Femi Adesina, Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, has replied Reuben Abati, over the latter’s claim that there is some form of witchcraft, which causes occupants of Aso Villa to take weird decisions.
Abati in his most recent article titled ‘Rituals, blood and death: The spiritual side of Aso Villa’, said recent happenings in the presidency should give the citizens headache, adding that the place needs redemption urgently.
In a response titled ‘The unspiritual side of Aso Villa’, Buhari’s spokesman said: “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 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 reelection, 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”.
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