by Rachel Ogbu

Introducing the Aso Country Club where members receive N100,000 fine for committing adultery.

The goal of the club is to build stronger and more peaceful family ties among the members; therefore it has defined punishment for members who have extra marital relationships.

According to reports, being part of this social group is really important to some men willing to build high-profile networking in Abuja and majority of the members of the club are middle-aged men and some with very young families.

But pioneer chairman of the club, Chidiebere Ogbaji Ferguson told Abuja Metro news that the campaign to curb adultery, which was referred to as the greatest attack on families and responsible for collapsing many marriages, is the actual reason the club began in the first place.

Ferguson who is also the CEO of Home Mall noted that:

“We have read about so many divorce cases in FCT. Many close-knit families in the past are today operated by single parents.

We discovered that the social factor of this city is influencing not only marriages but also families. We decided to use the club to sustain marriages, deep relationship among people that found themselves under the same roof as spouses.

“We formed the club to advance deep interpersonal relationship among us, promote good and healthy lifestyle, realize our roles as husbands and heads of our families. “We have stood stoutly, with our rules and regulations, against any member going the wrong way, abandoning his family and allowing adultery to tear his marriage apart.”

“As I speak to you, two to three persons have paid N100,000 fine each while others have decided not to throw away such amount of money by involving themselves in any proven case of adultery that threatens their marriages.”

“Some members have complained that our fight against the menace on marriage is infringing on their personal freedom, but since the only language we understand very well here is force, we decided to tell ourselves that we either join or leave the club.”

“So, since the members know that adultery would kill their marriages and decided to continue to commit it, they should be ready to continue paying the club the fine of N100, 000 or stay out and enjoy their marriages and family lives.”

“It is either you leave the club, join the club or find a way of becoming an artful dodger to evade the fine.” According to him, the objective of the club is not limited to rectitude, as he added: “We want to also sustain employer/employee relationship because you cannot be an employee and yet pretend while such employment is marred with frivolities.”

“We make our members take their jobs seriously because the way we serve people will be the way others will serve us.”

“For those of us going into politics, we give them orientation to re-channel their perception and reasoning concerning this country called Nigeria. Politics must not be an all comers gold site where we go in to steal money. We will make sure that they have a rethink and bring their conscience to focus to see if they can actually help this country.”

The Sun explores the club’s history :

As at May last year, we were mere group of friends that always stay together most evenings to discuss politics, sports, social events in FCT until we discovered that most of these men hanging out after work as common friends share similar ideas.

It was actually during those periods of hanging out that we decided to constitute ourselves into an association to promote deep interpersonal relationship among us, promote good healthy lifestyle, awaken the consciousness of our roles as husbands and head of our various families.

We discovered after a while that the age bracket of between 35 to 50 and 55 years in FCT are docile in nature, prey to the environmental manipulation and social influence of the city.

Most people’s lifestyles are so pinned to procrastination. It was against this backdrop that we brought people of like minds together to form a healthy club. It is a club to foster strong relationships and a club to sustain the development strides in FCT.

We want to use what we have to help develop our environment, influence people to have better impression about this city called Abuja. In future, we would try to consider the possibility of co-opting members from other states into Aso Country Club.

For now, we are trying to imbibe into ourselves the feelings of accepting FCT as our home, despite coming from various states.

Most of us have lived in Abuja for more than 10 years. We have continued to see the same familiar faces. That was the reason we decided to form the club to foster a development we can sustain for the benefit of all of us, and humankind. Since the club took off, I have been the convener, founding chairman and first executive chairman. We have executives and board of trustees committed to ensuring that our plans and programmes work out.

In the FCT, many families are collapsing, and many have come to know Abuja as a city where ladies are hot, daring and angle at men possibly to take them away from their wives, and having nurtured families for years even when most of us were just struggling, it would be most expedient we have a platform to help us sustain those old institutions without external intrusions.

The Aso Country Club was officially presented to the public on December 5, 2012 at the Yar’Adua Centre. We used the opportunity to let people know what we do and urged them to join us in the campaign for a rebirth of this country. We also let Nigerians know that they can still rely on friends in spite of the present doubts and mistrust in the country.

The Aso Country Club doesn’t have any religious bias. We are friends that have been together for a long time, playing chess, scramble every evening. It graduated to identifying with each other during celebrations, handling of cases involving our friends losing the grip of their marriages, those who don’t go home early and cases of our friends involved in fighting. Initially all these cases were regarded as gossips but we resolved not to continue with the gossips because talking behind somebody is maligning the person.

We stood stoutly with our rules and regulations against any member going the wrong way, abandoning his family and allowing adultery tear his marriage apart.