A WELCOME ADDRESS PRESENTED TO ANAMBRA-IMO-ABIA-ENUGU-EBONYI [ANIMAEE] DIOCESAN PRIESTS ASSOCIATION

The President of ANIMAEE

Members of ANIMAEE Executive

Rt. Rev and Very Rev Monsignori

Rev Fathers

Distinguished Members of the Audience

We, the members of ANIMAEE in Ahiara Diocese are very pleased to welcome you, our brother priests, friends and colleagues from the different dioceses of Igboland, to our great diocese. Your visit to us at this point in time demonstrates clearly your esprit de corps, camaraderie, love and concern for the clergy and lay faithful of Ahiara Diocese. It also shows your love for the Catholic Church in general. We thank you for this magnanimity of yours which will go a long way to assuaging the terrible pains resulting from some calculated efforts to embarrass and humiliate the clergy and lay faithful of Mbaise. This special visit of yours will also encourage the faithful of our diocese in their efforts to stand up against injustice of all kinds so as to be reckoned as good Christians and great Catholics.

We are sure that finding your way to Ahiara Diocese did not constitute much of a problem to many of you. Mbaiseland as we call it, though very rural by Church and the United Nations’ standards, is nonetheless a well known territory in Igboland and Nigeria as a whole. The saying that “Mbaise people are everywhere” is not just a fluke or an exaggeration but a real and demonstrable fact in many places across Nigeria and Africa as a whole. Mbaise people by their very nature are outgoing, earth-wandering and globe-travelling. We are by nature business, thrill and adventure seekers. As a result, it is hard for you not to have become acquainted with Mbaise people somewhere over the years. And we believe that encountering an Mbaise person anywhere in the world is as good as visiting Mbaiseland! Wherever Mbaise people go, they carry their uniqueness along with them. This is what has been touted as our “Mbaiseness”.

Moreover, as former seminarians on apostolic work or as priests on various assignments or as groups or classmates on various meetings and conferences, a great many of you have over the years visited the Mbaise territory. It is needless to say that through such interactions with Mbaise people you have become well acquainted with the uniqueness, history and stories about Mbaiseland and her people. Whether for better or for worse, stories about the Mbaise people abound in the greater Igbo territory and beyond. Mbaise people are famous throughout Nigeria for various reasons ranging from their total commitment to Catholicism to their doggedness in education, politics and commerce. Mbaise people are always striving to succeed and to excel wherever you find them. It is this perennial effort to succeed that makes them a standout people among the different peoples of Nigeria and Africa as a whole.

However, while we thank the good Lord for making our land prominent and known in Igboland and our people daring and hardworking, we are also conscious of the fact that such fame has not always gone down well with many people outside Mbaise. Such visibility has not always translated to good neighbourliness and good public relations for our people. Rather, many a time, competitors of the Mbaise people have manipulated and truncated our so-called fame to harm and denigrate the image of our great people. This has created a situation in which those who interact with Mbaise people from outside of our territory often tend to do so with a mixed bag of bias and curiosity. The cumulative effect of this scenario has been a backlog of stereotypes in which the Mbaise people are viewed and treated throughout Nigeria and beyond.

The current situation created by the controversial announcement of a priest from Awka Diocese as the bishop-elect of the Catholic Diocese of Ahiara and his subsequent rejection by the clergy and faithful of our diocese have created fodder for those who make a living trying to manipulate and tarnish the image of the Mbaise people. The bishopric crisis in Ahiara Diocese has created a cottage industry for those who are dedicated to dealing with Mbaise people through the prism of biases and stereotypes. This makes your presence in our midst on this day quite propitious. It is wonderful that you are here to find out things for yourselves; to use the proverbial horse anecdote; to hear from the horse’s mouth.

On our part as patriotic Mbaise citizens, we will make effort not to disappoint you. Rather, we will try to take you back on memory lane to the origins of Mbaiseland through some brief historical excursus so as to give you some backgrounds to the current situation in our territory. As Mbaise indigenes, we are a people with a rich history and peculiar culture. We are a joyful people by nature. We are a very entertaining people. We have a musical culture that could provide entertainment for all cadres of people across the world. We love to entertain and accommodate our guests.

As Mbaise citizens, we are also extremely welcoming towards other peoples of the world. We are a very hospitable people. We love strangers and outsiders a lot not only because it is a part of our nature to do so but because many of our brothers and sisters live as strangers and outsiders in many countries of the world. As a people who usually have dual residencies at home and somewhere abroad, we are like the Israelites who are warned repeatedly in the Old Testament that while treating strangers in their midst they should always keep in mind the fact that they were and are still strangers in many foreign lands. We are ever mindful of our obligation to treat strangers in our midst with utmost dignity and respect since we ourselves are strangers in one community or the other.

