by Mohammed Bello Doka
2 August, 2026.
By now, every Nigerian with a passing interest in politics has heard the latest salvo from former President Olusegun Obasanjo. At a fireside chat in Lagos, the elder statesman declared that picking Atiku Abubakar as his running mate in the 1999 presidential election was "the greatest mistake" of his political career. "If I had known him as I came to know him later, I would not have picked him," Obasanjo said, adding that he thanks God that Atiku's actions did not harm Nigeria.
It is a statement designed to land like a thunderclap. It is also, upon closer examination, a spectacular exercise in historical revisionism.
The question Obasanjo's convenient amnesia forces us to ask is this: Was Obasanjo ever truly in the right position to choose his running mate in 1999? The honest answer, supported by the weight of historical evidence, is an emphatic no. He was not in a position to choose anything. He was chosen. He was positioned. He was packaged and presented to Nigerians by forces far greater than himself—forces he did not control, and whose bidding he was expected to do.
Let us begin with the most fundamental fact of Obasanjo's 1999 emergence: he was a nearly bankrupt ex-convict. According to the book Too Good to Die: Third Term and the Myth of the Indispensable Man in Africa, written by Chidi Odinkalu and Ayisha Osori, when Atiku and others approached Obasanjo to inform him that he was being positioned to run for president, Obasanjo protested that he could not because he was a "nearly bankrupt ex-convict". He had nothing. No money. No political structure. No war chest. He had just been released from prison, and by his own admission, he had little to his name.
It was Atiku Abubakar who stepped in. Through General Aliyu Gusau, Atiku paid money into Obasanjo's account to begin his "financial rehabilitation". Atiku donated US$5 million (N500 million) to the PDP, donated his personal building for the party headquarters, and gave Obasanjo N130 million to donate to the party. Atiku mobilized the political machinery—Tony Anenih, Iyorcha Ayu, Lamidi Adedibu—to deliver Obasanjo as president. He put everything he had at his disposal to support Obasanjo's emergence as the PDP presidential candidate. And this was before Atiku was even the vice-presidential nominee. He was merely interested in becoming governor of Adamawa State, which he went on to win.
This is not speculation. This is documented history, drawn from Atiku's own account and corroborated by multiple sources. A broke man does not choose his running mate. A broke man accepts the running mate that the people who funded his campaign present to him.
But the financial dependency was only one layer of the onion. The deeper layer concerns the military establishment. The 1999 transition was not a spontaneous democratic uprising. It was an "army arrangement"—a term that became shorthand for a political process in which key former military officers rallied around the presidential candidacy of Obasanjo. The military funded the campaign of the Peoples Democratic Party. The trio of Ibrahim Babangida, Theophilus Danjuma, and Abdulsalami Abubakar wanted the PDP to adopt Obasanjo as their candidate "because they considered him the best person for the job". But here is the crucial admission from the book: "Implicit in their position was their belief that they knew how to manipulate Obasanjo and the fact that Obasanjo did their bidding in 1979. They felt secure that he could be managed again".
Let that sink in. The military establishment chose Obasanjo not because he was a democrat, not because he was a reformer, but because they believed they could manipulate him. He was a rehabilitated symbol, a familiar face, a known quantity who had done their bidding before. He was the product of a gentleman's agreement between military power brokers and civilian political structures—structures in which Atiku Abubakar was a prominent mover.
So when Obasanjo now claims, with the full weight of moral authority, that picking Atiku was his mistake, he is engaging in a profound act of gaslighting. He did not pick Atiku. The system picked Atiku for him. The Northern establishment wanted a Northern Muslim on the ticket to balance the Southern Christian presidential candidate. The financiers wanted the man who had put his money where his mouth was. The party machinery wanted the man who had mobilized the structures that made victory possible. Obasanjo's "choice" was a ratification, not a selection. He could reject candidates, but he could not impose his own preferred outsider. The power balance favored the kingmakers, not the king.
