Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has condemned the fact that some Nigerians “continue to” dislike Igbo people, which he calls “igbophobia”.
During Obasanjo’s administration which lasted from 1999 to 2007, Soludo served as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), while Okonjo-Iweala, the current world trade executive, served as finance minister.
Speaking at an event in Anambra State on Saturday, March 25 to celebrate Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s first year in office, Obasanjo said Soludo, who has worked closely with him as an economic adviser, said: economics, “never advise me wrong”, and the economist’s performance impressed him. So much so that he was asked to run the apex bank.
He said Soludo is Nigeria’s second CBN governor who is not a commercial banker.
Obasanjo says that after appointing Okonjo Iweala, he quickly found himself facing dissenting voices.
“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.’
“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,” Obasanjo said.
He added that the appointments of Okonjo-Iweala and Soludo were “probably the best of the appointments that I made when I was president”.
