Take path of honour, Obasanjo advises Yar'Adua

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Take path of honour, Obasanjo advises Yar'Adua
22 January 2010, 7:24 pm

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo publicly spoke yesterday on the health and absence of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua from office, with an admonition to the ailing Nigerian leader to tread the path of honour on the matter. He also defended his support and preference for Yar'Adua as his successorThe Guardian Newspaper of Nigeria reports that the National Assembly, the two chambers of the legislature, were also upbeat on the Yar'Adua saga. While the Senate resolved to take its final decision on the controversy trailing the continued absence of the President on Tuesday after it was briefed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Alhaji Yayale Ahmed on the leader's health conditions, the Lower House raised a six-man panel to travel to Saudi Arabia to meet Yar'Adua. In Lagos, human rights activists under the umbrella of Save Nigeria Group, stormed Alausa, Ikeja, the seat of power to protest the continued absence of Yar'Adua from the country. The President has been away abroad since November 23 to treat his dignosed acute pericarditis - and inflamation of the heart lining.The rally started from the Government Reserved Area (GRA), Ikeja to the State Secretariat in Alausa. The courts were almost deserted as most lawyers abandoned the courtrooms to participate in the rally. And falling short of joining in the clamour for Yar'Adua's resignation, Obasanjo said: "If you take up an appointment, or a job, elected, appointed or whatever and then your health starts failing you, and you will not be able to satisfy yourself and the people you are supposed to serve, then, there is a part of honour and a part of morality and if you don't do that.... I do not need to say more than that." Obasanjo's comments came during the question and answer session of the seventh yearly Trust Dialogue organised by the Abuja-based Media Trust Limited, which he chaired. The response was triggered by a question asked by one Buhari Bello Jese, who accused the former President of being the architect of the current constitutional crisis in the nation. According to Obasanjo, "nobody picked Umaru Yar'Adua so that he will not perform. If I did, God will punish me because I love this country so much so that there is no reason for me to do that." He thereafter delved into the history of how Yar'Adua emerged from several Nigerians, who aspired to lead the country at that time. "When in year 2006, the idea came as to succession, I was convinced in my mind that a southerner succeeding me will not augur well for this country. * "So, what I did was to look for a Nigerian with three qualities: First, somebody with enough intellectual capacity to run the affairs of this country; second, somebody with enough personal integrity and somebody that is broad-minded both politically and religiously to run the affairs of this country. "I knew that Yar'Adua has kidney problem and was under dialysis and that he went abroad for the treatment when he was the governor of Katsina State. Before I picked him, I asked him questions and he gave me the medical report that states that he is no longer under dialysis. I asked medical experts to interpret the report and they told me that once you had completed your dialysis, you have had a successful kidney transplant and can live as long as God wants you to live. If medical experts had said that, who am I to begin to think that the dialysis will fail?" Obasanjo said it would amount to insult for anybody to think that he deliberately chose an invalid to succeed him and recounted how he went round the country with Yar'Adua during the 2007 presidential election campaign. "I campaigned with President Yar'Adua and when the rumours came that he (Yar'Adua) was dead, I called him on phone and asked him: 'Umoru, are you dead or alive.' For you to say that Olusegun Obasanjo deliberately picked an invalid to succeed me is an insult. "I know the sacrifice that I made for this country, both in peace and in war. How can I, who has made huge sacrifices for the country, do what will not be in the interest of this nation? Nobody picked Yar'Adua so that he will not perform, if I had done that, may God punish me," he said. The former president, who also spoke extensively on the issue of power problem in the country, described the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) as the most corrupt public institution in the country. He said faced with the reality, his administration made a lot of investment in the power sector, but lamented that for 20 years, there was no investment in the sector. He added that the last investment made in that sector was during the Second Republic by Alhaji Shehu Shagari. Yesterday's briefing from Yayale was the fifth the Senate had received from different groups on Yar'Adua's health. The Safe Nigeria Group led by Prof. Wole Soyinka, the Gen. Muhammadu Buhari-led National Democratic Movement, the Senator Anyim Pius Anyim Concerned Nigerians, and the Attorney-General of the Federation, had all made submissions to the Senate on the matter. Briefing journalists shortly after the two-hour closed-door meeting with Yayale at the National Assembly, Senate spokesman, Ayogu Eze, declared that the Upper House had resolved to deliberate on all the submissions, especially Yayale's submission and take a decision.

Source: Businessday :: News you can trust

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