" An unpardonable mistake and sin against God would have been to foist him Atiku on Nigeria." ~ Obasanjo.

"I settled for Atiku Abubakar.

"Some of the reasons were he worked hard for the project, he never indicated interest in the job to me, he had worked closely with Shehu Yar'Adua and Shehu never passed any adverse comment on him

He had been elected as a Governor which already put him on the pedestal to move up politically, but he had been short- changed in the election that would have put M.K.O.Abiola in power, and he seemed to have some national outreach.

What I did not know, which came out glaringly later, was his parental background which was somewhat shadowy, his propensity to corruption, his tendency to disloyalty,

his inability to say and stick to the truth all the time,a propensity for poor judgment, his belief and reliance on marabouts,  his lack of transparency, his trust in money to buy his way out on all issues and his readiness to sacrifice morality, integrity, propriety truth and national interest for self and selfish interest.

May be some of these traits and poor attributes are not easy to see until you work with the person concerned. And those who should tell would keep quite so that they would not be accused of running others down .

For instance until later, when a distinguished chief from Bauchi pointed out to me the value of pedigree, queried Atiku's pedigree and blamed me for making a wrong choice, I did not pay attention to Atiku's parental background.

Furthermore until all efforts to help Atiku change had failed- and having stumbled upon a report of inquiry carried out on him- I asked one of my predecessors why he did not inform me of how bad the report was and he said that he though I knew.

He said, " This was a man I wanted to dismiss and jail but for the intervention of Shagaya and Shehu Yar'Adua. ". I took him at face value. However if his appointment was an error, I fully accepted responsibility for the genuine mistake.

And knowing all that I discovered about him, what would have been an unpardonable mistake and sin against God would have been to foist him on Nigeria."

Olusegun Obasanjo
MY WATCH
Volume 2
Pages 31- 32