Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday described his decision to select former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as his running mate in the 1999 presidential election as his biggest mistake.
Obasanjo made the comment in Lagos during a fireside chat with renowned performer and activist Charles Oputa, often known as Charly Boy, during the public launch of Charly Boy’s foundation and memoir, 999: A Memoir in Tribute to Late Justice Chukwudifu Oputa.
The former president, who served alongside Atiku from 1999 to 2007, said that while every leader makes mistakes in office, his choice of vice president was the one he regretted the most, stating that he would never have chosen him if he had known what he later discovered about his former deputy.
A video of the occasion, later uploaded to YouTube by iWitnessLive TV, shows Obasanjo reflecting on his years in office after Charly Boy asks him to identify his greatest mistake as president.
“What I have found in my own life is that mistakes that could have been fatal, God had taken care of for me,” he stated.
When pressed to identify one specific mistake, the former president responded, “The man I picked as my running mate, my number two. If I had known him as I came to know him later, I would not have picked him.”
When Charly Boy sought clarification on whether he was referring to Atiku, Obasanjo replied, “My vice president. I don’t know what name you want to give him, but my vice president, I mean that.”
He stressed that with the benefit of hindsight, he would have made a different choice.
“Of course, what I know about him later… I would not have picked him. Thank God that God did not allow his actions and reactions to overwhelm me, divert my focus from Nigeria or harm Nigeria,” he said.
Obasanjo, however, insisted he harboured no personal resentment against Atiku despite their turbulent political relationship.
“There’s no bitterness because he did what he believed he should do, and God did what God had to do, which enabled me to achieve what I was able to achieve,” he added.
Friday’s remarks are one of the sharpest personal assessments the former president has made publicly about his decision to appoint Atiku as vice president, reigniting a political rivalry that has moulded the country’s democratic landscape for more than 20 years.
Obasanjo and Atiku became the first democratically elected president and vice president following the end of military rule in 1999, winning the election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party.
For much of their first term, the administration was largely considered a powerful political partnership, with Atiku leading the National Economic Council, the National Council on Privatisation, and a number of economic reform efforts.
However, ties between the two leaders deteriorated significantly during Obasanjo’s second time in government.
The issue erupted after Atiku opposed moves by former President Obasanjo’s allies to change the Constitution to allow him to serve a third presidential term.
The defeat of the contentious constitutional change in 2006 increased the gap between the two leaders, sparking one of the most intense power confrontations in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.
The feud evolved into legal battles over the vice president’s powers after Obasanjo declared Atiku’s office vacant following his departure from the PDP to the Action Congress ahead of the 2007 general election.
The Supreme Court eventually found that the President lacked the constitutional authority to remove an elected Vice President, allowing Atiku to complete his term.
Since leaving office, both men have traded charges of corruption, misuse of power, and political treason.
In his memoir, My Watch, published in 2014, Obasanjo accused Atiku of corruption, treachery, and putting personal ambition ahead of national interest.
Atiku denied the charges, accusing his former principal of trying to rewrite history and portraying himself as a victim of political persecution in the final years of the Obasanjo administration.
Although the two leaders briefly reconciled ahead of the 2019 presidential election, when Obasanjo supported Atiku’s campaign against Muhammadu Buhari, the reconciliation was short-lived, with both men eventually returning to their respective political paths.
Obasanjo has been one of Atiku’s most vociferous detractors, pushing Nigerians to choose future leaders based on ability, integrity, and national interest.
