Soludo, Okonjo-Iweala, Best Appointments I Made As President — Obasanjo

Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president, spoke on his connection with Chukwuma Soludo, the governor of Anambra State, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the current director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), on Saturday.

He referred to them as some of his best presidential appointments.

The former president of Nigeria has denounced what he calls “chronic” Igbophobia, or prejudice towards individuals of southeast Asian descent.

At a celebration honoring Governor Soludo’s first year in office, Obasanjo gave a speech.

Soludo oversaw the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) during Obasanjo’s administration, which lasted from 1999 to 2007, while Okonjo-Iweala served as the minister of finance.

The former President claimed that Soludo, who served as his close economic advisor, “never misadvised me,” and that he was chosen to manage the central bank because of the economist’s success.

The 85-year-old statesman claimed that Soludo was only the second CBN governor in Nigeria not associated with a commercial bank.

The ex-president claimed that soon after appointing the academic, he came into contact with a dissident voice.

“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.

From his own experience, the former president said that being pleasant is the best way to win friends.

Okonjo-Iweala and Soludo were “probably the best of the appointments that I made when I was president,” he added.