By Selya Yarnap, Bauchi

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has said that apart from the fact that he served as the number two citizen of the country for eight years under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, he has nothing in common with the former President, adding that as long as he remained in politics he would continue to contest the presidency.

When asked about his relationship with his former boss of eight years he said, "we have never really been friends and so we don’t have common friends, even when we were together in the PDP we had a very wide gab of political thinking and ideology, so there is no way anyone will think of reconciling us, we differ in everything".

Atiku, who featured in a BBC Hausa service programme last weekend, however, refused to name under which political part he will contest for the country’s number seat just as he insinuated that the ongoing political reform may at the end of the recommend for the scraping of the present political parties and call for the formation of new ones even though he said he does not have any privy knowledge of what the outcome of the reform will be.

He also said that if well approached and convinced by the present leadership of the ruling PDP a party he belonged to in the past, he may reconsider joining the party though he said that no such serious move has been made to get him back into the pack of the PDP.

He also said that internal machinery has been set up to reconcile the warring factions in the AC, saying that after the successful reconciliation, the party will come out a better party that stands the test of political opposition in the country.

On the ongoing legal battle aftermath of the 2007 presidential election, he said that he does not know the date the judgment would be delivered, saying that, "it is the business of the legal team to know what is happening and then give us a feedback, we are waiting to see how it will end but we are confident."

Assessing the present Umar Musa Yar’Adua administration, Atiku said: "Reports we hear are that Nigerians are suffering under the present dispensation because things are pretty difficult for them", that if given the opportunity, he will advise the government on what positive steps to take to get things working better again for the country.

He also said that the ongoing move for constitutional amendment is necessary considering the fact that there are many defects in the present 1999 Constitution which need to be corrected in line with democratic principles.

According to him, the last effort failed because of the hidden agenda of tenure elongation and then called on Nigerians to continue to be patient and bear the situation, saying that with time, things will change for the better politically and otherwise.