Anambra State Governor, Charles Soludo
Anambra State Government has dismissed the 2025 PCL State Performance Index (PSPI) as “deeply flawed and misleading,” protesting the state’s shocking plunge from 8th place in 2024 to 34th this year.
The sharp criticism came via a statement issued Friday by Mrs. Chiamaka Nnake, Anambra’s Commissioner for Budget and Planning, who targeted Philips Consulting Limited (PCL) for what she called an “unscientific and biased methodology” in compiling the rankings.
Nnake zeroed in on the report’s glaring weaknesses, starting with its minuscule sample of just 78 respondents—a number she deemed laughably inadequate for a state teeming with over six million people.
“By accepted statistical standards, the sample size is invalid,” she declared in the statement. Compounding the issue, she pointed out, a whopping 76 percent of those respondents were men, skewing the results into “unrepresentative and biased” territory.
The commissioner didn’t stop there, blasting the index for leaning too heavily on subjective perceptions and raw spending figures while ignoring tangible, on-the-ground results in critical areas like education, health, and infrastructure.
“It’s unfortunate that in spite of these achievements, PCL ranked Anambra 30th in Health and failed to reflect significant development indicators across key sectors,” Nnake lamented.
To drive her point home, Nnake rattled off a litany of overlooked triumphs under Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s watch.
In education, she touted universal free schooling from nursery through senior secondary (SS3), the hiring of over 8,100 new teachers, and a robust 27 percent jump in student enrollment rates.
On the health front, Anambra snagged the top national spot in a 2024 UNICEF-led healthcare initiative, with more than 120,000 women benefiting from gratis maternal services at state facilities.
Infrastructure got equal billing: the administration has rolled out over 546 kilometers of roads in just three years, alongside a slate of flyovers and vital bridges that have transformed connectivity.
These feats, she argued, paint a picture of real progress that the PCL report conveniently airbrushed out.
Wrapping up her takedown, Nnake called on PCL to overhaul its approach with “rigorous methodologies,” including boots-on-the-ground surveys, balanced sampling, and hard data on outcomes rather than armchair opinions. “You cannot sit in Lagos or Abuja and rank states based on the opinions of a few people
. This reduces serious governance efforts to mere propaganda,” she fired off, urging a more credible benchmark for measuring state-level strides.
