Obasanjo: Why I preferred my successor to other PDP members

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo explains why he settled for late President Umaru Yar'adua as his successor among several other PDP members whom he considers were 'stinkingly corrupt'.

The 78-year-old former PDP member now a member of APC spoke in an interview with Channels Television, in Abeokuta on Wednesday July 15.

''Even if you take your son as your successor, you are not sure of what he will do when he gets there,'' Obasanjo told Channels TV. ''Don't ever kid yourself. What do I know about any successor? What he presents. When he gets there, he presents it differently. We did our best, but if you say our best is not good enough, I will say, when it comes to your turn, do better. With all the people that are available for successor, what we came up with was about the best that we could think of at that time. One of those who wanted to do the job came to me and said, ‘Sir, I like your job, but I cannot do it the way you are doing it.' Now, if he had told me that, should I then come and say, ‘okay, come, let me give you the job?’ He had told me that, 'I like your job, but look, the way you are doing it, I haven’t got the stamina to do it that way.' Then, what do you expect me to do? Or the one that I know that, oh!, this one, before he gets the job, he’s stinkingly corrupt. Now will I be able to defend myself before God and man if with what I know I give this job or I encourage the man to have this job?

 Yar’Adua died on May 5, 2010, from heart-related ailments.