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.
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.
Source: The Guardian
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