Opinion

Opinion

Nigeria-US relations and Donald Trump | By: Reuben Abati

 
I do not share the view of those who assume that by some kind of miracle, in the shape of electoral-college defections, Hillary Clinton would still, on the strength of winning the popular vote, supplant Donald Trump as US 2016 President-elect.
We might as well begin to live with the reality of a Trump Presidency, sad and traumatic as that outcome may be. And coming to terms with that, despite our disappointment, calls for a forward-looking approach on the part of the Nigerian government.
The United States remains Nigeria’s most strategic partner. More than one million Nigerians live in the United States and a significant percentage of that immigrant population has distinguished itself in academia, the health sector, public service, and other aspects of American life. Nigerians are perhaps the most visible and the most influential set of immigrant Africans living in the United States today. It is indeed possible to argue that there is no neighbourhood or community in Nigeria today that does not have at least one representative in America.
I know many families who have never been to Abuja but who talk about America with such frightening familiarity without ever seeing the inside of an aircraft. Their claim to such glory is the presence of a cousin, a son, a daughter, an in-law or other relatives, in the United States – it doesn’t matter if the fellow is a failed husband or wife, or he or she is washing plates, or doing security guard work, a jail term, or struggling to survive as a human being, or he or she is permanently trapped in America because coming home could be a vote for shame.
Nigerians love America, thus. The British colonized our country and Britain still remains a second home of choice for many middle class Nigerians, but America holds more than a special attraction for many wannabe Nigerians. America is Nigeria’s land of golden dreams, the country that our youths want to flock to.  Many of our politicians have Americans passports. The only Nobel Laureate that we have also holds an American Green card. Churches and mosques across Nigeria hold special prayer sessions for that Green card and when you have a child living in America, you are free to assume that the Living God has answered your prayers.
In terms of trade, Nigeria is America’s foremost partner in Africa. The United States through the auspices of the Nigeria-US Bilateral National Commission and similar diplomatic commitments in the African Union and ECOWAS and through other international protocols is actively involved in Nigeria’s health, security, agriculture, financial and human rights sectors. We are in addition, a big market for America’s exports in Africa and a stabilizing force for global security within the region and the continent.  Where the problem lies and where a foreign policy challenge needs to be addressed, is the emergence right now, of an incoming President who has expressly declared that African Presidents are thieves and that Nigeria is particularly a problem, because its leadership is both “corrupt and insensible”.
Person-to-person diplomacy is perhaps more relevant than government-to-government relations because the former impacts greatly on the latter, and any student of international relations can only ignore this at great cost. We have, despite our cultural, diplomatic and trade relations with the United States, an in-coming American President who hates immigrants, Muslims, and who considers Nigerians a threat to the US working population.
Whatever the situation might be, Nigeria has a duty and a responsibility to defend the interest of Nigerians doing business with the United States in one form or the other. Our residual interest in American politics and its outcomes should go beyond individual interests, and political emotions and rest on Nigeria’s corporate interest. Strategically, what does Donald Trump’s victory mean to us? What are the implications for Nigeria’s relationship with the United States?  What are the plans in place or in process, to protect Nigerians and Nigerian Americans who may suddenly find themselves in a threat situation under a racist and isolationist American Presidency? What can or should the Nigerian government do to protect Nigerians in the US diaspora from the uncertainties of America’s transition?
I have seen a couple of congratulatory messages here and there and a lot of casual commentaries on the subject, but what we need is far more strategic thinking at the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The officials should wake up and realize that it may no longer be business as usual with Washington. Our last ambassador to Washington DC, Professor Ade Adefuye was a well-educated diplomat and scholar with vast international exposure and a robust, aggressive personality. He brought that to bear on his job, and he achieved results. Right now, we don’t even have someone of his rank and stature in Washington. The Senate is busy still staring at the list of ambassadorial appointees, and no one knows when many of the critical vacancies will be filled. We need a man or woman in Washington post-haste: an ambassador who can represent Nigeria’s interest, and who can settle down, even without presenting letters of credence,  long before Donald Trump’s inauguration, and who must be the right man or woman for the job.  The Trump Presidency is interested in America only; every other diplomatic post in that country must look out for its own interest. America is too important to the world, too tied to the global network of interests to be allowed to disconnect.
At other levels, Nigeria must seek more active cooperation and collaboration with the United States. We need not be told that Nigerians living in the United States today are just as anxious as the Mexicans.  There is no gainsaying the fact that the incoming American President considers Nigerians a terrible set of immigrants. He has in the course of the campaigns shown a capacity to seek out groups and peoples and demonize them. In the interest of those vulnerable Nigerians (because no matter what, some Nigerians are linked to the US forever), and all the other strategic interests between our two countries, the Nigerian government must engage the emerging Trump establishment in Washington DC, proactively. It is not enough to just send a rhetorical congratulatory message. That is mere routine. But it is worse that President-elect Donald Trump has not deemed it necessary to call any African leader on phone. African leaders must learn to stand up for themselves but what measure of respect should we expect with the kind of leaders we have across Africa? And what quality of respect should any of our leaders give to a man who said this, referring to Nigeria:

