Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has revealed that Nigeria's former military Head of State, General Sani Abacha, had vowed that he, the late Shehu Yar'Adua, and Chief MKO Abiola would not come out of prison alive.

Obasanjo made this revelation during the commissioning of a state-of-the-art Assemblies of God Church at Ogbor Uvuru in Aboh Mbaise, Imo State. He attributed his survival to "the special grace of God" rather than his own power.

"When I was arrested, the man who arrested me, I thought he was making a mistake. He had decided that some of us must be liquidated if he has to be in power permanently," Obasanjo stated.

The former president recounted his initial confusion upon arrest, saying, "I had not done anything wrong. Was it a mistake?" Upon realizing it wasn't a mistake, he turned to prayer.

"I resigned myself into the hands of God and the man who arrested us boasted that three of us will not come out of the detention or prison alive – that MKO Abiola will not come out alive, that Shehu Yar'Adua will not come out alive and that Olusegun Obasanjo will not come out alive," he revealed.

Obasanjo noted that Abacha's threat materialized for two of the three detainees. "Two of the three he had planned not to come out alive did not come out alive, I did come out alive not because of my power but the special grace of God," he said.

The revelation provides insight into one of the darkest periods of Nigeria's political history during Abacha's military regime in the 1990s. Chief MKO Abiola, the presumed winner of the annulled June 12, 1993, presidential election, died in custody in 1998. General Shehu Yar'Adua, a former Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, also died in detention in 1997.

Obasanjo, who was released after Abacha's death in 1998, went on to become Nigeria's democratically elected president from 1999 to 2007.