Following former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s statement on supporting Igbos for presidency in 2019, the Northern Progressives Youth Initiative has reacted angrily to his pronouncement.

Obasanjo on Tuesday, January 24, while hosting the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Ogun state chapter, at his Abeokuta Hilltop residence said: “Irrespective of the thinking of the people ahead of 2019, I personally think that South-East should have a go at the Presidency too.”

However the group in a statement signed by Gazali Abdullahi it’s Secretary-General, said that the comment was unbecoming of Obasanjo and condemnable.

The statement reads: “while President Muhammadu Buhari is on vacation and with so much fuss over the President’s decision to undergo medical examinations during his vacation, it is confounding to find an elder in the status of a former president needlessly criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country and discussing a successor to a sitting president.

“In his days as a sitting president, everyone knows that such a crass remark would have passed as a felony by Obasanjo’s own standards. And, for someone who had publicly claimed to have retired from politics, one wonders on what auspices Obasanjo thinks he can unilaterally determine which region produces the president for a country of almost 180 million people, or if integrity has any interpretation in Obasanjo’s dictionary.”

The statement further said that judging by his conduct after his exit from the presidency, Obasanjo had clearly shown that he is not to be a friend of the North.

“This time again, Obasanjo has shown his hands that he is neither a friend of President Buhari nor is he a friend of the North. But as far as 2019 is concerned, we want to make it equivocally clear that only God, through the ballot of majority of Nigerians, and not one man can decide who the president of Nigeria will be in 2019,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, the Movement for the Actualisation of s Sovereign State Of Biafra (MASSOB) has also lashed out at the former president after he rooted for an Igbo presidency for 2019.

MASSOB said they will not take the former president serious as he might just want to use the Igbos for his own gain.

The group said: “Nobody should rejoice over the statement by Obasanjo because he will never do or say anything good about Igbo. For him to solicit for Igbo president is not in the interest of Ndigbo.”

News24