TheCable

The rift between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and  his deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has been settled, the former vice-president has said.

Abubakar told a youth group in Abuja on Tuesday that he harbours no hatred or enmity with the former president.

Both of them had a very public falling-out their second term in office between 2003 and 2007, leading to a series of litigation as Obasanjo tried to stop Abubakar from succeeding him.

The former VP eventually defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in order to pursue his presidential bid in 2007, but it was not successful.

Abubakar is now a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and is believed to be aiming another shot at the presidency in 2015.

“I don’t harbour any grudge against my former boss. Yes, we had disagreements in office. These were mere disagreements. I harbour no hatred or enmity against him or anybody. I never had anything against him and I will never have,” Atiku told the Northern Youth Leaders Forum, led by Eliot Afiyo.

The group, which said it was trying to resolve the rift between the two men, first met with Obasanjo weeks ago and the former president said he had forgiven his former vice-president.

Abubakar told the group “politics is not war” and you can only talk about “opponents, not enemies”.

The former VP then appealed to the federal government to take the current security challenges more seriously.

“If we can go to other countries to rid them of these kinds of problems, it shows that we have the capacity to put this one down immediately so that the suffering of the people can be reduced,” he said.