Former president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo has reacted to age long speculation about his father being Igbo.
Former president Obasanjo described the claim as laughable. In a statement released by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi following a visit to the former president by the Ndigbo Amaka Progressive Market Association in Lagos at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, according to the former president, insinuation about his father being an Igbo man “just make me laugh”.
He however did not speak further on his paternity rather, he reiterated his call for national unity while appealing to those threatening to drive a particular ethnicity from their region to desist from such.
He explained that the Nigeria’s penultimate civil war was to keep the Ndi Igbo as integral part of Nigeria and not to chase them away. He said the purpose of the Biafra-Nigeria civil war was to keep the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba as one. In his words: “the civil war was not to fight Igbos to go, but to come. So, if anybody says to me, that somebody should leave any place, he will be the one to leave.”