Buhari’s ‘Kitchen Wife’ And The Curse And Pain Of Power – Femi Fani-Kayode

By Femi Fani-Kayode

I read Reuben Abati’s excellent write-up titled “The Spiritual Side Of Aso Villa” and I concur with his submissions.

I worked in the Villa for three years as President Olusegun Obasanjo’s spokesman on public affairs and a lot of gery strange things happened there.

Amongst them is the fact that the two people that served as Senior Special Assistant to President Obasanjo on Media and Publicity one after the other, namely the much-loved Mr. Tunji Oseni and then later Mrs. Remi Oyo, both contracted a terrible terminal illness whilst in office and died a few years later.

Apart from that many other aides that worked in the Villa at that time were also afflicted with strange dieseases and a suddem and tragic end.

Amongst them were Col. Solomon Giwa Amu, Obasanjo’s hard-working and good-looking ADC and Mr. Stanely Macebuh, his brilliant and cerebal Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications.

I was so moved by Abati’s piece that I decided to share the following thoughts about the spiritual challenges that those in power have faced.

When our President can get up and tell the whole world all the way from distant Germany that his wife “belongs to the kitchen, the living room and the other room” simply because she dared to speak her mind to the BBC then you know that he is in the grip of something evil and that demons are speaking through him.

It is all part of the spiritual dimension of living in the Villa that Abati was referring to in his essay. The President’s mind has become twisted and he is now posessed by strange and powerful entities. He needs a lot of prayer.

Yet the problem is much bigger and wider than that. When one studies the history of our country critically and takes the time to do the appropriate research, one thing becomes very clear- that, in Nigeria, politics and the power game is a dangerous calling and terrible business which, more often than not, comes with a heavy price tag.

That price tag includes pain, anguish, betrayal, humiliation, persecution, misfortune, hardship, loss, death, strange ailments and tragedy for those who reach the top and their loved ones.

It is rather like playing Russian roulette- there is one live bullet in the six empty chambers of the pistol and one doesn’t quite know when that bullet will go off when the trigger is pulled.

The gamble and risks taken are not only compulsive but they are also addictive and at the same time utterly deadly.

Sadly the result is as follows- virtually every single one of our national leaders and those that have ever ruled this country has suffered immeasurably at some point or the other in their lives, whether it be before, during or after they came to power.

They too have shed tears in the loneliness of their closets and have eaten portions of what the Bible describes as the ”bread of sorrows”. Yes, even the rich and powerful cry and even they suffer loss and tragedy.