This brings us to the inconvenient question that Obasanjo's latest outburst raises: Why now? Why, after all these years, is Obasanjo once again dusting off old grievances and repackaging personal bitterness as national interest?
The answer is as transparent as it is cynical. The 2027 election is around the corner, and Obasanjo is on a desperate mission to save his drowning kinsman, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Atiku Abubakar has accused Obasanjo of fabricating allegations against him to favor his kinsman ahead of the 2027 general election. Atiku's aide, Phrank Shaibu, put it bluntly: the obvious objective is to "besmirch my person and reputation and confer an undeserved political advantage on the former President's kinsman". Obasanjo has openly supported Peter Obi, an Igbo and presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress, but political observers see this as a smokescreen. The real target is weakening Atiku, the most formidable opposition figure, to clear the path for Tinubu's re-election.
This is the same pattern that has defined Obasanjo's political career. When elections approach, he revives old battles, deploys recycled allegations, and presents himself as the nation's moral compass. In July 2026 alone, he alleged that Atiku gave the late Speaker Ghali Umar Na'Abba N5 million to initiate impeachment proceedings against him. Atiku dismissed this as a "stale allegation resurrected for political convenience". The timing, as Atiku noted, is instructive: "coming at a time when the political landscape ahead of the 2027 general election is taking shape".
But the hypocrisy runs deeper. Obasanjo now speaks as if he has the moral authority to judge anyone. Let us recall the record. As military Head of State, Obasanjo presided over a regime that was not known for its reverence for human rights. As civilian president, his administration was marked by allegations of corruption, vindictiveness, and authoritarian impulses. His desperate bid for a second term in 2003 saw him "throw integrity to the wind and restore himself to power at any cost," with the election itself described as "a monumental fraud". His plan to go for an unconstitutional third term worsened his dispute with Atiku, who stood firmly against the agenda. Atiku's offence was that he "stood firmly against the unconstitutional third-term agenda" and chose "the path of constitutionalism and the rule of law". For this, Obasanjo has never forgiven him.
Political associates, professional colleagues, and even family members have long maintained that Obasanjo is an ingrate who repays evil for any good done. How many people who helped him rise has he not betrayed? He has turned against virtually every ally who ever lifted a finger for him. Atiku clothed him, fed him, rehabilitated him financially, mobilized the political structures that made him president—and Obasanjo repays him with a public declaration that picking him was the greatest mistake of his life.
The irony is almost too rich to bear. The same man who was a nearly bankrupt ex-convict in 1998 is now one of the richest men in Nigeria. Yet he is the same man calling Atiku names, accusing others of corruption, and positioning himself as the nation's conscience. Nigerians are wiser now. They see the game. They understand that Obasanjo's current attacks are not about historical truth but about political convenience. They are about saving Tinubu, a man who himself betrayed virtually every prominent voice that made him president. Just as Tinubu has turned against those who lifted him, Obasanjo started it. He is the godfather of betrayal, the pioneer of political ingratitude in Nigeria's Fourth Republic.
In any serious country, a man with Obasanjo's record—the authoritarian tendencies, the corruption allegations, the manipulation of state institutions, the attempts to subvert the constitution for personal ambition—would not be sitting on television claiming moral authority. He would be answering questions before a tribunal. He would be explaining his actions to a nation that has suffered too much from the very systems he helped entrench. Instead, he is treated as an elder statesman, invited to fireside chats, and given platforms to rewrite history as it suits his political calculations.
Nigerians must see Obasanjo's latest outburst for what it is: a desperate attempt to rewrite history, weaken his political opponents, and save his drowning kinsman. He did not choose Atiku in 1999. The system chose Atiku for him. He was broke, he was politically irrelevant, and he was positioned by forces he did not control. His current "regret" is not history; it is politics. It is election-season revisionism, weaponized to serve a narrow and cynical agenda.
The next time Obasanjo speaks of his "greatest mistake," Nigerians should ask him a simple question: Sir, if you were so broke and so politically powerless in 1999, what choice did you really have? The answer, of course, is none. And that is the truth that all his revisionism cannot erase.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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