My quarrel with Obasanjo over –Atiku

Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has said that the quarrel between him and his former boss, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo is over.

Atiku also said that he did not harbour any “hatred or enmity” against the former President.

The former VP spoke on Tuesday, in Abuja, when he granted audience to the leaders of the Northern Youth Leaders Forum, a group that recently embarked on a mission to settle the quarrel between the former President and his deputy.

The group, led by one Eliot Afiyo, had some weeks back met with Obasanjo in his Ota farm, in Ogun State, during which the ex-President announced that he had forgiven his former deputy.

Both Obasanjo and Atiku ruled the country together as numbers one and two between 1999 and 2007 but the two were at loggerheads towards the end of their tenure over the former’s alleged third-term agenda, which contradicted his deputy’s ambition to become the president.

“I don’t harbour any grudge against my former boss. Yes, we had disagreements in office. These were mere disagreements. I harbour no hatred or enmity against him or anybody. I never had anything against him and I will never have,” Atiku said while responding to the group.

He explained that in politics, he had opponents but no enemies.

“Politics is not war,” he said.

Atiku thanked the group for successfully brokering peace between him and Obasanjo, adding that this single effort had marked the leaders of the youth organisation as serious-minded people, fully prepared to take over the leadership of the country from their seniors.

Speaking on the current security situation in the country, Atiku appealed to the Federal Government to take the challenges more seriously.

“If we can go to other countries to rid them of these kinds of problems, it shows that we have the capacity to put this one down immediately so that the suffering of the people can be reduced,” he stressed.

Punch