Let me begin with two clarifications. Aso Villa is not my
home; I am just passing through. Even this world is nobody's home; we are just
birds of passage. So, let nobody turn up his nose in derision, and say;
"he's writing to the landlord of Aso Villa, defending a place where's he's
just a tenant."
Yes, nobody is a landlord in the Villa, not even rational
presidents. They can only live there for a maximum of eight years, if Nigerians
so decide. And for me, my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The
angels only need to beckon me from Heaven's open door, and I wouldn't feel at
home in this world anymore.
The second clarification. Let nobody, particularly on social
media, begin to insinuate that Femi Adesina is at war with Reuben Abati, his
immediate predecessor as presidential spokesman. This piece you are beginning
to read is not about Abati as a person; it is about his spiritual ideas and
convictions, which I think need some appraisal, as they are rather unspiritual.
Abati and myself have been professional colleagues for almost 30 years, we have
a lot of mutual friends, and know how to reach each other when necessary. So,
this is not a case of Muhammadu Buhari's spokesman being at war with Goodluck
Jonathan's spokesman. What for?
In his piece in The Guardian of October 14, 2016, Abati wrote
under the headline, 'The spiritual side of Aso Villa.' What were his
conclusions? For the benefit of those who did not read the highly entertaining
piece (in fact, there were moments I had my two legs in the air, laughing, as I
read), let me do a brief summary. Call it 'gospel' according to Abati, and you
would be right: There is some form of witchcraft, which causes occupants of Aso
Villa to take weird decisions. Working in the Villa makes you susceptible to
some sort of evil influences because there is something supernatural about
power and closeness to it. Some of those who lived or worked in the Villa had
something dying under their waists (for the men), while some of the women
became merchants of dildo because they had suffered a special kind of deaths in
their homes. "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," Abati
posited.
Reading the piece through, you would think Aso Villa was
nothing but what Godfrey Chaucer called "a thoroughfare of woes." In
fact, Abati submitted that the Villa "should be converted into a spiritual
museum, , and abandoned." Holy Moses! Jumping Jehoshaphat!
If Aso Villa was such a haunted house, why then do most
occupants like to stay put, right from the first tenant, Ibrahim Babangida, who
was virtually forced to step aside in August 1993? And why did Goodluck
Jonathan, Abati's principal, spend money in trillions (in different currencies
of the world), just to perpetuate himself in a house that consumes its
occupants? Being a literary scholar, Abati would remember the doctor in
Macbeth, that work of William Shakespeare, who was detailed to cure Lady
Macbeth of the neurosis that afflicted her, after she had been party to the
deaths of King Duncan and Banq so that her husband would be the king of
Scotland.
A spiritually troubled Lady Macbeth sleepwalked every night,
trying to wash her hands of the innocent blood that had been shed. The doctor
was so fed up with the terrifying atmosphere that he said to himself:
"Were I from Dunsinane away and clear, profit should hardly again draw me
here."
Did Abati ever say the same of the Villa, a place where men became
women "after something died below their waists?" We do not have it on
record that Abati showed a clean pair of heels, or that he would not have
stayed if Dr. Jonathan had won reelection, and had asked him to continue in his
position as the adviser on media. Or was it the case of eternal fascination for
the thing that repelled and terrified you? Mysterium tremendum et fascinas, as
it is called in Latin.
For me, what Abati did in the October 14 piece was simply a
glorification and deification of superstition, something that attempted to
elevate works of darkness above the powers of God. The writer merely fed the
cravings and propensity of people for the supernatural, in a way that stoked
and kindled the kiln of fear, rather than that of faith.
Let's take the issues one after the other, and look at them
against true spiritual principles. Christianity is the one I am most familiar
with, and that would be my benchmark.
In Aso Villa, houses were haunted, people were oppressed
into taking curious decisions, they fell ill, died, or suffered the losses of
loved ones, so Abati claimed. Are such peculiar only to the presidential villa?
Should all those who live or work there automatically enjoy immunity from the
vicissitudes of life, simply because they walked the corridors of power?
Wasn't President
Umaru Yar'Adua right inside the presidential villa, when he told us on national
television: "I am a human being. I can fall sick. I can recover. And I can
die." That was a practical man for you. Abati unwittingly wants his readers
to believe that once you operated in or around Aso Villa, you became a
Superman. No. You are as mortal as can be. The Holy Bible does not even give us
such leeway. "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to
man..."(1 Cor 10:13).
There are certain things common to man, and they can
happen to you wherever you are. At the White House. At 10, Downing Street.
Buckingham Palace, Aso Villa. Wherever. "But such as is
common to man..." Let no man feed us with the bogey that such things
happen because of where you live or operate from. There are some things that
are just common to man, and which may happen to you as long as you are on this
side of eternity.
I lost my sister in a road crash last year. She was a
professor of Dramatic Arts at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife. Abati
knew her well, as they both did post-graduate studies at the University of
Ibadan in the 1980s. Abati was among those who called to condole with me. My
sister never visited the Villa in her lifetime. Even if she did, that could
never have had anything to do with her death on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. To
believe and teach otherwise is to carry superstition to a ridiculous level, and
venerate the Devil, granting him omnipotence, an attribute that belongs to God
only.