“No sensible President continuously travels round the globe while his country Nigeria is in terrible hardship and economic mess. It can only happen in Nigeria where all that matters to the President is the full introduction of Islam, the annihilation of his political opponents and absolute extermination of the old Eastern Nigeria. Buhari, prior to his questionable victory at the polls as the President of Nigeria made lots of promises which he obviously failed to keep and in most cases denied.”

There are usually consequences for this kind of effrontery in diplomatic relations. If Donald Trump ever offers to visit Nigeria, President Buhari must snub him. Donald Trump also said:

“Look at African countries like Nigeria or Kenya for instance, those people are stealing from their own government and go to invest the money in foreign countries. From the government to the opposition they qualify only to be used as a case study whenever bad examples are required.
“How do you trust even those who have run away to hide in the United States, hiding behind education? I hear they abuse me in their blogs but I don’t care because even the internet they are using is ours and we can decide to switch it off from this side. These are people who import everything including matchsticks.
“In my opinion, most of these African countries (like Nigeria) ought to be recolonized again for another 100 years because they know nothing about leadership and self-governance.”
The man who would be sworn in, January 20, 2017, as President of the most powerful country in the world also said: “To make our country big and powerful again, we have to get rid of Muslims, Mexicans and Africans, and in particular of Nigerians. They take us away from our work, job places intended for honest diligent Americans. When we don’t give them jobs, these Muslims arrange terrorist attacks.”
“We have to move Africans. Nigerians are everywhere now. I was at the meeting in Alaska and only Africans were everywhere. How do you think where they are from? From Nigeria! I saw them in each state where they got a job. Why can’t they find a job in the hometown in their native country?’ I know, because corruption reigns in their country. Their government plunders people. Therefore, they come here and take us away from our work.
“When I become a President, we will send all of them home. We will construct a wall along the Atlantic coast. We will colonize them, because probably, they haven’t felt what is it from (the) British.”

Nigeria and Donald Trump! It is left to the Nigerian government not to behave as if these statements do not matter. The typical response could be that these declarations are true and  they may well be, but in diplomatic relations, such aggressive conduct, carried through in formal situations, would be considered consequential. In view of what and who Trump is however, Nigeria needs to fashion out a new policy towards the United States in line with our foreign policy objectives. One point is that President Trump may not necessarily be the Trump of the campaigns. But knowing his mindset, we should build our defences. Our foreign policy team working on Nigeria-US Bilateral National Commission should see the urgent need to define and protect Nigeria’s strategic interest as the United States goes through an uncommon transition between now and January 2017.

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Opinion

Opinion: Ooops….Trump is President-elect of  America! | Tony Ogunlowo

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Opinion

Opinion: Don’t Dehumanise Nigerian Graduates |By : Tope Fasua

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The debate raged last week about Governor Ambode’s attempt to recruit 1,000 Nigerian university graduates as bus conductors in Lagos State. Ordinarily, Ambode is one of Nigeria’s ‘performing’ governors, and he has effectively and shockingly shaken off the legendary shadow of Raji Fashola, who is himself getting demystified by the problems of the three ministries which were dumped on him in Abuja. Going to Lagos these days could actually be an enjoyable experience. Lagos continues to get neater, traffic is often light, and there is generally a new, refreshing ethos that Ambode imported from his sojourns around the world. But for me, this bus conductor business is a no-no. And my reasons have nothing to do with some foolish pride which university graduates possess.

First, the policy was announced by the Chairman of the Bus Conductors’ Association of Nigeria (BCAN), Comrade Israel Adeshola. I am usually suspicious of these people who form associations so easily. Nigerians form associations for everything these days and usually in order to grab power and money. I heard this Chairman, like his colleague in the ‘okada’ business, drives an expensive SUV with a personalised plate number. These guys remind us of what happens to motorists who have any collision with the ‘okada’ bike guys. No matter who is at fault, the okada riders begin to gather and will usually lynch the motorist. In Nigeria, it is every man for himself. Unfortunately, in what is supposed to be our season of renaissance, human lives have become even cheaper, and our attitudes more combative. In Abuja, the more different associations sprung up in the Jonathan era that claimed they were in charge of cleaning the environment, the dirtier Abuja became.

