Business
”THE UNSPIRITUAL SIDE OF ASO VILLA”, Femi Adeshina replies Reuben Abati
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 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.
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.
.Adesina is Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari
Deadline of Compliance: Nigeria’s Urgent Call for Tax Return Filing
By George Omagbemi Sylvester | Published by SaharaWeeklyNG.com
“Shift or Structural Demand? A Declaration of Civic Duty in a Nation at a Fiscal Crossroads.”
In the unfolding narrative of national development and economic reform, few instruments are as defining as tax compliance. For Nigeria, a nation perpetually grappling with revenue shortfalls, structural dependency on a single export commodity, and entrenched informal economic behaviour, the Federal Government’s recent clarification on tax return deadlines is not mere bureaucratic noise. It is a deliberate and inescapable declaration: the social contract between citizen and state must be honoured through transparent, lawful and timely tax reporting.
At its core, the government’s pronouncement is stark in its simplicity and radical in its implications. Federal authorities, speaking through the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, have made it unequivocally clear that every Nigerian, whether employer or individual taxpayer, must file annual tax returns under the law. This encompasses self-assessment filings by individuals that too many assumed ended once employers deducted pay-as-you-earn taxes from their salaries.
This is not an optional civic suggestion, it is mandatory, backed by statute, and tied to a broader vision of national fiscal responsibility. Citizens can no longer hide behind ignorance, apathy, or false assumptions. “Many people assume that if their employer deducts tax from their salaries, their obligations end there. That is wrong,” Oyedele warned, emphasizing that the obligation to file remains with the individual under both existing and newly reformed tax laws.
The Deadlines and the Reality They Reveal.
Across the federation, state and federal revenue authorities have reaffirmed statutory deadlines in pursuit of compliance. The Lagos State Internal Revenue Service, for instance, moved to extend its filing date for employer returns by a narrow window, reflecting the reality that compliance often lags behind legal timelines. The extension was intended not as leniency, but as a pragmatic effort to allow accurate and complete submissions, underscoring that true compliance rises above mere mechanical ticking of a box.
At the federal level, Oyedele’s intervention was even more fundamental. He reminded Nigerians that annual tax returns for the preceding year must be filed in good faith, with integrity and in respect of the law. This applies regardless of income level including low-income earners who have historically believed that they are outside the tax net. “All of us must file our returns, including those earning low income,” he stated.
Herein lies one of the most challenging truths of contemporary Nigerian governance: widespread tax non-compliance is not just a technical breach of law, it is a deep cultural and structural issue that reflects decades of mistrust between citizens and the state.
The Root of the Problem: Non-Compliance as a Symptom.
Nigeria’s tax culture has long been under scrutiny. Public discourse and economic analysis consistently show that a significant majority of eligible taxpayers do not file annual returns. Oyedele highlighted that even in states widely regarded as tax administration leaders, compliance remains strikingly low, often below five percent.
This widespread non-compliance stems from multiple sources:
A long history of weak tax administration systems, where enforcement was inconsistent and penalties were rarely applied.
A perception that public services do not reflect the taxes collected, eroding the citizenry’s belief in reciprocity.
An informal economy where income often goes unrecorded, making filing seem irrelevant or impossible to many.
Lack of awareness, with many Nigerians genuinely believing that tax liability ends with employer deductions.
The government’s renewed push for compliance directly challenges these perceptions. It signals a shift from voluntary or lax compliance to structured accountability, a stance that aligns with best practices in modern public finance.
Why This Matters: Beyond Deadlines.
At its most profound level, the insistence on tax return filings is about nation-building and shared responsibility.
Scholars of public finance universally agree that a robust tax system is the backbone of sustainable development. As the eminent economist Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz has observed, “A society that cannot mobilize its own resources through fair taxation undermines both its government’s legitimacy and its capacity to provide for its people.” Filing tax returns is not a mere administrative task, it is a declaration of participation in the collective project of national advancement.
In Nigeria’s context, this declaration carries weight. With the enactment of comprehensive tax reforms in recent years (including unified frameworks for tax administration and enforcement) authorities now possess broader statutory tools to ensure compliance and accountability. These measures, which include electronic filing platforms and stronger enforcement powers, have been framed as fair and equitable, targeting efficiency rather than arbitrariness.
Yet the success of these reforms depends heavily on citizens embracing their civic duties with sincerity. And this depends on mutual trust, the belief that paying taxes yields tangible benefits in infrastructure, education, healthcare, security and social services.
Voices From Experts: Fiscal Responsibility as a Public Ethic.
Tax law experts and economists, reflecting on the compliance push, have underscored a universal theme: taxation without transparency is inequity, but taxation with accountability is empowerment. When managed with fairness, a functional tax system can reduce dependency on volatile revenue sources, stabilise national budgets, and support long-term investment in human capital.
Professor Aisha Bello, a respected authority in fiscal policy, notes that “Tax compliance is not a burden; it is the foundation upon which social contracts are built. A citizen who honours tax obligations affirms the legitimacy of governance and demands better performance in return.”
