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The man who believed he was a “perfect specimen of prime manhood” was a very rich and powerful individual who lived in an opulent house and socialized with the most important people in the world. One day, he put on his Rolex, his Yeezy sneakers, and a bright red cap to go play golf, but something bad happened to him and he believed he had died. His soul experienced a terrifying free-fall through dark, chilling tunnels and icy realms that seemed never-ending. He felt himself to be nothing more than a bodiless soul on a shitty flight from death, sensing a hooded nemesis with a killing scythe giving him relentless chase. Hearing the frail wail of a newborn baby from a separate tunnel, he veered toward the sound and dove until he hit something soft and small, which knocked him unconscious.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself in a stinking, rancid room with red-mud walls and a thatched roof. He initially tried to call for his security detail, screaming for a man named “Pete,” but realized he could not move his neck and his pistol was gone. He recalled that his name was POTUS, though he could not remember if it was his first or last name. A “black giantess” hovered over him and pushed a finger into his mouth that tasted of Manuka honey, and to his horror, he found himself suckling greedily. He believed he had been kidnapped by Albanians and sold to Chinese scientists who had shrunk him into a baby as part of an evil experiment. He was placed against the breast of a pale woman named Folake, and despite his fury and shame, his mouth guzzled her milk with gusto. Folake revealed that the baby whom she intended to use as a “ticket to America” was the son of a man named Tunde Adeniran, who had abandoned her. Folake planned to sell the baby to a rich man in Lagos to fund a black-market U.S. visa.
In the United States, news broke that President Jerry King had been admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in a medically-induced coma. He had been hit in the head by a golf ball swung by playboy billionaire Tad Hunter, a situation the media dubbed the “King-Golf Curse”. Seven years later in Lagos, a young boy named Lanre Olupitan arrived at an exclusive international primary school in Ikoyi and insisted to his teacher, Miss Yemisi, that his real name was POTUS Olupitan. Adisa (POTUS) was a dark-skinned boy with unusually pale brown eyes and a menacing scowl. He was a playground bully who used his fists to teach his classmates respect, particularly targeting those he deemed “dirty” or “poor”. His only real friend was a bookish Filipino boy named Frankie Potot, whom he considered “clean” and rich.
POTUS suffered from excruciating headaches and “demon voices” inside his head that spoke in multiple male and female voices with American or Canadian accents. His parents, Ronke and Kunle Olupitan, believed he was possessed by a powerful water spirit named POTUS, characterized by a Babalawo as a “polluter of men’s morals and a stealer of souls”. The Babalawo performed a ritual at Bar Beach to appease the spirit, instructing the parents to name the child POTUS as a talismanic shield and warning them never to let the boy cross a bridge or go near large bodies of water. Despite his academic struggles, POTUS was a golf protégé, earning trophies and local fame. He felt a strange sense of displacement, believing the “real him” was hidden behind the mirrors in his home.
On his ninth birthday, Adisa’s world imploded when he accidentally walked in on his mother, Ronke, in the bathroom. He discovered that his mother had a “giant ding dong” and was actually a man. Ronke, crying and trembling, begged Adisa never to tell anyone, especially his Grandma Funke. Adisa became soul-terrified of the “alien monster” that had taken over his mother’s body. His father, Kunle, eventually confessed that they were not his blood parents; Adisa had been brought to Ronke as a present when he was less than a day old. Kunle threatened Adisa, saying that if he revealed the secret, he would be thrown into the Atlantic Ocean to swim with the water demon.
For the next eight years, the family lived in a “sandcastle” of lies and uncomfortable silence. Adisa eventually turned the tables on his father, using the secret to blackmail Kunle for money, freedom, and a motorbike. He felt a deep loathing for Kunle, whom he called “Kinky-Kootch Kunle,” viewing him as a hypocritical coward who hid in a closet while dressing in traditional Yoruba Agbada. Despite his knowledge of Ronke’s gender, Adisa still loved her, seeing her as feminine and tender-hearted.