This is why the current misunderstanding arising from the rejection of a priest from Awka Diocese as the bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese must be put in its proper historical perspective so as not to propagate the erroneous opinion that Mbaise people who are among the most hospitable people in Igboland are in reality xenophobic, atavistic, protectionist and inward-looking. It pains us greatly that this could become one of the tragic fallouts from the legitimate battle against injustice that is raging in Mbaiseland! This is why your visit on this day is greatly valued by us. We pray that you open up your minds and absorb the right perspectives on this matter so as to communicate same to the priests and lay faithful of your different dioceses.

What has been happening in Mbaise since December 7, 2012 draws from our perception of our history. We, the people of Mbaise, have a long history of persecution, injustice and marginalization inflicted on us by people who do not wish us well. Those who do not share our history will not be able to understand this sad aspect of our lives. The present-day Mbaise is not a happenstance. Rather, it is a child of a very wonderful and sometimes tragic history. It is this unique history that has contributed a great deal in shaping the existence of the Mbaise people in the world. Those who want to deal with Mbaise must first of all embrace and appreciate her history and predicament in the world as a basis to contributing in her transformation.

Like most other Nigerian communities, the territories that would later be called Mbaise became known to the wider world through the effective takeover of the Southern Nigerian territory by the British colonialist in A.D. 1900. By 1902, the first colonial road that cut through the territory of the would-be Mbaiseland to Arochukwu received its first construction equipment. The construction company was made up of a detachment of the West African Frontier Force and their local conscripts and collaborators. The new road was then called Douglas Road after the first district commissioner in Owerri, Mr. H.M. Brian Douglas. The so-called Douglas Road was being constructed to give access to a detachment of West African Frontier Force [WAFF], O Garrison, stationed in Owerri to carry out their expeditionary conquest of the famed Ibini Ukpabi in Arochukwu.

But by January of 1905, something tragic happened in the would-be Mbaise territory that had perhaps never happened in Nigeria before. A white explorer and physician, Dr Roger Stewart, who was embarked on this Douglas Road to an unknown destination was murdered in the territory. Unfortunately, Dr Stewart got lost without a trace in the territory of the would-be Mbaiseland. Responding to their loss, the British colonial forces embarked on a killing spree throughout the territory. The soon-to-become Mbaise territory was reduced to a land of mourning and genocide. It is on record that Mbaiseland was among the first places in Africa to suffer a massive genocide in the hands of the colonial masters. It can be said that the blood of the Mbaise patriots lies at the foundation of the Nigerian nation.

After committing their heinous atrocities in Mbaiseland, the British colonial masters set up their military cantonment in Nkwogwu to ensure a total subjugation of the territory. But the aftermath of the murder of Dr Stewart in the Mbaise territory would include many reprisal actions that were consistently taken against Mbaise people to deplete their population. Mbaise people were captured and jailed at random. They were given lethal injections in hospitals and allowed to die some painful deaths. Successive colonial governments in Owerri, Enugu and Lagos at large descended on the territory with draconian laws and policies. Through colonial fiat the territory was abandoned and earmarked to serve as a rural area as long as colonialism lasted. But unfortunately the subsequent indigenous provincial and federal governments took over from where the colonialists stopped. They abandoned Mbaise to be a stigmatized, undeveloped and rural place for the foreseeable future.

However, a more enduring action against Mbaise people would come by way of the declaration of the panel of inquiry set up to investigate the death and disappearance of Dr Stewart in the territory. This panel of inquiry declared the territory as the land of hardcore criminals, savages and bellicose cannibals. In the panel’s report, the would-be Mbaise territory was described as made up of very wicked people who must be dealt harshly with by all civilized peoples. Colonial officials were warned accordingly to view Mbaise people with fear and suspicion and treat them without mercy. This was the origin of stereotypical stigmas against Mbaise which have endured till today. Many competitors of the Mbaise people swallowed hook, line and sinker the colonial stereotypes against Mbaise people and have been repeating them ever since.

In 1909, a native court was established at Nkwogwu, the military headquarters of the O Garrison of the WAFF. But in December of 1929, the women of Mbaise while responding and participating in the rebellion of Igbo women in general against colonialism and its draconian taxation system burnt down the Nkwogwu court and the military headquarters located there. This was a huge embarrassment to the colonialists and another public relations disaster for the Mbaise people. This ultimately led to the ultimate decentralization of the court system in the territory. From the Nkwogwu and the Okpala courts, five court areas were created in the territory. It was these five court areas that would be renamed Mba-Ise in 1941 when colonial court system of administration yielded to county system. That was how the territory transited from a territory of five courts to that of five clans [Mba-Ise].

