR SECOND TENURE”

Are you at home with the spate of security challenges in the state?

Security of lives and properties from the beginning of time has been the primary responsibilities of every government, the Soludo administration has neither neglected nor shied away from this all important aspect of a responsible government. From the beginning of this present administration in March 17 2022, It inherited an outrageous insecurity as one of the bundled liability from the previous administration, a situation where eight out of the Twenty One Local Government Council Areas which represented about 40 per cent of the entire State were taken over by kidnappers and bandits, unleashing their mayhem almost on daily basis, lives and properties were lost and public buildings razed, the entire seat of government were threatened with fire and brimstone, citizens were running helter skelter in search of protection, while Ndi Anambra became united in Condemnation of the dastardly acts.

But today, things are different, the government of Anambra State has taken the battle to the domain of the criminals and recovered the entire State and its citizens from the shackles of kidnapping, banditry and armed robbery. Soludo restored peace and hope which brought back our traditional peaceful burial ceremonies of Loved ones and other family events like marriages, house warmings and naming ceremonies. 

The ugly situation of that time gladdened the heart of the oppositions, whose instrument of criticism were barely in short supply, they were counting the number of days the Soludo administration would have lasted before things would fall apart for them to have their way, but alas their negative prayers were never answered, their hands never performed their wicked enterprise as the Solution Government stood like the Rock of Gibraltar and swoop across the entire State, smashed all the criminal hideouts, recovered all the eight Local Government Councils and restored normalcy to all communities in the state.

It’s no longer a hear say that for the past two years the opposition elements in Anambra State went underground because of lack of critical instrument of opposition, Solution took over our communities and villages and brought an overwhelming infrastructural developments to the extent that the major and viable opposition leaders didn’t have any other choice than to commend Charles Chukwuma Soludo led administration for performing above average in a short while. 

Generally, how will you rate governor Soludo’s 2yrs in office?

It’s a matter of record that the two years of Soludo’s administration has delivered viable and visible infrastructural developments more than the sixteen years of his predecessors. Successive administrations were only maintaining laboratory, Radiographic machines in our General Hospitals, but the Soludo administration has initiated the building and equipping of five new general Hospitals across the state. 

The sixteen years impasse between the workers of the water Cooperation of Anambra State and the government which resulted in the disappearance of pipe borne water in the entire Anambra State were settled and pipe borne water restored. The Internally Generated Revenue IGR which for the past sixteen years were only a gift of settlement to cronies with a pantry sum of at most Four Hundred Million Naira only (#400m), were generated for the state government which saw the Soludo administration in Partnership with the traders generating over Three Billion Naira only (#3 billion) over the same period at the same rate.

Since the civilian administration of 1999, no Government both from the federal, state or Local Government has given priority to the areas and Communities which did not turn up their votes during elections, only in Soludo’s administration can a community or Local Government which did not deliver their votes massively benefit from government largees. For example, Ogbaru Federal and State Constituencies voted different Political Parties against Soludo’s All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, but they are the top beneficiaries of Solution’s massive infrastructural developments.

The unwarranted funfair,  jamboree and lavish spending in funerals and other ceremonies in Anambra State barred by the laws of Anambra State were brought to bear on the citizens and governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo used the burial of his beloved late father as a yardstick to discourage lavish spending in funerals and other ceremonies which have plunged our families and homes in a terrible economic mess.

About five hundred Kilometers of Solid roads awarded by Soludo’s administration as well as about three hundred Kilometers already commissioned have automatically changed the movement of Ndi Anambra, with a multiplier effect on Socio-economic and security of lives and properties. The free antenatal cum Child delivery in all the state government hospitals and clinics, including the free education to pupils and students in Anambra State, became a big shock to the oppositions.

Government of other States and even successive Governments here were retrenching workers and reducing their work force, but the Soludo administration increased the work force with ten thousand workers with increment on their wages. With this, families, kindreds, communities and towns are now producers of farm crops and agricultural seedlings with economic threes springing up in our farm lands. Agricultural implements were distributed free of charge to the real farmers, courtesy of governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo.

Fighting of crimes and Criminalities in Anambra State took a different dimension as first batch of five thousand Youths have been empowered with skills, while another ten thousand is on the verge of receiving training , the age long concept of Umuboy’ scheme which was the secret mechanism used by the Igbos to develop their own to become masters of their own after few years of apprenticeship was restored by the Solution Government in order to return the glory of traders in Igbo land.

Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo is the champion of made in Anambra Products by making the use of local products as compulsory and official instrument for all Government functionaries, in order to market our indigenous products to the outsiders.

The 2025 Anambra governorship election is at the corner, what are your charges on the oppositions? 