So these associations are just Mafia groups. And the so-called Chairman was allowed to gloat at the famed ‘uselessness’ of Nigerian graduates. It is not enough that we daily denigrate our graduates – especially the ones from the public universities that our leaders and elites deliberately killed while using corrupt money to build private ones and forcing parents to be corrupt so that they can afford the crazy fees being charged in those places, now we throw those hapless graduates into the fangs of some fly-by-night Chairman of Bus Conductors’ Association to further denigrate them. What the Comrade did was basically to say “shebi they said we bus conductors are useless, but see us now, we are employing graduates”. For effect, the Chairman dropped the amount that his association, in conjunction with the Lagos State Ministry of Transport, were going to pay any of these lucky graduates – N50,000 per month.

And so many ‘intellectuals’ weighed behind that policy, some of them abusing and insulting any graduate who hesitates to send in an application. One guy was even very ingenious, asking that between a graduate who works for two years as a bus conductor, and one who sits at home, which one would one as an entrepreneur hire? It seems obvious that one should go for the bus conductor, who was pragmatic enough to try and earn something, but what about attributes of perseverance? Rather than jump at any work just because it pays some money, is there any value to having a vision and defining some barriers about what one will not do? Is life all about the money these days? Mind you, the commercial buses of Lagos are legendary in their craziness. Certainly, there aren’t enough BRT buses in Lagos to post 1,000 university graduate conductors to. And if the government wanted only university graduates in those BRT buses, they can be sure of a protest from the conductors’ association, whom they have given so much prominence.

Some prominent Nigerians – many of them living abroad – chipped in and regaled us with how they did menial work when they arrived in their foreign locations and were trying to find their feet. Some spoke of working as labourers, as sweepers and so on. See, it is different. Very few were able to talk of how low they sunk with their university degrees in hand here in Nigeria. And that is exactly the point. Sometimes, when you give up on yourself and decide to sink, it may be impossible to recover yourself and regain your dignity. If this project is carried through, there is every likelihood that 80 percent of the graduates will be subsumed in the rough ways of Lagos bus drivers and conductors in no time, and perhaps become permanently traumatised such that they would forever feel inferior in the corporate world. We even have evidence. All the state transport schemes in Nigeria started off with well-dressed drivers, complete with suits and ties. But today, some of them are the roughest drivers, and are usually high on whatever it is they drink.

Lack of Vision

It is this lack of vision that is our problem in Nigeria. The simple thing to do is for government to focus on creating employment for school dropouts, and secondary school leavers. By so doing, they create employment opportunities for graduates who will supervise these younger people and retain their dignity. The graduates can do some menial work, but we needn’t strip them of their self-respect. As a matter of fact, if graduates choose on their own to do these jobs, it is better than being forced, coerced, insulted, and made to look lazy, before they take up such jobs out of necessity. Running a society demands the vision of an artist. The work of governance is like painting on a blank canvass. It is that vision that those who purport to lead Nigeria painfully lack. They should try inverting the process of sticking Nigerian graduates under bus conductors and okada riders and see what happens. Mind you, Nigeria has invested on these graduates, by sending them to university and training them with intellectual capital. Why throw good money after bad? Why throw that investment into the fire?

The Children of the Rich Get the Plummest Jobs

Another argument against this brainless idea, is that in the last 15 months, Nigerians have seen scandals involving the employment of the children of the rich and connected into the best jobs in the country, with much impunity. We have seen the culture of nepotism and partiality writ large. There was no statement whatsoever from those on whom we hoped for a Nigerian reorientation. It was a case of ‘woe betide the poor’. Nigeria has changed for the worse in the past two decades. If it was impossible to employ the children of the poor in all these posh public agencies, why bring them even lower to join the vermin of the earth, while your own lucky children float to the top and become leaders over these unfortunate ones. It used to be that through the public school system, Nigerian children mixed together and benefited from one another. Now, with the deliberate destruction of that system by our elites, Nigeria is evolving into a proper class society which will culminate in serious disaster.

Trauma Effect

While all this was going on, there appeared a clip where Nigeria’s most famous senator, Dino Melaye boasted that he once hawked “Kunu” in Kano. Now, let us juxtapose that background against his present penchant for Byzantine luxury. That is what happens when people go through trauma. The very few of them that ‘make it’ never cease to want to prove a point. Many people in Nigeria’s ruling class were traumatised, hence they have become monsters devouring everything in sight. Look at Jimoh Ibrahim who is playing the spoiler in my Ondo State. He too cannot shake off the poverty of his past and the trauma he went through. We cannot keep producing dangerously traumatised people.

Let us just drop the idea and quit messing with our young people.

‘Tope Fasua is President, Institute for Service Excellence and Good Governance. He can be reached via  email: [email protected].

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Opinion

Let’s Talk About Super Excellence! | By: Tony Ogunlowo

So let’s talk about Super Excellence.

