Between Obasanjo and 'Yar Adua

OBJ is back in the news....good or bad. He was at a media dialogue in Abuja 21/01/2010:

When in the year 2006 the idea came up as to succession, I was convinced in my mind that a Southerner succeeding me will not augur well for Nigeria. You may not agree with that, you may not agree. I was convinced in my mind that.

Now, I was looking for somebody who will succeed me; who has three important qualities. One, he has enough intellectual capacity to run the affairs of Nigeria. Two, he has sufficient personal integrity to run the affairs of Nigeria. Three, he is sufficiently broad minded in knowledge, politically, religiously, socially, whatever to manage the affairs of Nigeria.

These three were important and very paramount in my mind (What about health? A participant at the dialogue shouted from his seat followed by a brief rowdiness). Wait, wait, wait, you may hear what you have never heard...Then Umaru Yar’adua who is now the President, I know he had kidney problem and was under dialysis. Some time earlier, he had gone abroad when he was governor of Katsina. When the idea was for him to contest, I asked him and he gave me a medical report and the medical report showed that he had come off dialysis.

I asked experts who then told me that if you were under dialysis or you are on dialysis and you are no longer on dialysis, it means you have had a successful kidney transplant and that you can live for as long as God may wish you to live.

Now, who am I and who are you not to accept that? (Applause). Wait, wait, wait; that was the situation and I...now that you want to hear...He went campaign and we campaigning together. And you will remember that at one stage of the campaign, he was run down. Chairman of our party then, Ahmadu Ali was also run down. Ahmadu Ali didn’t go abroad but he went abroad for check up. And then there was rumour that he was dead and I called him and put the telephone on speaker. And I said Umaru, are you dead or not (applause). And you heard his voice live and kicking; he came back and continued the campaign. That was the true situation, and to the best of my knowledge he wasn’t on dialysis after that. When the issue of dialysis came, he was well into his first term, which must mean one thing; that the kidney transplant is failing if it hasn’t failed. That you cannot blame on anybody. You cannot even blame it on him (Yar’adua).

So for people to say that I Olusegun Obasanjo deliberately picked somebody who is an invalid, I think it is the height of insult. How can I put so much into this country both in peace and in war and then think of giving this country to somebody who will run it down (Applause). How can I? Even if you don’t have the fear of God you will not think that way...and you said there is constitutional crisis, I will not comment on that. What I needed to say on that, I had said it as the chairman of my Board of Trustees last week and I won’t say anything more. The one that I need to say is the fact that nobody picked Yar’adua so bad he will not perform. If I did that God will punish me. Yes because I love this country so much that there is no reason why I should do that.

But wait, if you take up an appointment, a job, elected, appointed, whatever it is and then your health starts saying, I will not be able to deliver, to satisfy yourself and the people that you are supposed to serve, then there is the path of honour and the path of morality. And if you don’t know that, then you don’t know anything.