By Cajetan Mmuta

The immediate past Managing- Director of Anambra State Signage and Advertisement Agency (ANSAA) Mr. Jude Emecheta has tasked residents and people of the state to rally around Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo to enable him to deal decisively with hoodlums masquerading as unknown Gunmen and other criminal elements terrorizing the state.

Emecheta stated this, during an handing over ceremony to mark the end of his eight years in office held in the state capital.

He pointed out that citizens of Anambra state cannot be slaves in their land and as such, the governor should treat the Gunmen with kid gloves in order not to lose the war against crime and criminality across the state.

The former ANSAA boss also frowned at the spate of killing of innocent lives and destruction of public properties in parts of Imo state, a development he noted was a consequence of power drunkenness and politics of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) at the center.

According to him, “If you give the boys chance, we will lose the war against recovering the state from hoodlums. If we allow them, we will be slaves on our land. The so-called unknown gunmen, we know them and we must deal with them.”

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“Soludo is prepared to smoke them out of their hidden places. We cannot allow people from outside the State to destabilize the state,” he said.

He further cautioned those who said that Soludo is talking too much to guard their utterances as they are not correct and are yet to see the governor in action.

Emecheta maintained that Soludo has started well from steps so far taken towards sensitizing the people and trying to put square pegs in square holes, adding that “the governor has not started talking.”

He urged Ndi Anambra to support the governor for him to clean up the system and restore sanity in the state.

“People should support Soludo to rid the state of criminal elements. These criminals are not from Anambra and should not be allowed to destroy the State ” he said.

On his achievements as ANSAA pioneer managing director, he said the agency had been able to employ over 5, 000 youths thereby reducing the unemployment rate in the state.

He said the body has done well in the state and urged the government to sustain the tempo of putting the state in proper perspective by looking into the law that established the agency.

He explained that the law setting up the body was fashioned after the Lagos state advertising agency without considering the peculiarity in the state, stressing that there was the need to rejig the law of the agency in the various localities for ease of identification.

He added that if ANSAA is properly harnessed it would generate over one billion nairas into the coffers of state government every year.