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.
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.
www.reubenabati.com.ng/2016-10-14-The-Spiritual-side-of-Aso-Villa-By-Reuben-Abati.html

This is quite hilarious Sha....