Reuben Abati talks on the
spiritual side of Aso Rock this time around. Read below:
People tend to be alarmed when the
Nigerian Presidency takes certain
decisions. They don’t think the
decision makes sense. Sometimes, they
wonder if something has not gone
wrong with the thinking process at
that highest level of the country. I
have heard people insist that there is
some form of witchcraft at work in the
country’s seat of government. I am
ordinarily not a superstitious person,
but working in the Villa, I eventually
became convinced that there must be
something supernatural about power
and closeness to it. I’ll start with a
personal testimony. I was given an
apartment to live in inside the Villa. It
was furnished and equipped. But
when my son, Michael arrived, one of
my brothers came with a pastor who
was supposed to stay in the
apartment. But the man refused
claiming that the Villa was full of evil
spirits and that there would soon be a
fire accident in the apartment. He
complained about too much human
sacrifice around the Villa and advised
that my family must never sleep
overnight inside the Villa.
I thought the man was talking
nonsense and he wanted the luxury of
a hotel accommodation. But he turned
out to be right. The day I hosted
family friends in that apartment and
they slept overnight, there was indeed
a fire accident. The guests escaped and
they were so thankful. Not long after,
the President’s physician living two
compounds away had a fire accident
in his home. He and his children could
have died. He escaped with bruises.
Around the Villa while I was there,
someone always died or their relations
died. I can confirm that every
principal officer suffered one tragedy
or the other; it was as if you needed to
sacrifice something to remain on duty
inside that environment. Even some of
the women became merchants of Love
Machine because they had suffered a
special kind of death in their homes (I
am sorry to reveal this) and many of
the men complained about something
that had died below their waists too.
The ones who did not have such
misfortune had one ailment or the
other that they had to nurse. From
cancer to brain and prostate surgery
and whatever, the Villa was a hospital
full of agonizing patients.
I recall the example of one particular
man, an asset to the Jonathan
Presidency who practically ran away
from the Villa. He said he needed to
save his life. He was quite certain that
if he continued to hang around, he
would die. I can’t talk about colleagues
who lost daughters and sons, brothers
and uncles, mothers and fathers, and
the many obituaries that we issued.
Even the President was multiply
bereaved. His wife, Mama Peace was
in and out of hospital at a point,
undergoing many surgeries. You may
have forgotten but after her husband
lost the election and he conceded
victory, all her ailments vanished, all
scheduled surgeries were found to be
no longer necessary and since then
she has been hale and hearty. By the
same token, all those our colleagues
who used to come to work to complain
about a certain death beneath their
waists and who relied on videos and
other instruments to entertain wives
(take it easy boys, I don’t mean nay
harm, I am writing!), have all
experienced a re-awakening.
Everyone who went under the blade
has received miraculous healing, and
we are happy to be out of that place.
But others were not so lucky. They
died. There were days when convoys
ran into ditches and lives were lost. In
Norway, our helicopter almost crashed
into a mountain. That was the first
time I saw the President panicking.
The weather was all so hazy and he
just kept saying it would not be nice
for the President of a country to die in
a helicopter crash due to pilot
miscalculations. The President went
into a prayer mode. We survived. In
Kenya once, we had a bird strike. The
plane had to be recalled and we were
already airborne with the plane acting
like it would crash. During the 2015
election campaigns, our aircraft
refused to start on more than one
occasion. The aircraft just went dead.
On some other occasions, we were
stoned and directly targeted for evil. I
really don’t envy the people who work
in Aso Villa, the seat of Nigeria’s
Presidency. For about six months, I
couldn’t even breathe properly. For
another two months, I was on
crutches. But I considered myself far
luckier than the others who were
either nursing a terminal disease or
who could not get it up.
When Presidents make mistakes, they
are probably victims of a force higher
than what we can imagine. Every
student of Aso Villa politics would
readily admit that when people get in
there, they actually become something
else. They act like they are under a
spell. When you issue a well- crafted
statement, the public accepts it
wrongly. When the President makes a
speech and he truly means well, the
speech is interpreted wrongly by the
public. When a policy is introduced,
somehow, something just goes wrong.
In our days, a lot of people used to
complain that the APC people were
fighting us spiritually and that there
was a witchcraft dimension to the
governance process in Nigeria. But the
APC folks now in power are dealing
with the same demons. Since Buhari
government assumed office, it has
been one mistake after another. Those
mistakes don’t look normal, the same
way they didn’t look normal under
President Jonathan. I am therefore
convinced that there is an evil spell
enveloping this country. We need to
rescue Nigeria from the forces of
darkness. Aso Villa should be
converted into a spiritual museum,
and abandoned.
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Should I become President of Nigeria
tomorrow, I will build a new
Presidential Villa: a Villa that will be
dedicated to the all-conquering
Almighty, and where powers and
principalities cannot hold sway. But it
is not about buildings and space, not
so? It is about the people who go to the
highest levels in Nigeria. I really don’t
quite believe in superstitions, but I am
tempted to suggest that this is indeed a
country in need of prayers. We should
pray before people pack their things
into Aso Villa. We should ask God to
guide us before we appoint ministers.
We should, to put it in technocratic
language, advise that the people
should be very vigilant. We have all
failed so far, that crucial test of
vigilance. We should have a
Presidential Villa where a President
can afford to be human and free. In
the White House, in the United States,
Presidents live like normal human
beings. In Aso Villa, that is impossible.
They’d have to surround themselves
with cooks from their villages,
bodyguards from their mother’s clans
and friends they can trust. It should
be possible to be President of Nigeria
without having to look behind one’s
shoulders. But we are not yet there.
So, how do we run a Presidency where
the man in the saddle can only drink
water served by his kinsman? No. How
can we possibly run a Presidency
where every President proclaims faith
in Nigeria but they are better off in
the company of relatives and kinsmen.
No. We need as Presidents men and
women who are willing to be
Nigerians. No Nigerian President
should be in spiritual bondage
because he belongs to all of us and to
nobody.
Now let me go back to the spiritual
dimension. A colleague once told me
that I was the most naïve person
around the place. I thought I was a
bright, smart, professional doing my
bit and enjoying the President’s
confidence. I spelled it out. But what I
got in response was that I was coming
to the villa using Lux soap, but that
most people around the place always
bathed in the morning with blood.
Goat blood. Ram blood. Whatever
animal blood. I argued. He said there
were persons in the Villa walking
upside down, head to the ground. I
screamed. Everybody looked normal to
me. But I soon began to suspect that I
was in a strange environment indeed.
Every position change was an
opportunity for warfare. Civil servants
are very nice people; they obey
orders, but they are not very nice
when they fight over personal
interests.
The President is most affected by the
atmosphere around him. He can make
wrong decisions based on the cloud of
evil around him. Even when he means
well and he has taken time to address
all possible outcomes, he could get on
the wrong side of the public. A
colleague called me one day and told
me a story about how a decision had
been taken in the spiritual realm
about the Nigerian government. He
talked about the spirit of error, and
how every step taken by the
administration would appear to the
public like an error. He didn’t resign
on that basis but his words proved
prophetic. I see the same story being
re-enacted. Aso Villa is in urgent need
of redemption. I never slept in the
apartment they gave me in that Villa
for an hour.
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