The Africa Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, has slammed former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo over the recent ‘Igbophobia’ comment.
JomogNews Nigeria reported that Obasanjo while speaking at a ceremony organized to mark Governor Charles Soludo’s one year in office on Saturday, said the appointments of Okonjo-Iweala and Soludo were “probably the best of the appointments that I made when I was president”.
The former president who openly supported the candidacy of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party on February 25, frowned at how the Igbos are persistently discriminated against in Nigeria.
To explain what he meant by one being an Igbophobian, the 85-year-old former president recounted how an unnamed close associate reacted when he made Soludo and Okonjo-Iweala CBN governor and finance minister respectively.
In response to Obasanjo’s recent remark, Sowore during an interview on Mic On Podcast with Seun Okinbaloye, accused the ex-president of hypocrisy towards the Igbos.
The political activist said he had not seen any Nigerian who probably killed more Igbo people than Obasanjo.
He narrated how Obasanjo, as a top officer in the Nigerian Army during the Civil War led a massacre that resulted in the death of 3.5 million Igbo people.
According to Sowore, the former president is yet to apologize to the Igbos over the massacre, yet exploiting their emotions in order to gain undeserved praise.
He said, “I was reading a headline; Obasanjo was saying Igbo phobia. This is a guy who went to the east and shot people dead because they wanted Biafra.
“He was one of the officers that obtained the surrender of Biafrans. They were asking for a nation. Obasanjo and others, (Theophilus) Danjuma, (Muhammadu) Buhari, (Ibrahim) Babangida; they went to the east and killed up to 3.5 million people.
“They did not even apologize for it. Maybe 60 years later, you are saying you suddenly find out that people hate Igbos when you in Nigerian uniform went and killed children, women, men, boys who are of Igbo extraction.
“I was really livid that he suddenly found out that there is Igbo phobia. When the Nigerian Army carried out a massacre and because he wants to play on the intelligence and emotions of Igbos, they will be clapping for him. Oh! Obasanjo is now our human rights defender. He is fighting for Igbo. I have never seen anybody among Nigerians that has probably killed more Igbos than Obasanjo. They killed people during the civil war.”