Similarly, a leading tax scholar, Dr. Emeka Okon, argues that “The era when Nigerians could evade broader tax responsibilities simply because automatic deductions occur at source must end. For a modern economy, every eligible citizen must be part of the formal tax fold not as victims, but as stakeholders.”
These authoritative voices point to an unassailable truth: filing tax returns is both a legal requirement and a moral responsibility, an expression of citizenship in its fullest sense.
Challenges on the Ground: Compliance and Capacity.
While the rhetoric of compliance is compelling, the reality on the ground demands nuanced understanding. Many taxpayers (especially in the informal sector) lack meaningful access to digital platforms and resources for filing returns. For others, the fear of bureaucratic complexity and perceived punitive enforcement deters participation.
The government, for its part, has responded by promoting online systems and pledging greater taxpayer support. Tax authorities are increasingly engaging stakeholders to demystify filing processes, explain requirements and offer assistance. This mix of enforcement and facilitation is essential. As one seasoned revenue specialist observed: “The state cannot compel compliance through force alone; it must earn it through education, simplicity and fairness.”
The Broader Implication: A New Social Compact.
Ultimately, Nigeria’s renewed emphasis on tax return filing transcends administrative deadlines. It is an unequivocal declaration that national development is a shared responsibility, that citizens and state must engage in a transparent, accountable, and reciprocal relationship.
Tax compliance, therefore, becomes far more than a legal act; it becomes a moral claim on the nation’s future.
When citizens file their returns honestly, they affirm their stake in the nation’s destiny. When the government collects taxes transparently and deploys them effectively, it strengthens not only public services but civic trust itself.
In this sense, the deadlines proclaimed by Nigeria’s fiscal authorities mark not an end but a beginning; the beginning of a civic epoch in which accountability replaces apathy, participation replaces indifference and national purpose triumphs over fragmentation.
The road ahead will not be easy. But in demanding compliance, Nigeria is demanding more than tax returns. It is demanding commitment and that, ultimately, is the foundation on which nations are built.
BUA Foods Records 91% Surge in Profit After Tax, Hits ₦508bn in 2025
By femi Oyewale
Business
Adron Homes Unveils “Love for Love” Valentine Promo with Exciting Discounts, Luxury Gifts, and Travel Rewards
Adron Homes Unveils “Love for Love” Valentine Promo with Exciting Discounts, Luxury Gifts, and Travel Rewards
In celebration of the season of love, Adron Homes and Properties has announced the launch of its special Valentine campaign, “Love for Love” Promo, a customer-centric initiative designed to reward Nigerians who choose to express love through smart, lasting real estate investments.
The Love for Love Promo offers clients attractive discounts, flexible payment options, and an array of exclusive gift items, reinforcing Adron Homes’ commitment to making property ownership both rewarding and accessible. The campaign runs throughout the Valentine season and applies to the company’s wide portfolio of estates and housing projects strategically located across Nigeria.
Speaking on the promo, the company’s Managing Director, Mrs Adenike Ajobo, stated that the initiative is aimed at encouraging individuals and families to move beyond conventional Valentine gifts by investing in assets that secure their future. According to the company, love is best demonstrated through stability, legacy, and long-term value—principles that real estate ownership represents.
Under the promo structure, clients who make a payment of ₦100,000 receive cake, chocolates, and a bottle of wine, while those who pay ₦200,000 are rewarded with a Love Hamper. Payments of ₦500,000 attract a Love Hamper plus cake, and clients who pay ₦1,000,000 enjoy a choice of a Samsung phone or a Love Hamper with cake.
The rewards become increasingly premium as commitment grows. Clients who pay ₦5,000,000 receive either an iPad or an all-expenses-paid romantic getaway for a couple at one of Nigeria’s finest hotels, which includes two nights’ accommodation, special treats, and a Love Hamper. A payment of ₦10,000,000 comes with a choice of a Samsung Z Fold 7, three nights at a top-tier resort in Nigeria, or a full solar power installation.
For high-value investors, the Love for Love Promo delivers exceptional lifestyle experiences. Clients who pay ₦30,000,000 on land are rewarded with a three-night couple’s trip to Doha, Qatar, or South Africa, while purchasers of any Adron Homes house valued at ₦50,000,000 receive a double-door refrigerator.
The promo covers Adron Homes’ estates located in Lagos, Shimawa, Sagamu, Atan–Ota, Papalanto, Abeokuta, Ibadan, Osun, Ekiti, Abuja, Nasarawa, and Niger States, offering clients the opportunity to invest in fast-growing, strategically positioned communities nationwide.
Adron Homes reiterated that beyond the incentives, the campaign underscores the company’s strong reputation for secure land titles, affordable pricing, strategic locations, and a proven legacy in real estate development.
As Valentine’s Day approaches, Adron Homes encourages Nigerians at home and in the diaspora to take advantage of the Love for Love Promo to enjoy exceptional value, exclusive rewards, and the opportunity to build a future rooted in love, security, and prosperity.
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