Abdulsalami in connivance with others send me to Presidency to torture me-Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo says he was granted pardon for an offence he did not commit by the administration of the former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar.

The former president was granted pardon over a fathom military coup allegation by late General Sani Abacha and incarcerated in prison for months.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Niger state Investment and Economic Summit in Minna, the former president said he was innocent of the allegations.

Obasanjo also said that General Abdulsalami Abubakar also connived by some like minds to torture him by effecting his release from prison and made him president afterwards.

“I was going on with my life “jeje” in the prison when General Abdulsalami Abubakar decided to get me out.

“He did not stop at that but also decided to grant me pardon and conspired with others to send me to the presidency,” he said.

The former president stressed that administering the country at that troubled moment was like a torture, adding that leading a country like Nigeria was not ordinarily an easy task.

Obasanjo, who was the chairman of the occasion, was pulled onto the podium by Abdulsalami Abubakar, when it was the turn of the later to deliver a goodwill massage, a move which elicited heavy applause.

He said the former head of state was fond of torturing him, saying when he was settling down to discussion with the Acting President, the former head of state dragged to the podium.

Speaking on the summit, the former president believed that agriculture was a sure way of improving Nigeria’s revenue earning and addressing the lingering unemployment problem facing the country.

He however said double digit interest rate by commercial banks and lack of access to low credit by farmers were stultifying the federal government’s effort at divesting the nation’s economy through agriculture.

He urged the federal and the state governments to collaborate in providing necessary infrastructure to encourage agric business across the country but warned that such projects should not be allowed to be hijacked by the legislators as constituency projects.

“Roads must not be turned into constituency projects because constituency project is corruption,” he maintained.