WordPress Duplicator SQL fail

I have used this great plugin for a few of my sires with no issue. However I have just tried to use it on a new site and am getting the error below. This site is hosted on the same hosting as the other sites that work. So not sure whats going on. So the server side sql must support it ok. Does anyone have any suggestions.

The version of MySQL on this server is [5.1.73]. The Duplicator requires MySQL version 4.1+ or better. If the MySQL server version is valid and this requirement fails then the mysqli extension is not installed. If you are on a hosted server please contact your host and request that mysqli extension and MySQL Server 4.1+ be installed. For more info visit: http://php.net/manual/en/mysqli.installation.php