For the Devil, doing evil is a full-time business, and whether you had
anything to do with Aso Villa or not, he continued with his pernicious acts.
Does that then suggest that mankind is helpless before evil? No. God still has
ultimate powers. He can spare you "as a father spares the son that serves
him."
(Malachi 3:17). If you are under the pavilion of God, sleep,
wake and operate daily in Aso Villa, you are covered, no matter the evil that
lurks around, if any. There is a better covenant established on greater promises,
and that is the canopy under which you should function. God can spare you from
all evils, and if He permits any other thing, it is "such as is common to
man," and not because of Aso Villa.
If houses catch fire in the Villa, how many conflagrations
occur in other parts of the city? If some men in the Villa suffered erectile
dysfunction in Abati's time, doesn't the Journal of Sexual Medicine tell us
that about 20 million American men have something that has died under their
waists? It is one thing that became prevalent in the last two to three decades,
due to modern lifestyle. Causes range from age, to stress, depression, anxiety,
alcohol, medication, and several others. Even, a study showed that watching too
much television kills something under the waist. So why does Abati make it seem
as if it is a copyright of Aso Villa?
Now, another clarification. Don't I believe in demonic
infestation and manifestation? I sure do. I won't be a student of the Holy
Bible if I don't. Jesus talked about the man who got delivered from demonic
possession, and because that man did not yield himself to a better influence,
the evil spirit that inhabited him came back with seven more powerful spirits,
and the end of the man was worse than his beginning. Abati wrote of persons in the Villa, "walking upside
down, head to the ground." Let me share this story I heard over 20 years
ago. There was this young Christian who gave scant regards to demons and what
they could do. In fact, he almost didn't believe demons existed. One day, as he
walked along the ever busy Broad Street in Lagos, God opened his spiritual
eyes.
Some people were walking on their heads! And not only that,
as they passed by other people, they slapped them with the soles of their feet.
If you got so slapped, you developed an affliction, which you would nurse for
the rest of your life. Yet, you never knew where it came from.
As the young man saw that vision and got its spiritual
explanation, he began to s-c-r-e-a-m. Was that in Aso Villa? "Such as is
common to man..." Evil exists everywhere. Trying to source and locate it
in Aso Villa is disingenuous. You need God everywhere. In Europe, Asia,
America, Oceania, Aso Villa.
There is evil everywhere, and we need not make
fetish of any place as being more evil infested than other places. Since Satan
got thrown out of Heaven due to his inordinate ambition, evil had resided in
the world. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the
morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"
(Isaiah 14:12). The Devil lives in the world, but God is never helpless before
evil. He will never be. Let the Devil commit suicide if he is not happy about
that fact. God rules!
If every principal officer including the President and his
wife suffered series of tragedies as Abati claimed, and he himself had
breathing problems and walked with the aid of crutches for months, it was
" such as is common to man" and not necessarily because they were in
Aso Villa. But of course, if such people put their hands in evil, possibly to
gain some things in power or perpetuate themselves beyond the time heaven
granted, then "he who rolls a stone, a stone shall be rolled back to him.
He that digs a pit, shall fall into it." That is what the Good Book says.
You can then hardly blame Aso Villa for such payback time, can you?
To avoid getting sucked into what Abati calls "the
cloud of evil" that hangs around power, what to do is to hold ephemeral
things loosely. Know that they are temporal, and will truly end. Power is one
of such things. Will anybody be a permanent landlord at Aso Villa? It would be
foolhardy to have such mindset. A couple of times I'd had some private
discussions with President Buhari, and he had lamented the state of the nation,
he invariably ended with the statement, "while we are here, we will do our
best." It shows a man who knows that he's not a permanent landlord at Aso
Villa, and can never be. He would use the opportunity he has to do his best for
Nigeria, and then move on.
That is a good mindset and a safety valve from getting
sucked into "the cloud of evil." Daily, I tell myself that I am just
passing through Aso Villa. And while there, just like my principal, I will do
my best. It could be long, it could be short, depending on God and the man who
appointed me, but one day, it would be over, and some other people would come
in to do their bit. It is inexorable. The real treasures are laid somewhere
beyond the blue.
Abati says we should pray before people pack their things
into Aso Villa. I say not just Aso Villa, but everywhere. Pray before you pack
into any place, because there are some things "such as is common to
man." It is only God that keeps from such. And He is sovereign in terms of
what He prevents, and in what He allows. Ours is to pray, and believe. Prayer
works.
"Aso Villa is in urgent need of redemption. I never
slept in the apartment they gave me in that Villa for an hour," wrote
Abati. Well, different strokes for different folks. Hear what the Good Book
says: "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the
bread of sorrows; for so he giveth his beloved sleep." Here am I. For over
one year, I have lived in the house allocated to me at the Villa. I sleep so
soundly, I even snore. In fact, I snore so loud that at times, I wake myself up
with the sound.
*Contributed by Femi Adesina, the Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari
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Pix: Reuben Abati and Femi Adesina