The English dictionary describes excellence as the quality of being outstanding or extremely good. Super excellence, however, is the art  of pushing yourself to go even further, further than going the proverbial extra mile, being better than the  best.

Already you’re excellent at what you do (I presume) but what if you could become even better?

In his highly acclaimed book ‘the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ Steven R Covey lists seven things you can do to be better. These are:

1, Be more proactive.

2, Begin with the end in mind.

3, Put first things first – taking full control and staying disciplined.

4, Think Win-Win – failure is not an option!

5, Learn first learn how to understand and then be understood.

6, Synergize – the habit of creative co-operation – teamwork.

7, Sharpen your saw.

We all know what we are good at so there’s no point in going into that. To be super excellent I’ll narrow these seven habits down to three things anyone can follow.

These are:

1, Time is money – don’t waste it!

2, Work Harder and smarter.

3, Seek Feedback.

Now let’s examine them one by one.

‘Time is money’ is a phrase we are all accustomed to. Once you’ve lost time you’ll never get it back! The secret is to make every minute count – time management. There are 24 hour hours in a day. How much of this do we actually waste on frivolous activities – watching TV, messing about online, social events etc. Say if you were to stay off the internet for an hour less every day that’s one hour gained a day, seven hours over a week and over thirty hours over a month. And this is time that can be put to achieving your goals or whatever you’re working on. Try to come up with a plan to manage your time effectively.

Don’t be like a hamster running on a wheel! The poor little creature is putting in a lot of hard work running on its wheel but it’s not going anywhere! It’s one thing to work hard and  another to work smarter – have a destination! There’s no point in working hard till you’re about to drop if it’s not geared towards achieving a specific goal. Some people spend all their lives working hard and at retirement they have nothing to show for it whereas some people work hard for a few years and they are set for life – work hard but smarter.

Two heads are better than one is a saying we are all familiar with. Nobody knows everything and its best to seek feedback on whatever you’re doing from someone else. Better still make sure it’s a third party person who knows very little about you. That way you can be assured that whatever feedback you receive will be an honest appraisal of your abilities not influenced by familiarity.

So let’s move on to the super excellence part; you’ve invented the wheel – Hurray! But it’s not time to pop a bottle of champagne and rest on your laurels. This is just the beginning! What can the wheel be applied to? Time to get your thinking cap on and think of the next step. And when you work it out that the wheel you have invented can be attached to a cart .What’s next? You either get a donkey to pull it or invent an engine to drive it. Be open to all possibilities.

You keep on evolving. You keep on going forward thinking of new things, broadening your horizons, improving your skills – till you become a Master at what you are doing. Look at it from this point of view; you go to primary school. Then on to secondary school. Then on to university to get your FIRST degree before proceeding to get a second degree, a Masters – why stop? You proceed to get your third degree, a  PhD – is there anything else after a PhD? Probably academically not but you can proceed to become an overall expert in your field. Anything else? You can of course proceed to become an internationally known expert in your field and keep on going till, perhaps, you become…..

There is no limit to how far you can go – don’t set yourself a target as this will only limit you, just keep on going! It’s rumoured we just use less than five per cent of our minds capabilities, now’s the time to start using the remaining unused ninety-five per cent! It can be done as its not impossible.

Being excellent to a high degree elevates you above everybody else; your thinking is different. Your perspective on the world becomes different and you’re able to do more things than most can do in their lifetimes.

You will obviously need to be disciplined, focused, ready to put in a lot of hard work, ready for criticism(-and constructive feedback) and at the end of the day your reward will be the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom beyond anybody’s wildest dreams which can be applied to any aspect of your life.

Follow Tony on Twitter: @Archangel641 or visit http:// archangel641.blogspot.com

 

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Opinion

How To Be The World’s Greatest Comeback Kid ~By :Tony Ogunlowo  

“…When you’re going through Hell, keep on going! Never, never never give up…”

~ Winston Churchill

 

By some cruel twist of fate you’ve lost it all – everything! The house, the job, the wife, the kids, the cash – everything’s gone!

Or you haven’t lost all the aforementioned (-yet) and you’re spiralling downwards rapidly and things aren’t working out in your life; debts are piling up, business is going under and you’re pulling you’re hair out in frustration at your inability to control your predicament.

Normally when you’ve fallen from a great height and suddenly find yourself face down in the gutter you can only do one of the following three things:

1, Take the easy way out – find a tree and hang yourself, take an overdose or jump off the nearest high rise. Suicide is not always the best way out; you create untold hardship and misery for those you leave behind and it’s not good for the soul either.

2, You can lose the plot altogether, go insane and wait to be carted off to the nearest psychiatric ward of the nearest mental hospital or …..

3,…or you can decide to be a comeback kid!

