I still think there will be problems until mysqli is enabled. I typically enable mysqli from my VPS control panel, or cPanel on hosted servers. Below is a graphic showing the php extensions that I enable. Note that I have enabled mysqli.
Hello
Thank you for your answers, turns out that i do have mysqli enabled as i said before i have other moodle instances running with no problems,
I have updated to mysql 5.6 but the problem still persists.
I am not the admin of this moodle install (hence i cant update it) i am the server admin and this is the first time i encounter this problem its probably the best bet to update to moodle 3.x but still i would like to know why this happened so i can explain this to the moodle owner the reason he has to update to 3.x
Regards.