Tag: Aso Villa

Reports of presidential unease over the location of the Aso Villa chapel won’t go away, no matter how surreptitiously presidency officials act or think. Though presidential aides denied some two weeks ago that the chapel built by former president Olusegun Obasanjo — some say less than some 50 metres from the residence of the president — had been closed down, there are persistent reports all is not well with its current location. President Muhammadu Buhari’s security aides are said to be uncomfortable with the closeness of the chapel to the president’s residential quarters. Current reports, yet to be denied by the presidency, suggest that the chapel, together with the Aso Villa mosque, may soon be relocated to more spacious and distant surroundings within the presidential complex. The Aso Villa mosque built by the Ibrahim Babangida regime is believed to be nearer the office of the president than the chapel is nearer the resident. This column does not have the measurements.

A few newspapers also reported that the children’s wing of the chapel had been closed down, and the facility turned into food store. Presidency officials have refused to rebut or corroborate this latest information. However, if the chapel eventually gets relocated, it is unlikely to portray the image of the president in the pleasant and liberal light he has struggled in the past few years to entrench in the hearts of many Nigerians who suspect his secularist bona fides. They will wonder why former president Umaru Yar’Adua did not relocate the chapel, wonder why ex-President Goodluck Jonathan did not tamper with the location of the Aso Villa mosque notwithstanding security concerns, wonder whether there are plans to preclude a Christian from winning subsequent elections and enjoying the close proximity of the chapel, and wonder whether each president, Christian, Muslim or traditionalist, would redraw the Villa facilities to suit his religious, social and political purposes.

President Buhari has sensibly refused to be drawn into the issue of the chapel relocation. He should resist the temptation. If he is aware of the plans by his security aides to do anything about the chapel, he should quietly give them his firm opinion, recognising that whatever he does has perhaps lasting implications for his image, if not for his presidency. If he assents to the relocation of both the chapel and the mosque, he can defend his action on the grounds that both are located too uncomfortably close to the office and residential quarters of the president. But he must be painfully aware that the Christian community would conclude that the mosque relocation, if it was ordered, was simply an excuse to uproot the chapel. The president has a reputation for bold decisions; but he must be aware that most Christians would see the decision as exemplifying intolerance rather than courage.

However, sooner or later, both the mosque and the chapel will be relocated. A courageous and secularist president will, in fact, relocate the worship centres outside the presidential complex, in other words, cancelling them altogether as a needless and showy example of sham religiosity. The presidential complex does not need worship centres; they do not confer holiness on the president and his aides, and their absence will not confer wickedness on them either. As a matter of fact, since the Villa became habitable, none of its occupants had demonstrated the fine and sober spirit of leaders who feared God and loved the people. If President Buhari would demonstrate that spirit, it is not altogether clear whether the bold decision to uproot the chapel and the mosque is a fitting way to start, especially because a significant part of the Christian community believed him to be more amenable to Islamic matters than any other religion, notwithstanding his protestations and those of his friends and supporters to the contrary.

Other than sustaining the status quo, any other step President Buhari takes concerning the chapel will draw flak. His predecessors perverted the country’s secular foundations, and enthroned poor judgement and appalling leadership, leaving him little room to manoeuvre. When military president Babangida built the Aso Villa mosque, it was apparent he did not think like a Nigerian leader. If he did, he would either have resisted the temptation to religionise the seat of power, or if he felt compelled to build worship centres, at least balance religious interests by also building a chapel. Logic and good sense would have dictated that he should build both in the best locations, with the security implications of the locations in mind. Since Gen Babangida, no other head of state or president had deemed it fit to correct the imbalance until Chief Obasanjo assumed office in 1999 and, in his customary disregard for order and propriety, simply planted a chapel where his emotions led him. Though the chapel solved a need, it further compounded the confusion in Aso Villa, portraying Nigerian leaders as disorderly, inept and lacking in commonsense and foresight.

Unfortunately, the disorder and lack of polish and responsibility at the national level are gradually seeping into many states and distorting their social and political ethos, particularly the Southwest states, where it is no longer possible to run for governorship election without a religiously diversified ticket. Yet, in the Southwest, it was a little over three decades ago, irrespective of religious demographics, that some states boasted of same religion tickets and won, with not a whimper from anyone. But the gradual and reckless religionisation of the federal seat of power has corrupted everything in its wake. If President Buhari is perceptive, he will recognise that the distrust for him in the southern part of Nigeria and substantial rejection in the polls were based not on the qualities and competence of Dr Jonathan, two virtues the former president didn’t have, but on the unsubstantiated fear that the APC candidate would Islamise the country.

Aso Villa, like many other areas of national life, must be reclaimed from religion. More than anything else, religion, especially its politicisation, is the greatest threat to national stability. The outbreak of Boko Haram and Maitatsine revolts have not taught the North any lessons about circumscribing the role of religion in national life. After Boko Haram, there will be yet other puritanical revolts because lessons have not been learnt, as Libya, Syria, Iraq and others are showing. Nigeria has so far been fairly lucky to avoid an all-out religious cataclysm. How long the luck will hold out will depend on whether it is fortunate enough to produce real, secular leaders who would draw a line between religion and state, between unfairness and equity, and between justice and injustice.

In the next few months, Nigerians will determine how to judge President Buhari. Let him, therefore, not have any illusion that he is not under scrutiny. His actions will be watched, whether in politics or in such matters as the relocation of the Aso Villa chapel, and harshly judged. So far, given his controversial appointments and ascetic comportment, few people have few reasons to cheer about him and his leadership. That is why he may not be well placed to correct the dismal errors made by his predecessors in locating the chapel and mosque at the Villa, errors that are hideous, reproachable, and indefensible. He cannot ignore his own weaknesses, especially his aloofness and disinterestedness in deeper, complicated issues pertaining to libertarian values. Having been praised for so long for his ascetic, Spartan lifestyle, and lauded for his integrity and honesty, he seems to be persuaded of his own uniqueness almost to the point of sanctimoniousness. Not being a good communicator, and being sometimes inured to the dangers of ignoring other people’s liberal, if not permissive, beliefs, he will need to pay closer and wider attention to the complex and entangled world around him.

Whether Nigerians like it or not, the chapel and mosque at the villa will one day be relocated. But it will be done by someone who can take that drastic measure and get away with it, someone whose bonhomie can convince the nation of his impartiality and zest for life, someone who can convince the country that his decision is propelled by a firm conviction and ideology that state must be delinked from religion, and that he is himself a trustworthy rampart for the defence of the rights of the people.