The book of record may not contain the positive impacts on the environment and citizens of Anambra State by the Charles Chukwuma Soludo’s administration in just two years and the opposition elements have now invested heavily on the sponsorship of crimes and criminalities in Anambra State. 

To their wicked and unprogressive minds, there is no other way to throw spanners at Soludo’s achievement, than to sponsor kidnapping, banditry, armed robbery and all manners of crimes geared towards stopping Soludo. 

They are already asking questions in the media space on who would enjoy all these numerous infrastructural developments when crimes and criminalities are in the increase? That’s the thinking of the opposition elements. But I assure you, if Charles Chukwuma Soludo applies to Ndi Anambra for a second term in office, both indigenes and non indigenes would grab Soludo with both hands and that’s the greatest fear of the opposition.

The ASMATA Soludo Support Group, therefore wishes to tell those desperate opposition elements, who now soil their hands with the blood of Ndi Anambra to have a rethink and change their evil ways for good as the sacredness of the Land of Anambra is hereby invoked against the eaters of flesh and drinkers of the blood of Ndi Anambra, who now politicize kidnapping, banditry and armd robbery in Anambra State to discredit the gift of God to Anambrarians through Soludo’s administration, even when he has not applied for the second term, End.

Gloria Monica Tobechukwu Emezue, popularly known as GMT Emezue, is a Professor of English at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu Alike Ikwo in Ebonyi State, Nigeria.

She is one of the Principal Investigators (PI) for the NaijaVoices project. The scope of our project is to curate up to 500 hours of audio datasets in each of the three languages, namely Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.

In this interview, GMT Emezue explained that the NaijaVoices dataset will assist in the development of impactful voice technologies in the health, education, economic, religious, agricultural sectors and all other areas of human life in Africa.

Excerpts:

Please, can you introduce yourselves?

I am Gloria Monica Tobechukwu Emezue, popularly known as GMT Emezue. I am a Professor of English at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu Alike Ikwo in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. I am a literary critic, but can best be described as an Afrocentric scholar with a passion for identifying and promoting positive African values, indigenous practices and knowledge systems,

which includes African languages. 

I am one of the Principal Investigators (PI) for the NaijaVoices project. My Co-Principal Investigator is Chris Emezue.

Chris Emezue is a seasoned researcher affiliated with Mila-Quebec AI Institute in Canada, a prestigious research institute known for its groundbreaking scientific advancements in artificial intelligence.

As a researcher, Chris is committed to developing intelligent and reliable systems for under-represented contexts (this includes under-represented African and indigenous languages and cultures).

His research cuts across natural language processing, causality, and

reinforcement learning. As a dedicated contributor to the field of AfricaNLP, he has worked on several key projects to improve the representation of low-resource African language technologies and datasets (MMTAfrica, OkwuGbe, AfroDigits, IgboAPI). 

Furthermore, as an entrepreneur, Chris is working at Lanfrica Labs, a research institute with the mission to foster

technological innovation in language technologies.

Can you tell us about the nature and scope of the project?

The title of our project is “NaijaVoices: Curation of Audio Datasets in the Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba Languages.” These are the three major languages that are spoken in Nigeria. These three languages are estimated to be spoken by over 60 million people, both within and outside Nigeria and the African continent. The scope of our project is to curate up to 500 hours of audio

datasets in each of the three languages.

Thus, in all, we would have not less than 1,500 hours of audio datasets in these three languages. When some scholars saw our project proposal, we were told that we were being too ambitious because what we are proposing has never been achieved in any Nigerian language at such scale, as a result of the challenges that are strewn all over the path of its successful achievement. 

But I am glad that we undertook it and as of today, we have successfully curated the 1,500 hours of audio datasets in these three Nigerian languages. So far, to the best of our knowledge, at the moment, the NaijaVoices project boasts the largest volume of audio datasets to be curated in any Nigerian language (and probably second largest in Africa, the largest being for Kinyarwanda by Digital Umuganda).

What will Africa as a Continent benefit from the project?

Across the globe, major speech recognition platforms like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google’s Home dominate the market, yet they neglect the rich tapestry of African languages. Not a single native African language is supported by the current voice technologies widely used. 

What we have succeeded in doing by creating huge hours of audio datasets in these three languages will be of immense benefit to many Africans in several ways. To start with, many African scholars, who had been interested in research involving voice technologies will now have available audio datasets that they can use in inventing bespoke voice technologies for Nigerian languages. In the past, we are aware that many companies and start-ups had

expressed interest in creating machine learning models or artificial intelligence

platforms/gadgets that could use African languages. 

However, the major challenge had been

the non-availability of huge volumes of audio datasets in these African languages due to some challenges which included: the non-availability of millions of authentic scripted or non-scripted texts; non-availability of the sentence generating, voice recording, or validating platforms that have been tailored to handle the peculiarities of the African languages. For instance, in the area of gathering what we call authentic texts in African languages, our experience during this research has shown that most of what is littered on the internet are riddled with linguistic errors.

