I turned down N250m bribe for third term agenda – Ex-senate president, Wabara

Adolphus Wabara, a former Senate President, has maintained that he declined a N250 million bribe to back the contentious third-term agenda that was put up under former President Olusegun Obasanjo's watch.

In a Monday-released clip from the Untold Stories with Adesuwa YouTube interview series, Wabara assertively said, "That's very correct," in response to an inquiry concerning the accuracy of this assertion.

The journalist pressed him harder, but he didn't budge.

Wabara said, "Then when they were saying they were distributing N50 million per Senator, I didn't believe it," setting the political scene of that era in context.

In addition, the former Senate President made a clarification regarding his resignation. "To begin with, I resigned; Obasanjo did not remove me," Wabara declared.

Wabara retorted, "No, there was even no pressure," to the interviewer's suggestion that he might have been under pressure to step down.

Wabara said, emphasising the need of rejecting the third-term proposal, "Democracy would not exist today without people like us. Yes, if we had backed the third term, tyranny and dictatorship would have reigned, and individuals such as Buhari would never have come to power. Because Obasanjo would still be in place, even the current Tinubu would not have emerged.

Although the full interview has not been released, Wabara talked on the wider ramifications of their actions as well as the ongoing problems the Igbo people face.

"We have not been forgiven for something we did not cause, the Biafra War," he declared. Although the propaganda claims that the Igbos are untrustworthy, it wasn't our fault.