One Sunday morning, while riding his motorbike to church, the “demon voices” in Adisa’s head became a shrieking ruckus. He recognized the voice of a deep, authoritative male talking about “National Intelligence” and a cultured female calling out to a patient named “Jerry”. He overheard what he believed was a murder plot against the patient. Distracted by the voices, Adisa was hit by a car and sent flying over a bridge into a lake. In the “foggy bubble of nothingness” following his drowning, he saw an “Oyinbo ghost” the spectre of an old white man with silver hair, pale green eyes, and Yeezy sneakers. The ghost identified itself as POTUS. Adisa challenged the spirit, and his charmed amulets activated, shrouding him in a “bubble of rainbow fire” that flung the ghost away.
Adisa returned to consciousness to witness a horrific scene: a screaming mob had descended upon Ronke on the beach. Her wig had fallen off when she dove in to save Adisa, revealing her secret to the public. The mob called her a “sick pervert” and an “abomination,” eventually hanging a tire around her neck and setting her on fire. Adisa watched in helpless horror as his mother was murdered. In the hospital, Kunle visited Adisa not with comfort, but with hate, cursing the day he brought Adisa into their lives and informing him that they were now “national caricatures”. Kunle disowned Adisa, telling him he would be kicked out of the house after the burial and would receive no further financial support, including his planned U.S. university program.
The Oyinbo ghost reappeared at Adisa’s bedside, revealing that he was not a water demon but President Jerry King. The President explained that he had “jumped” into Adisa’s infant body to escape the “hooded one” after his golf accident, and had been stuck there for years, feeding Adisa the sounds of his hospital room. King revealed that his wife, Portia (FLOTUS), and the Vice President (Flake-Frank) were plotting to kill him by switching off his life support. He also shared bizarre “top secret” information, claiming that celebrities like Tom Cruise, Taylor Swift, and Lewis Hamilton were actually aliens from Mars.
Adisa contacted The Great America News Inc. and provided a secret code and the message “Remember Belly-Berry” to prove the President was communicating through him. This message brought a high-level American delegation to Adisa’s hospital room in Lagos, including the President’s sister, Dr. Delores King, the Chief of Staff Pete Daniels (Pansy-Pete), and FBI Director Daniel Jackson. To convince the skeptical FBI Director, the President’s ghost performed telekinetic feats, throwing a remote control at Jackson’s head and nearly choking him with his own necktie. Adisa relayed the President’s instructions for his sister to find his latest will and access a secret vault at his bank. In exchange for his help, Adisa demanded a college scholarship, a house, and one million dollars each for himself and Frankie.
President King eventually forced Adisa to host his spirit again because the ghost was “dying” and needed a human vessel to recharge. Adisa agreed on the condition that the perks the house, money, and scholarship go to Frankie and the Babalawo’s son, Adeleke, while the President used the FBI to find Adisa’s biological mother. Before the final possession, Adisa forced the President to reveal the meaning of “Remember Belly-Bury” (which Adisa had misspelled as Belly-Berry). King confessed that in 1997, he and his sister had performed a secret, fatal abortion on a girl named Mary-Lou Johnson and buried her body in Delores’s backyard. Adisa realized that the recurring nightmare he had every December 12th of a girl in a yellow dress strangling him was actually the President’s memory of the murder.
The Babalawo performed a ritual involving “Àwòrán juice” and a blood oath that temporarily turned the President’s spirit into a solid black human. Adisa and the Babalawo then traveled to America, where the medicine man switched the souls of Adisa and the President. Adisa, now in the President’s body, used his five hours of power to bring Frankie and Adeleke to the safe house and then hold a press briefing. Standing before the world’s media at the Waldorf, Adisa felt a surge of conflict; despite the President’s crimes, King had helped him reconcile with Kunle and stop smoking. Instead of exposing the President’s sins publicly as the Babalawo wanted, Adisa announced that the President was withdrawing from the race and would not seek a third term.
In the aftermath, the FBI discovered the body of Mary-Lou Johnson at Dr. Delores’s house, and Delores committed suicide. Jerry King lost the election and began ranting on social media about “celebrity aliens and African witch doctors”. Adisa returned to Nigeria, where he fully reconciled with Kunle. He tracked down his biological grandmother, Grandma Mercy, in the village of Orugbo and learned that his birth mother, Folake, had died when her smuggler’s boat capsized in the Atlantic. Adisa renounced Christianity for the traditional religion of Ògún, finding peace in his roots and the protection of his two mothers, Ronke and Folake. The book concludes with Adisa now going by his ancestral name, Adisa Olupitan living a life of pride and honesty, finally free of the “fake ghost” that had haunted his existence.
