Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has flared up over what he described as insulting questions from his American friends over China’s new role as a colonial master in Africa.
He also explained on Sunday on “The Toyin Falola Interview” on Zoom why he preferred late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as his successor, despite knowing about his kidney ailment.
His words: “I feel insulted when they ask me in America: How are your new colonial masters doing?
“I should also ask you: how are your new Colonial masters? The amount of American treasury China is holding, if they unleash it on the world, America will feel it.
“China is making progress with its economy, buying our cocoa, etc higher than other parts of the world.
“I am not really worried about that. I will be worried if China does not pay heed to what it should be paying to: Start training Africans. Africans are capable of being trained.
“Don’t make it an all Chinese affair. If the Chinese are ready to do business with us, why will you ask me not to?
“And this will be with terms comfortable with me. They said the Chinese have taken over something in Zambia.
“It is the stupidity of governments that go on borrowing with nothing to show for it. For instance in Nigeria, I left government in 2007.
“I left after settling a quantum of debt. Over $30 billion. Left only a debt of $3.6 billion.
“But the debt has mounted again to over $30 billion. What have we done with it? We should not continue to behave irresponsibly and believe we can get away with it.
“If we got $20 billion debt relief and we have not learnt a lesson from that, they should teach us the bitter way.
“US can’t dictate to us who our friends should be.
“It is in our interest to keep our old friends, they should not teach us who our new friends should be.”
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:On Yar’Adua, the former President said: “Let me tell you the story of Umaru Yar’Adua. I knew he was ill and before I put him forward, I asked for his medical report which he sent to me and I sent it to one of the best doctors of our time and a good friend of mine who died only last year –Professor Akinkugbe.
“I said look at it because it is confidential and he said to me that from this report, this man has had a kidney transplant and it is successful, he is no longer under dialysis.
“And if you have a kidney transplant and it is successful, it is as good as if you didn’t have a kidney transplant at all. I accepted that and Umaru Yar’adua contested within the party and he contested within the country and came up.
“In the process of the campaign, I remember that he had to go for a medical checkup abroad and he was not around for a campaign here in Abeokuta.
“I called him because the rumour was that he had died. I called him on my telephone and put it on speaker. I said, ‘Umaru, are you dead or alive?’ and he said, ‘I am not dead, I am alive’.
“Within a couple of days, he came back and reported that he was checked up and he was well. That was the position of Umaru Yar’adua and if anybody in his right sense will think that what I have done in that position was not right, I leave him in the hands of God.”
Explaining why he ditched former Rivers State Governor, Dr. Peter Odili for Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, Obasanjo said: “Now, we needed a running mate for Yar’Adua. There were two possibilities – the first possibility was Peter Odili.
“Peter Odili was a much stronger personality than Goodluck Jonathan, but Odili had an EFCC issue, which made him to be dropped and once he was dropped, the next man was Goodluck Jonathan and Goodluck Jonathan had it all going for him.”
“He was not a strong character as Peter Odili, I will admit that, but he was not a pushover; he had been a deputy governor, he had been a governor and his state was doing fairly well.
“I don’t know what else anybody will say because the vice president had to come from the South and we had agreed that it would come from the South South.”