A comeback kid is a person who repeatedly demonstrates the ability to overcome downturns or bad periods and bounce back – imagine a boxer knocked out on the canvas, seconds away from being counted out, when he suddenly leaps up and wins the bout.

History is full of people who have infamously fallen flat on their back sides, lost everything, and miraculously picked themselves up.  Some famous ‘comeback kids’ include:

·         Robert Downey, Jr, battled substance abuse and legal problems that saw him jailed in the 90s. Today, he’s cleaned himself up and is one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood now.

·         Donald Trump – The Republican Presidential candidate has survived four cases of bankruptcy and managed to bounce back.

·         The late Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he started, in 1985 before coming back to rescue it in 1997 and turning it into a mega-success.

·         Actor/Comedian Steve Harley went from being homeless to being worth over $100 million dollars.

·         Martha Stewart – Americas first self-made billionaire who nearly lost it all when she was sent to prison for conspiracy, bounced back regained control of her company and has since taken it to new heights.

·         George Foreman – the boxer- reportedly squandered his $5 million fortune earned from fighting and was close to bankruptcy when he climbed back into the ring at the age of 45 in 1994. He has since lent his name to the Foreman grill and is currently worth over $250 million.

Just because you’re down doesn’t mean you’re out of the race; get up, dust yourself down and continue. Others have fallen much further than you have and still managed to get up.

In my book ‘Bootcamp for the Troubled Mind’ (to be published on the 13 June 2017) I list six ways to get yourself out of the gutter and back on top again:

1.      Self-Analysis – you need to be brutally honest with yourself here. Look yourself in the mirror and try and see where you went wrong. Don’t blame anybody else for your shortcomings (- even if others are responsible for your downfall!) – Spreading the blame will never solve your problems.

2.      Get ready to live an austere life – while you’re picking yourself up you have to limit yourself to just the basics in life – food and shelter. Anything else becomes a luxury you can’t afford! Don’t waste resources!

3.      Hard work, hard work, hard work – hard work doesn’t kill anybody! Get ready to work like you’ve never done before – to breaking point and beyond if need be. You’ll be surprised at how much your frail human body can take.

4.      Set your sights even higher – if before you fell you intended to make a million dollars, set your new target to make 5 million dollars. If you intended to climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro now set your sights on conquering Mount Everest. Always aim to achieve more then you originally intended.

5.      Don’t repeat the mistakes of the past – by now you’ve picked yourself up and things are beginning to get back to normal. Remember the mistakes of the past that dragged you down in the first place – DON’T REPEAT THEM!

6.      Reward yourself – each time you reach a certain milestone in your comeback-fight treat yourself to something – call it a pat on the back for good behaviour. It could be a mini-holiday, a new car or a watch – but don’t go over the top ‘cause there’s still lots of work to do

To borrow a story from the Bible Jesus once said ‘destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again’. The Jews he was talking to replied by saying’ this temple took forty-six years to build…and you’re going to raise it up(brick by brick) in three days?’. But of course Jesus was talking about the temple of his body and his resurrection (- which is a story for another day!)

But you can apply this same principle to your lives! If your life has been torn down build it up again – brick by brick!

From a ‘Comeback Kids’ point of view if his temple, that took forty-six years to build, is torn down he’ll persevere and build it all up again in record time – maybe not in three days – but he’ll build it up.

In our material world whatever you have lost can be rebuilt or re-acquired in record time. All you need is the will to do it, the strength to work hard and the belief that it can be done. And like a phoenix you’ll rise from the ashes and be great again.

Where there is a will there’s a way.

Follow Tony on Twitter: @Archangel641 or visit http:// archangel641.blogspot.com

Photo Credit: www.psychologies.co.uk

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Opinion

The Death Wish Of The Ninety Percenters|By : Isaac Aluko Ademoroti

Going by all available records, Nigerian politicians generally, shortly before and immediately after independence from Britain, were often referred to as ten percenters.  This was a reference to a situation where ten per cent of the worth of any contract awarded by the then political leaders ended up in their pockets or personal coffers.  It is another way of saying that a tenth of the nation’s resources was misappropriated or stolen by those politicians.  Not unexpectedly, this was a phenomenon that was to be the harbinger of all other forms of corruption.  Those were the heady days of Regional politics.

However, according to records, in one or two of those Regions, the leaders, at least, managed to use the remaining ninety per cent of our resources to introduce free and qualitative education and to ensure that the people had access to good medical care.  There was full employment.  There was also a well- thought- out programme of integrated rural development which meant that development was extended to people who lived in the remotest parts.  This was the era of farm settlements.  Even though there was no oil boom at this time, the first modern sports stadium was built. The first television station in Africa was also built.  Those leaders were able to notch up several other firsts.  All these things were accomplished using ninety per cent of our resources.

