By Labaran Kenneth
365Daily – Former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar (Rtd), has declared that he was not involved in ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s sojourn into politics which led to his emergence as president of Nigeria.
Speaking with Trust TV, Abubakar said he had advised Obasanjo, who had just been released from jail, to go home and take care of his health.
Obasanjo, who was detained by the regime of late General Sani Abacha, was released by Gen. Abdulsalami.
He narrated: “He (Obasanjo) came to see me to tell me that he had been approached by this group of people, they want to make him the candidate to stand for election.
“I said, ‘Sir, if I were you, please disregard this people. Sir, go home and rest and sort your health out and so on and so forth.’
“He said: ‘Okay, General, thank you for your advice, I will get back to you’. He never got back to me. The next I heard was that he was one of the presidential candidates.
“I tried to tell people that I had nothing to do in bringing Obasanjo to contest the election. Whatever must have happened was within the political parties and so on.”
Going further, he explained that he gave support to Obasanjo as a form of ‘rehabilitation’ to allow him revive his businesses and other interests that may have been affected by his absence due to detention.
He, however, clarified that the gesture was not limited to him alone as others were also beneficiaries of the ‘support’.
“Of course not only him, all people that were imprisoned in one way or the other, we tried to rehabilitate them; to help them in one way or the other. In one way or the other we did what we could to assist them, so you cannot equate that to bringing him to contest for an election,” he said.