LAGOS, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- Former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo has said ailing President Umaru Yar'Adua showed a medical report that certified him fit to contest the 2007 Presidential election.
Responding to questions at a media forum in Abuja, Obasanji said Yar'Adua had all the qualities of a good leader, at the time he was chosen as his party's candidate for the election.
"I was looking for somebody who will succeed me and who has three important qualities," he told the forum. "One, he has enough intellectual capacity to run the affairs of this country; two, he has sufficient personal integrity; three, he is sufficiently broad minded enough, politically, religiously, socially and whatever, to manage the affairs of this country," he said.
"These three were important and very paramount," he added, noting that Yar'Adua's health has been failing since he was governor of northern Katsina state.
"When the idea came for him to contest, I asked and he gave me a medical report and the medical report showed that he had gone off the dialysis," he said.
"I asked experts who then told me that if you were under dialysis and you are no longer on dialysis, it means you have had a successful kidney transplant and that you can live for as long as you may wish and as God may wish you to live," he added.
"Now, who am I and who are you not to accept that," Obasanjo said.
The former president said Yar'Adua had gone abroad for treatment before the election in 2007.
"When we were campaigning and we campaigned together, you could remember at one stage that his health ran down," he said.
"The chairman of our party then, Ahmadu Ali was also run down. Ali did not go abroad for check-up but he (Yar'adua) went abroad for check-up," he added.
"And the rumor was that he was dead and I phoned him and I put the telephone on speaker and I said Umaru are you dead or alive and you heard his voice live and direct," Obasanjo said.
"He came back and continued with the campaign. That was the true situation. To the best of my knowledge he wasn't on dialysis," he added.
"So, for people to say that I, Olusegun Obasanjo deliberately brought somebody who is an invalid to rule this country is the height of insult," he stressed.
"That I have put so much into this country in peace and in war and given this country to somebody who will run it down," he asked.
"No body picked Yar'Adua so that he will not perform, If I did that, God will punish me because I love this country so much and there is no reason why I should do that," Obasanjo told his audience.
Yar' Adua is hospitalized for acute inflammation of the pericardium, the outer covering of his heart.
There are serious pressures on ailing the President to resign from the presidency because of illness.
Worried by the lack of information on the President and the uncertainty about his health and date of return, many prominent Nigerians called for his resignation.