Now, looking back longingly, one could say that the politicians of that era were mere choir boys compared to the present ones who are dangerously rapacious by any standard.  It is a shock that what happens these days is that our politicians steal ninety per cent of our resources.  Perhaps, this was why the immediate past president of the country, Goodluck Jonathan, defiantly refused to accept that stealing is corruption.  To him, political banditry is normal.  This is hardly surprising considering that this was a man who presided over the looting of the nation’s treasury.  The former president’s stance was simply a confirmation that we are dealing with depraved, hardened opportunists. 

Is it any wonder that with only ten per cent of our earnings remaining, we do not have enough left to develop the country?  How can ten percent of our resources be sufficient to run a country of almost 200 million people?  Why should people then be surprised when many of our poorly equipped soldiers who go to the war front are brought back in body bags?  Should we not all spare a thought for the family of an Air Force pilot who is ordered to go on a sortie in a rickety, malfunctioning, Stone Age military aircraft?  In all these, the death wish of the ninety percenters is simply coming to pass.

What about our youths?  Millions of these youths are idle as they roam the streets.  It is because only a meager 10 per cent is left in the national coffers.  There is simply not enough to keep them usefully engaged.  Many university graduates cannot get jobs.  There is no doubt that an idle mind becomes the workshop of the devil.  This explains why many of these youths are attracted to cults which promise them heaven on earth.  They do not realize that they are just being set up for destruction.  Rather than build hundreds of 21st century colleges of Arts, Science and Technology all over the country where the youths can be trained and retrained in all kinds of trades, they are left to roam the streets.  We would rather pander to the wishes of the ninety percenters than care for the future of our youths.  

Our motorways, the railways and the waterways are all in a state of disrepair because 90 per cent of our resources are in private accounts.  Money is needed to repair, rebuild and revamp these transport infrastructures.  It is a shame that a nation that generates billions of dollars can also not pay government employees simply because the ninety percenters must have their fill first.  What about our senior citizens, people who have spent their whole lives serving the nation.  Some God-forsaken ninety percenters do not care if these retirees perish as they criss-cross the country chasing their stolen pensions.

The ninety percenters make sure that Nigerians do not have access to good medical care as there is no money left to build modern, excellently equipped hospitals.  Many people, as a result, die from easily preventable, treatable ailments and diseases.  We must not forget the poor, the weak, the disabled and the disadvantaged who are mostly all on their own.  The 90 percenters have always chosen to turn a blind eye to the plight of these people.

Ultimately, the wish of the ninety percenters is for the hopes of the people to be dashed.  It is their fondest desire for our collective aspirations to be destroyed and for the union to die a slow death.  Frighteningly, the grim reality is that should this trend continue, the dispensation of the ninety nine percenters may just be around the corner.  This connotes a period when only one percent of our resources will be left to run the country.  When the era of the ninety nine percenters arrives, the chances are that places like Banana Island, Lekki, the exclusive residential areas in Abuja, all government reservation areas in all the state capitals and other places regarded as safe havens by our deluded elite may no longer be safe.  It is then that our leaders will come to the realization that it might not be wise after all for them to think that they can always shut themselves away from the plight of the generality of the people.

 

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Opinion

The unspiritual side of Aso Rock|By : Femi Adesina

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 like the landlord of Aso Villa, defending a place where’s he’s just a tenant.”

Yes, nobody is landlord in the Villa, not even rational presidents. They can only live there for 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 for 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 Banquo, 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 re-election, and had asked him to continue in his position as 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 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 ridiculous level, and venerate the Devil, granting him omnipotence, an attribute that belongs to God only. For the Devil, doing evil is 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 wouldn’t be a student of the Holy Bible if I don’t. Jesus talked of 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.

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The Demons Of President Goodluck Jonathan | By: Sonala Olumhense

PARIS, FRANCE - DECEMBER 6: Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan arrives for a dinner with the French President as part of the Summit for Peace and Security in Africa at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France on December 6, 2013. (Photo by Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Few articles in print can be as troubling as “The Spiritual Side of Aso Villa,” published by former Nigeria presidential adviser Reuben Abati on October 14.

Mr. Abati’s account portrays the Nigerian seat of power under Mr. Goodluck Jonathan as having being under spiritual bondage, and suggests that performance was impossible.

The situation was so bad under Mr. Jonathan that staff were always falling sick, according to the account.  Men routinely reported they had become impotent, and their wives comforted themselves with sex videos and toys.  Mysterious fires were common in homes of villa staff.

