Former President Goodluck Jonathan said he would have been killed and rumoured to have died of eating apple from Indian ladies during the political crisis occasioned by late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s prolonged ill-health that took the latter out of the country for a long while for medical motive.
Then, Jonathan, a Vice President, the requirement of the law, bordering on transmission of letter to the National assembly when a sitting President is unavailable for a stipulated period to enable the Vice becomes acting President was bypassed by Yar’Adua’s handlers.
The situation created a constitutional crisis which was later resolved by the doctrine of necessity at the instigation of the National Assembly.
The latter, on the strength of Section 145 of the Constitution made Jonathan the acting President.
Recounting the tempestuous period in an interview he granted Rainbow Book Club, the former president said at a point there was rumoured that he was going to be killed in the Villa and was urged by a friend to come and sleep in his guest house but he declined.
His refusal, he stated, was to avoid a situation in which he would be murdered outside the Villa and the narrative about his death would be similar to that of former Military Head of State, Sani Abacha’s death.
“I remember one day, I was still vice president, they had not even moved the doctrine of necessity then and some of my friends came and said, ‘No, you don’t have to sleep here. You have to come and sleep in my guest house.
“I said, ‘No.’ I will stay in the state house. If anybody wants to kill me, it’s better you kill me in the state house so Nigerians will know that they assassinated me in the state house.
“They know I have not committed any offence. If I go and stay in your guest house and people kill me there, they will now say Indian girls brought apples to kill me. And I wouldn’t want that kind of story”, he narrated.
