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 dildo 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.
Every one 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.
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 wiling 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.
