Former Nigerian President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has described his appointments of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Charles Soludo as his best appointments, as he speaks about Igbophobia.
According to news reports, Obasanjo was Nigeria’s president from 1999 until 2007.
During that time, he chose Charles Soludo as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Okonjo-Iweala as finance minister, both of Igbo descent.
It should be noted that Soludo is the current governor of Anambra state, while Okonjo-Iweala is the current Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
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On Saturday, during an event to commemorate Governor Soludo’s one-year tenure, Obasanjo claimed the appointments of Okonjo-Iweala and Soludo were “perhaps the best of the appointments that I made when I was president.”
On February 25, the former president officially supported Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, and expressed concern over Igbo discrimination in Nigeria.
To explain what he meant by “Igbophobian,” the 85-year-old former president told how an anonymous close acquaintance responded when he appointed Soludo as CBN governor and Okonjo-Iweala as finance minister, respectively.
Obasanjo said, “Somebody came to me and said, ‘Wow! You have ruined the economy of Nigeria.’ I said, ‘How?’ He said, ‘An Igbo woman, Minister of Finance; an Igbo man, Governor of the Central Bank? Then you have clearly completed the task of ruining the economy of Nigeria.’
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“I don’t know why he said that, except for what I can call Igbophobia, and I don’t take that lightly. It remains, it persists. But when you have that type of thing that was said to me and the type of thing that you know is going on, as I have just called it, what do we do with it?
“I believe we have to go back to the scripture, which says we must conquer evil with good. And whoever you are, wherever people are afraid of you, you must make yourself friendly to those who are afraid of you and earn their friendship by being good to them, and that is what we have to do.”
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