By Christian ABURIME
In any institutional landscape, data is sacred as performance rating firms wield critical influence over public perception and policy decisions. That is why ratings and rankings should be far more than academic exercises. They become instruments that can either build or destroy institutional credibility. The foundation of any credible rating system must rest on uncompromising data accuracy and rigorous empirical methodology, as these standards separate legitimate analytical work from mischievous speculation.
When rating firms compromise these fundamental principles, they risk not only misrepresenting the institutions they evaluate but also undermining their own professional standing and market credibility, thus turning them from trusted arbiters into sources of potential misinformation that can distort critical development narratives.
These days in the bilious cacophony of Nigeria’s governance discourse, where data is often wielded as a weapon rather than a tool for truth, the 2025 Philips Consulting Limited (PCL) State Performance Index (PSPI) has come out as a particularly dubious brew of either mischief or poor judgment. This report, which falsely ranks Anambra State near the bottom in critical areas like education (33rd), healthcare (30th), and capital expenditure per capita (33rd), has become fodder for opportunistic critics eager to paint Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo’s administration with the brush of denigration.
Yet, a closer, dispassionate, thorough scrutiny would reveal not a state in decline but a consulting firm’s venture into uncharted territory, marred by methodological amateurism and disconnected from verifiable realities.
Far from a “backwards slide,” Anambra State under Governor Soludo is on the rise, a positive trajectory with unprecedented investments, tangible outcomes, and international accolades, proof that progress is measured by facts, not by flawed surveys.
Let us first dissect the PCL report’s foundation, which crumbles under scrutiny like a house built on sand. Philips Consulting, historically a specialist in human resources, has now pivoted to state performance rankings, a field demanding statistical rigour, field validation, and impartiality. But where is the evidence of their expertise? The 2025 PSPI’s dramatic swing for Anambra, from 8th in 2024 to a dismal 34th overall, begs incredulity. Such volatility in a single year should prompt any credible analyst to pause, refine, and verify. Instead, PCL barrels ahead, relying on a sample size of just 78 respondents for Anambra’s over 6 million residents. By Cochran’s formula, a minimum of 385 respondents is needed for a mere 5% margin of error; PCL’s paltry pool invites sampling errors that render their conclusions laughable.
Compounding this is a glaring distribution bias: 76% male respondents, with no apparent stratification by age, income, or geography. This is not research; it is a skewed snapshot, likely drawn from urban elites in Lagos or Abuja, far removed from Anambra’s rural heartlands. The report overemphasises expenditure without assessing outcomes, value for money ignored in favour of raw numbers. And crucially, there is zero evidence of on-ground engagement: no stakeholder consultations, no community visits, and no cross-verification with state data. PCL’s armchair analysis, based on perceptions or conjectures rather than performance, joins the ranks of dubious rating agencies proliferating in Nigeria’s data fad.
When international bodies like UNESCO, UNICEF, and the Gates Foundation deploy teams for rigorous fieldwork and rank Anambra at the pinnacle, PCL’s bottom-tier placement exposes its superficiality.
Critics, particularly those playing insidious politics towards elections, seize on this report to decry Governor Soludo’s “policy failure.” For instance, they lament a supposed reversal in education, invoking some previous missionary school handovers as a golden age. But nostalgia blinds them to the present’s bold strides. Under Governor Soludo, Anambra has implemented truly free education from nursery to JSS3 since September 2023, extending to SS3 in 2024 across all public schools. The result? A 27.05% surge in primary enrollments and 10.36% in secondary, slashing the out-of-school rate to a national low of 2.9% per UNESCO. And this is the lowest in the country
What’s more, no other state matches the recruitment of 8,115 teachers in Governor Soludo’s first two years in office, transparently selected to end the plague of teacher-less classrooms. Massive upgrades in physical and technological infrastructure have propelled Anambra’s students to global stardom: the 2023 International Debate Championship in Malaysia, clinched by Anambra pupils; Christ the King College, Onitsha, securing gold in the 2024 World Affairs Challenge, the first for Nigeria in 32 years, with their innovative “Wise Tales by Primus” project addressing UN Sustainable Development Goals; St. John Vianney Science College winning the 2024 National Girls in ICT Competition with a virtual reality tour of Nigerian landmarks; and in June 2025, Anambra teams dominating the UK-Nigeria International Debate Championship. Even in standardised tests, Marist Comprehensive College, Nteje, boasted 24 students scoring above 300 in the 2025 UTME, while Okeke Chinedu Christian from Anambra topped the nation with 375 marks. These are not anomalies; they are the fruits of an administration prioritising quality over quantity, outcomes over optics. PCL’s 33rd ranking? A farce that ignores learning metrics, teacher quality, and these irrefutable wins.
Healthcare fares no better in PCL’s distorted lens, slotting Anambra at 30th despite empirical evidence of excellence. In 2024, the National Primary Healthcare Leadership Challenge, judged by UNICEF, the Dangote Group, Nigeria Governors’ Forum, and the Gates Foundation, crowned Anambra No. 1 in the Southeast and nationwide, awarding $1.2 million after on-site assessments by a 15-member international team across all states. This accolade celebrates Governor Soludo’s unprecedented free antenatal and delivery services in public hospitals, benefiting over 120,000 women in two years. Add massive investments in new and upgraded general hospitals, telemedicine, and tertiary care, and the metrics speak volumes: child mortality second only to Lagos, public hospital patronage skyrocketing from 25% in 2022 to 73% today. PCL’s ranking, devoid of such context, reeks of bias, perhaps because it prioritises perceptions from a handful of respondents over peer-reviewed, field-validated data.
Infrastructure critics, emboldened by PCL’s underplaying, overlook Anambra’s engineering renaissance. In three years, 842.2 kilometres of roads have been awarded, with 546.3 km completed, including eight bridges, flyovers, and over 150 km of dualisation projects. These are not vanity projects; they have earned multiple awards for transformative delivery, connecting communities and fueling economic growth. But PCL’s focus on capital expenditure per capita misses the efficiency: Governor Soludo’s “Doing More with Less” mantra ensures every naira yields maximum impact.
Even PCL concedes Anambra’s strengths: though, placing it 7th in ease of doing business, driven by Onitsha and Nnewi’s vibrancy; 8th in debt management and internally generated revenue, yet buries them under social indictments. But independent validations affirm fiscal mastery: BudgIT’s 2024 Fiscal Performance Ranking placed Anambra 3rd nationwide, with top honours in the Q1 2025 State Fiscal Transparency League for digital accountability, e-procurement, and timely data publication. These reflect prudent resource management, aligning investments in education, health, and infrastructure with sustainable development.
So, do we say that PCL ‘experts’ are being mischievous or are blind and need to see an optician urgently? Their report’s apparent mischaracterisation of Anambra State’s performance across critical sectors like education, healthcare, and infrastructure represents precisely the kind of methodological failure that undermines some rating firms’s credibility in Nigeria.
Such fundamental assessment errors not only do a disservice to the state’s genuine development efforts and achievements but also call into serious questions about the consulting firm’s analytical competence.
In all, Philips Consulting must recognise that credibility in the rating business is earned through consistent methodological rigour and accuracy, qualities that, once compromised, prove exceedingly difficult to restore in a competitive market where trust represents the primary currency of professional success.
To Governor Soludo’s detractors exploiting PCL’s report: your tenuous narrative collapses against the avalanche of achievements. Anambra is not slumping; it is soaring, it is on the rise, propelled by a governor who blends vivid vision with actionable, verifiable governance.
With Governor Soludo, Anambra is constantly on the rise, and Ndi Anambra are happy!
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