It was so bad that someone warned the writer that he 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…He said there were persons in the Villa walking upside down…”

A pastor told Abati the villa was full of evil spirits and too much human sacrifice.  Someone always died.  People “lost daughters and sons, brothers and uncles, mothers and fathers…”

Faulty presidential aircraft, one enduring a bird strike in Kenya.  In Norway, a helicopter bearing President Jonathan almost crashing.

Abati, who twice in the article claims not to be superstitious, fields far-reaching conclusions: “When Presidents make mistakes, they are probably victims of a force higher than what we can imagine…When the President makes a speech and he truly means well, the speech is interpreted wrongly by the public…”

His most important one is probably this: “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…in the United States, Presidents live like normal human beings. In Aso Villa, that is impossible…No Nigerian President should be in spiritual bondage because he belongs to all of us and to nobody.”

That last point seems to be an effort to make Nigerians accept that the squalid picture the writer paints of the Jonathan presidency applies to Muhammadu Buhari, who assumed power famously declaring that he belongs to everybody and to nobody.

Abati’s article’s should have been written in 2011, somewhere between June and November, that first half-year in office when he discovered it was impossible for Mr. Jonathan to succeed.  This is the import of his story.

Since neither he nor any of his so-called troubled colleagues found the strength to quit, his dissertation is laughable, at best.  A lot of Mr. Jonathan’s initiatives were well-received.  He did not run into trouble because they were poor.  The devil, pardon the imagery, was always in his failure to implement.

The Freedom of Information Act, for instance, was one of his early, and celebrated efforts.  But in practice, neither he nor any of his senior officials honoured it.

Similarly, in July 2011, Mr. Jonathan announced an anti-corruption “war,” saying he would begin with a comprehensive audit of the finances of all Federal Government ministries, departments and agencies, with effect from 2007.  For four years thereafter, he never implemented it.

This was not new.  That year, I documented how Mr. Jonathan, in an effort to win the election, bathed every nook and corner of Nigeria with promises. Not only did he fulfil none of them, in November 2014 at the launch of his presidential campaign in Lagos, he lied that he had fulfilled ALL of them.

In February 2015, Abati himself, in response to The Economist’s dismissal of Mr. Jonathan’s re-election hopes, backed that position, claiming Mr. Jonathan had “worked very hard to fulfil all the major promises he made to them on assumption of office.”There is a comprehensive contradiction between the energies Mr. Jonathan and his staff spent in trying to remain in power and the claim that uncontrollable forces was preventing them from exercising that power.

The truth is that power is a strange aphrodisiac which lures the unwary into forgetting that its flip side is responsibility.  Ibrahim Babangida, Aso Rock’s first occupant, didn’t want to leave, neither did its most prominent occupiers so far: Sani Abacha and Olusegun Obasanjo.  Are we to take it that the same gremlins that encouraged them to underperform and to betray also insisted that they must be forced to leave?

Jonathan is known as Nigeria’s luckiest politician.  He virtually sneaked into the presidency, unnoticed.  But by his own admission, even as vice-president, he declared his assets in 2007 only because President Umaru Yar’Adua forced him.

And then he found in his hands presidential power, that is: the opportunity to transform his country forever.  What did Jonathan do with it?

“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,” Abati writes.  “He talked about the spirit of error, and how every step taken by the administration would appear to the public like an error.”

Error?  Jonathan swore never to declare his assets. He didn’t give a damn. He conferred respectability on stealing.  He granted state pardon to the corruption ex-convict, Dipreye Alamieyeseigha.  He armed the National Security Adviser (NSA) with slush funds. Arrogant and deliberate howlers, obviously but in no wise spiritual.

Jonathan’s embrace of corruption enhanced the decay of our military.  The disaster of Chibok was magnified because the Jonathan government first chose to deny the abduction.  Was that supposed to appear to the public as though it was a wonderful decision misunderstood by the public?

Jonathan was not hampered by extraneous forces, but by a lack of vision, motivation and strength.  He ran a bazaar, not a responsible, responsive outfit.

For example, Doyin Okupe was appointed Special Adviser in 2012 because Abati himself was said to have demonstrated no ability to “defend” the First Lady from critics.  For that position, the former medical doctor explained last July that NSA Dasuki gave him N50m upon his appointment, another N50m in October 2014, and N10million monthly.  To do what, you wonder.

Okupe also said he had a staff of 23, of which about half had at least university graduate degrees.  How did one attack dog multiply so darkly and expensively?

People were sick in Aso Rock?  Sorry o!  But people are sick all over Nigeria, their miseries of diabetes and hypertension and cancer compounded by incompetent and malicious governance.  Unlike Aso Rock, they often lack diagnosis or treatment, and cannot travel to Germany.  Families are dying of hunger, and in road crashes, robberies and kidnappings.

