Former president Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo, broke his silence on President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s ailment yesterday, saying the ailing number one citizen should take the path of honour and morality by throwing in the towel.

This is even as he vehemently denied the allegations that he deliberately imposed ailing President Yar’Adua on Nigerians to punish them, saying it was an insult on his person.
Obasanjo, who was speaking in Abuja at the 7th annual Trust dialogue put together by publishers of Daily Trust Newspapers, said it was an insult for any God-fearing and right thinking Nigerian to have that kind of assumption after all his contributions and sacrifice to this country in peace and war times.

Denying the allegations, Obasanjo swore: “Nobody picked Yar’Adua so that he will not perform. If I do that, God will punish me. Yes, because I love this country so much and there is no reason why I should do that.”

He advised that the proper thing for Yar’Adua to do in his present situation was to resign.
According to him, “If you take up an appointment, a job, elected or appointed whatever and then your health start failing, and you will not be able to deliver and satisfy your self and satisfy the people you are supposed to serve, then there is a path of honour and a path of morality and if you don’t know that, then it means you don’t know anything. I will stop at that.”

The former president who admitted that he played a great role to search for someone that would succeed him in office, said he found the three qualities he was looking for in Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, but did not know medical condition was very critical. According to Obasanjo, the medical report presented to him by Yar’Adua when he first approached him on the idea for him to contest the post of president, showed that he had crossed the most critical stage in his kidney condition. The former president added that that convinced him that Yar’Adua was the right man for the job.

Obasanjo explained further that, based on the medical report presented to him by Yar’Adua, he contacted medical experts who allayed his fears and assured him that Yar’Adua had indeed crossed the most critical stage of kidney failure.
Obasanjo, spoke for the first time on the allegation by some Northern leaders that he deliberately planted President Yar’Adua despite his unstable health on Nigerians to serve as punishment to the Northerners. He dismissed the allegation as untrue. According to the former president, he had set out three very important qualities, which anyone that was to take over from him must possess.

He said, “as to succession, I was convinced that a Southerner succeeding me will not augur well for Nigerians. You may not agree with me but that is the truth. And I was looking for somebody who has three important qualities. I was looking for somebody who will succeed me to be somebody that has enough intellectual capacity to run the affairs of the country. I was looking for somebody who has sufficient personal integrity to run the affairs of the nation, somebody who is sufficiently broadminded politically, religiously and socially to manage the affairs of the nation. These three were important and paramount to me.”

Obasanjo, who got emotional while explaining his relationship with President Yar’Adua, said: “when the idea for him to contest came up, I know he had kidney problem and was under dialysis and that sometime earlier, he had gone abroad and stayed for close to six months while he was governor of Katsina State.

“And so when the idea was conceived 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, and you are no longer on dialysis, it means you have had a successful kidney transplant and that you can stay as long as God may wish that you live. Now, who am I and who are you not to accept that and that was how we started off with the campaigns.

“If you remember, at one stage of the campaign when it was intense, he broke down and the chairman of our party, Ahmadu Alli also broke down and they went abroad for check up and the rumour was that he was dead and I phoned him and I put the telephone on speaker and I said, ‘Umoru, are you dead?’ That was the true situation.”

The former president maintained that he was not aware, to the best of his knowledge, that President Yar’Adua, was on dialysis after that, adding that the issue of dialysis actually came up during his first year in office.
“It wasn’t to the best of my knowledge that he was on dialysis after that. When the issue of dialysis came up, it was well in his first term, which must mean one thing and that is that the kidney transplant is failing, if it has not failed, and we don’t have to blame him for that.”
An angry Obasanjo, in explaining his position on picking Yar’Adua as his successor said, “so for people to say that I, Olusegun Obasanjo, deliberately put somebody who is an invalid, I think it is the height of insult. How can I put so much in this country both in peace and war time and give the running of this country to one that is invalid? How can I? And you say there is no constitutional crisis?
Obasanjo’s reaction to the Yar’Adua saga came up during the interactive session, when an angry young man from the North openly accused the former president that he imposed President Yar’Adua on them and that the president’s state of health had dragged the country backward and caused a ripple.

Obasanjo, who apparently looked not too happy about the way things were going on in the country said he would not say much about the constitutional crisis currently rocking the country as he had talked on that in his capacity as the Peoples Democratic Party Board of Trustees chairman last week.
He, however, shocked the audience when he said “if you take up an appointment, a job, elected or appointed whatever and then your health starts failing and you will not be able to deliver and satisfy your self and satisfy the people you are supposed to serve. Then, there is a path of honour and a path of morality and if you don’t know that, then it means you don’t know anything. I will stop at that.”

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