Our research has therefore been able to solve many of these challenges. For instance, we were able to devise new methods for creating authentic, contextually-grounded sentences, which we call the Sentence-Generating Method. Also, we observed that due to the peculiarity of some African languages, (tones, special characters, and so many other features) many of the already

existing audio-creating platforms do not support the peculiarities of African languages. 

This led us to work with our partners in the Lanfrica Labs to create platforms such as the Lanfrica Voice Recorder and Lanfrica Sentence Generating Platform, which we utilized to scale our operations. These platforms were specifically tailored towards meeting most of the peculiarities of African languages.

Finally, a large population of Africans, who had earlier been excluded from many voice technologies due to age or literacy skills, can now benefit from the new inventions that will be created using these three African languages, because language cuts across all age groups,

genders, and boundaries.

In a nutshell, the NaijaVoices dataset will assist in the development of impactful voice technologies in the health sector, education sector, economic sector, religious sector, agricultural sector, and all other areas of human life in Africa.

Who are the key sponsors of the project and how were you able to emerge as one of its principal investigators?

Our financial sponsor is the Lacuna Fund which is a consortium of the following organizations: Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Google.org, and The Rockefeller

Foundation. Our implementation partners include Lanfrica Labs, Global KANAC Ltd, Digital Learning Indaba (DLI), Masakhane, and a host of local communities.

I was able to emerge as a principal investigator as a result of my interest in Artificial Intelligence and my passion for promoting Afrocentric ideals and systems, of which African indigenous languages are part. When I started discussing some ideas with my co-principal investigator, we discovered that we shared some common interests concerning African languages, the Natural Language Processing (NLP) eco-system and artificial intelligence.

What actually led to the conceptualisation of the project?

Our major source of inspiration for the NaijaVoices project is the noticeable absence of Nigerian (African) indigenous languages in most AI technologies like Alexa, Siri, just to mention but a few. This is more critical in the area of voice technologies, which tend to reach many more people, including the very young (like toddlers), children, youth, old, blind, illiterate as well as the literate and educated. And these groups make up the larger population of Nigerians. 

Our analysis of the problem promptly revealed that the major problem was the absence of needed quality audio datasets in these languages. The datasets enable the creation of AI technologies. So, we set out to bridge this gap. And the result is the NaijaVoices project.

What stage is the project as we speak?

We have successfully completed the NaijaVoices project. We have over 1,500 hours of audio datasets in the three major Nigerian languages. This comprises 1.3+ million original and

contextual sentences, and 1.9+ million audio clips. The resource is publicly accessible at https://naijavoices.com/.

Stepping down the project to Nigeria, what will Nigerians and various sectors of the economy benefit?

Nigerians of all ages and in all fields of life like education, sports, agriculture, and health just to mention but a few will benefit a lot from the voice technologies that will be built as a result of the

NaijaVoices resource our effort, which is like laying the AI foundation for AI developments in Nigeria.

Furthermore, we believe that since Nigeria is gifted with many talented young men and women who are interested in artificial intelligence and Machine Learning, they too can also benefit economically when they develop some technologies that people would find very useful.

What is the investment potentiality of the project? 

The NaijaVoices Project has lots of investment potential for individuals and organizations that are into machine learning and artificial intelligence. What we have created has the possibility of

bringing forth many start-ups to emerge from Nigeria and outside the country. It has lots of investment opportunities, which we hope that many Nigerians could leverage to reverse their

economic fortunes and become wealth creators.

Does Africa as a Continent stand the chance to compete favorably with the Western World?

The African continent has a chance of competing favorably with the Western world when we talk about bringing forth good ideas. Many Africans have wonderful ideas about things that could be done to transform the continent. However, many of these ideas need financial sponsorship to become realities and it is in this area of financial sponsorship that Africa is lagging behind. 

From the so-called African leaders occupying positions in government to rich individuals, it is the same story of the paucity of sponsorship for brilliant ideas that will develop the continent. Many Africans have yet to discover the will to create a benign economic environment and structure that would permit and assist more Africans to become wealthy, thus enabling more development within the continent. 

In the area of data curation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, the

West appears to have fared better because there are public-spirited individuals and governments, who understand the principle of sustainable development and economic growth.

A simple example is seen in the fact that the fund that enabled us to achieve the vision of the NaijaVoices project is from the West, even though we had earlier sent our proposal to the Nigerian government.

So, our problem in Africa is the lack of a large number of selfless and visionary citizens and leaders, who would sow financial seeds (by supporting brilliant ideas) for the sake of developing and sustaining Africa’s tomorrow and the lives of future generations.