Posted by 9jabook.com on January 21, 2010 at 9:11pm
Nigeria’s former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday at the 7th Annual Trust Lecture in Abuja told President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to do the honourable thing by resigning as President of Nigeria because of his failing health.
Obasanjo made the speech in a reply to a question from one of the attendees at the event who had faulted him for the current Constitutional crisis by forcing President Yar’Adua on Nigerians.
The former President’s answer to the question was very blunt and hard on the President who was evacuated from Abuja on November 23, 2009.
"If you take up an assignment, a job-elected, appointed or whatever it is, and then your health starts to fail and you will not be able to deliver to satisfy yourself and to satisfy the people you are supposed to serve, then there is a path of honour and the path of morality, and if you don’t do that, then you don’t know anything.”
The former president has come under severe criticisms for anointing President Yar’Adua knowing fully well he had a kidney condition.
The former President’s answer to the question in full:
"When in 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 agree with that, you may not agree but I was convinced in my mind.
"Now, what I was looking for in those who will succeed me were 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 enough-politically, religiously, socially or whatever to manage the affairs of Nigeria. These three were the important things.
"Then Umaru Yar’Adua who is now the President, I know he has kidney problem and was under dialysis. Sometime earlier, he had gone abroad when he was still the Governor of Katsina State.
When the idea was for him to contest, I asked him and he gave me a medical report.
"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 were on dialysis and you are no longer under dialysis, it means you have had a successful kidney transplant and that you can live for as long as God may give you favour. Now, who am I and who are you not to accept that? That was the situation.
"Now, Mallam Musa Yar’Adua went campaigning and we campaigned together. I remember at one day of the campaign, he was run down. Chairman of our party then, Ahmadu Ali was also run down. Ahmadu Ali didn’t go abroad to check up, but he went abroad to check up and the rumour was that he was dead. And I called him and I put the telephone on speaker and I said, are you dead? And we continued with the campaign.
"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 (as president), which must meant maybe the kidney transplant is failing, if it hasn’t failed. That you cannot blame on me. You cannot even blame it on him.
"So, to say that I, Olusegun Obasanjo deliberately see somebody who is an invalid and is highly, highly ungrateful and make him President… how can I put so much into this country both in peace and in war and I will begin to run it down. If you have fear of God, you will not make that statement.
"On the way out of the constitutional crisis, what I needed to say on that, I have said as the Chairman of my Board of Trustees last week. I won’t say anything more. What I need to say is that nobody picked Yar’Adua so that he will not perform. If I did that, God will punish me. There is no reason why I should do that.
"Again, if you take up an assignment, a job-elected, appointed or whatever it is, and then your heath starts to fail and you will not be able to deliver to satisfy yourself and to satisfy the people you are supposed to serve, then there is a path of honour and the path of morality. There is path of honour and the path of morality and if you don’t do that, then you don’t know anything."
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