Elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, said yesterday that his comments on how President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua emerged PDP presidential flagbearer in 2007 were basically hinged on the accounts of former ministers, Nasir el-Rufa’i and Femi Fani-Koyade.

Yakasai was reacting to a statement by a former minister, Alhaji Adamu Waziri, in an earlier interview granted by Yakasai on how a group including el-Rufa’i, Fani-Kayode and Waziri supported Yar’Adua against their will because of the antics of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

In a statement carried in the last edition of LEADERSHIP SUNDAY debunked the account of Yakasai that their group accepted Yar’Adua at the instance of Obasanjo even as he described him as an outsider in the events. He also alleged that Yakasai had lobbied Obasanjo to appoint somebody as a minister.

In an interview yesterday, Yakasai admitted that he was not an insider in PDP as Waziri claimed and that he used the confessions of the duo of el-Rufa’i and Fani-Kayode in the media to arrive at what he said. "I was acting on a public statement which was not denied," he said.

According to him, the trio of el-Rufa’i, Fani-Kayode and Waziri were like sons to him as he has a long standing relationship with their respective families.