Let us be clear: Bad governance is not a victimless crime.  It is a weapon of mass destruction.  Bad policies are bad policies, such as Buhari not identifying powerful looters and speedily prosecuting them.  Nigeria should not erupt in joy because he is trying to sell only two executive jets instead of at least five.

Leaders should not spend power on themselves and their inner circle, and when it is gone, attribute their failure to people who walked on their heads.  We like to cite the US, while conveniently forgetting that in that country, the licence Nigerian leaders take in Aso Rock would put the president in jail within one week.

And our people have a saying: If the man who slept indoors says he saw a ghost, what should the man who slept outdoors say?

Credit: PUNCH Newspapers

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The Room President Buhari Really Needs Now |By : Gimba Kakanda

 
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At first, like every sane Nigerian, I took President Muhammadu Buhari’s response to his wife’s criticism of his government as a joke. And even agreed with Mallam Garba Shehu’s description of it as such on Twitter, that “(President Buhari) was obviously throwing a banter.” But the president’s unnecessary restatement of that misogynistic caricaturing of his wife in a subsequent interview, clarifying that indeed “she belongs in my kitchen, my living room and the other”, was devastating. And this was done as guest of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, a woman who manages a country more prosperous than his and ranks higher than him in the global political equation. Yet that wasn’t a clue to keep his patriarchy to himself.
 
The tragic thing is, what Mrs. Buhari said wasn’t even damaging. It was an explicit praise of the president, which was why I endeavoured to understand her interviews on BBC in Hausa and then in English as a PR stunt developed to exonerate the husband. For what could be a more convenient inference from her claim that the government has been hijacked by strangers and opportunists? I even likened her guts to that of her fictional American counterpart, Mrs. Claire Underwood, reputed for audacious ambition and manipulation of events to secure her husband’s political capital. “House of Cards” fans will get this analogy.
 
For a president serially accused of nepotism and parochialism, Aisha’s interviews, in my initial interpretations, seemed like strategic PR for President Buhari. Her criticism only portrayed him as he once described himself, that he “belongs to everybody…” All the things she said, intended to be a criticism of her husband, only projected a favourable image of the man.
 
For a fact, Aisha wasn’t speaking for me, probably not for anyone outside her circle of partisan elite. She was speaking for those who deserved or expected rewards for supporting Buhari. The hunger addressed in the BBC interview isn’t really that of the masses, but that of a part of the Nigerian elite who aren’t eating as they had anticipated. So, following her logic, democracy is intended to be a grand house party for friends and family of the celebrant – the president.
Shouldn’t this have been explained by the president’s media managers as validation of the man’s famous declaration of belonging to nobody even though he belongs to all? Aisha Buhari’s argument could’ve been valid if she hadn’t based a point on Buhari inviting strangers and opportunists to his government. She painted her husband as naïve, and that his government has been hijacked. Before him was an opportunity to describe her outrage as a misunderstanding of his magnanimity.
Perhaps the president was not disturbed by the media backlash that trailed his initial degrading response to his wife because patriarchy is a way of life in his country, and expressions as his aren’t interpreted as wrong and unacceptable here. We shouldn’t be fooled, millions of us like this male-privileging social order, even if we can’t make the delusion of that grandeur public. Amongst ourselves, and deep within us, there’s a maddening patriarchal tendency obvious in our reactions when we see a car badly driven, a lady living alone, a lady over 30 who is unmarried, a lady heading a big public institution. Like all privileges, men see this patriarchy as birthright, something hard to unlearn. Like that racist who can’t imagine a world of all equal. And it would be foolish to praise the president for publicly shaming us all.
Buhari has goofed by degrading his wife in the eyes of the world, and he should apologise to her. But her outrage over his approach to governance was harmless. There’s nothing wrong with the president of Nigeria appointing citizens he didn’t know, or had never ever met, which seems to frighten his wife the most. That’s a partisan concern, not a national problem. If anything, we should commend the man for refusing to reward only those who supported him as expected by his wife and her ilk. It’s one thing to say Nigeria isn’t functioning as promised by the APC, it’s another to say it’s so as a result of existence of “strangers” and “opportunists” in the government.
As we await the next episode of the first family’s rumble, the president needs a retreat to reflect deeply on the legacy he intends to leave behind, and the impact of this politically incorrect example he advertised in his reaction to his wife. Buhari used to be a flawless model to some partisans, and their intellectual allies could have written the story of his struggles and named it “The Best President Nigeria Never Had” if he had lost the 2015 Presidential Elections.
 
Today, he’s falling down the popularity bar, and the speed with which this is happening is the only motivation he needs to sit up. It’s likely he may not have company in the “other room” soon, so what he really needs is a space to reflect—a Reflection Room. May God save us from us!

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Opinion: The spiritual side of Aso Villa | By: Reuben Abati

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.
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.
Credit: guardian.ng
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