Answering a question on the issue during his monthly television programme on Sunday, Obasanjo said that he did not swear, as claimed by his Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, that he would leave by 2007.
He explained that as a man of honour, he did not need to swear to any secret oath before anybody on his exit from office at the end of his tenure as enshrined in the constitution.
A national daily had quoted the vice-president as having claimed that Obasanjo swore before him that he would not extend his tenure in office beyond 2007.
But in his reaction to a question, which sought to know if he indeed swore to leave office by 2007, Obasanjo said the only oath he took was to protect the constitution and rights of all Nigerians.
He explained that on his assumption of office in 1999 he swore to an oath to protect the constitution, adding that with such an oath, he believed that the question of his leaving in 2007 was a settled issue.
The president said he had wanted himself and Abubakar to swear by the Bible and the Qur’an respectively over alleged questionable loyalty, but that the vice-president declined to take the oath.
He explained that evidence was brought before him to show that Abubakar had not been “very loyal’’ to him and so he decided to confront the vice-president with the facts, but he (Abubakar) declined to swear.
He said it was also not true as portrayed by the vice-president that he wept when doctors approached him for injection, while at the Jos prison during his travails over his alleged participation in a military coup in 1995.
The president recalled that more than a dozen Nigerians called him, while in Copenhagen to warn him not to return to the country and that the vice-president “was definitely not one of them’’.
He said, however, that Atiku was at his farm to tell him about the arrest of his military colleague, the late Gen. Shehu Yar’adua when a police officer came to arrest him.
Obasanjo recalled that far from the claims that he wept when some medical personnel requested to inject him, what happened was that they approached him to take his blood sample to test for cholesterol level, a request he rejected.