As the would-be Mbaise land struggled and languished under the pains resulting from the wicked genocide of British colonialists and their numerous other restrictions and privations, both the Anglican and Catholic missionaries were making their way into the territory. The Anglican missionaries arrived first in 1911 through the Imo River water ways. But by 1912, following the establishment of Mount Carmel Church, Emekuku, Catholic missionaries started showing interest in the territory that would become Mbaise. It was an indigenous warrant chief of the colonial masters, Chilaka Ukpo of Umunama Ezinihitte, who would first visit Emekuku and ask for Catholic missionaries to venture into the territory in 1912. However, it would be through the agencies of such notable sons of the territory as Chief John Njoku Akpaka and Chief Joseph Patrick Anyamele of Umuopara and Ogbor Nguru respectively that would enable the territory to have her first Catholic Eucharistic celebration in 1914. But it would be through the dogged efforts of Chief Pius Onyekwere Njoku of Nnarambia Ahiara that the Catholic Church would settle in the territory with the establishment of St Brigid’s Catholic Church, Nnarambia, Ahiara, in 1933.

As the Catholic Church entered into the territory of the would-be Mbaise people from around 1912 to 1914, the people flocked into it en masse. The influx of Mbaise people into the Catholic Church was immense and almost unprecedented. Instinctively, Mbaise people preferred the Catholic Church to the other protestant churches in the area competing for attention and loyalty. A testimony to the evangelization wonders in the territory would come some four years after the first Eucharistic celebration in the territory. In December of 1918, the prefect apostolic of Southern Nigeria, Fr Joseph Ignatius Shanahan CSSp, embarked on a pastoral visit to the Cameroons. As he reminisced on how the great feast of Christmas was being celebrated that year in his missionary base in Southern Nigeria, he began to lavish praises on some particular communities including the very illustrious towns of Nguru and Inyeogugu [Enyiogugu] [Cf. Bishop Shanahan of Southern Nigeria p. 164]. From that period onwards the Catholic Church in the territory would continue to grow in leaps and bounds.

However, the booming Catholicism among the people of Mbaise would appear to paper over the fact that the prejudices and stigmas the colonialists left behind against the Mbaise people were still alive and active. In colonial government circles and other areas where the church did not have much of a say, Mbaise people were still subjected to treatments arising from colonial stereotypes and stigmas. But in and around the Catholic Church, the situation was tamed by the fact that the principal missionaries to Igboland were all Irish who had a cat-and-mouse relationship with the British colonialists. It was a self-evident fact that there was no love lost between the colonial British government of Nigeria and the Irish missionaries of Southern Nigeria. Whatever each one loved the other hated and vice versa. As long as Irish missionaries were in charge of the affairs of Igboland Mbaise people seemed to enjoy a kind of reprieve.

This would contribute a great deal to the special love the Irish missionaries showered on Mbaise. Besides their love for the people of Mbaise for their uniquely active Catholicism in Nigeria, the Irish would love them for their ability to stand up and show some resistance to colonial Britain. When therefore Owerri Vicariate and Diocese were created in 1948 and 1950 with Bishop Joseph Brendan Whelan as her first bishop, Mbaise became the favourite of the new bishop. He so loved Mbaise that he used to call Mbaise people, “my beloved Mbaise people.” It would be around this period, the 50s and 60s, that young men and women from Mbaise would pour into priestly and religious vocations.

The first Mbaise person to be ordained a Catholic priest, that is, the man who opened what became a floodgate of priestly and religious vocations in Mbaise was the late Msgr. Edward Ahaji of Umuokrika Ekwerazu in 1945. In his class of 1945 that included Fr Anthony Gogo Nwedo CSSp, who would become the first bishop of Umuahia Diocese, Edward Ahaji was a standout seminarian and later on a great priest and a foremost canonist in the Catholic Church of Nigeria. The late Bishop Mark Unegbu in his autobiography, My Life, described Msgr. Ahaji as “one of the best priests that ever went through our seminary. He was very methodical…” As testified to during your last month’s meeting in Owerri Archdiocese by one of the oldest priests in Igboland today, when the creation of Umuahia Diocese was being dreamed up, Edward Ahaji was thought to be a shoo-in. But one way or the other, he was bypassed and Anthony Gogo Nwedo was preferred. According to Bishop Unegbu in his autobiography, “just as Fr A Gogo Nwedo’s admission into the Spiritan congregation raised eye-brows, more so his appointment to pastor a diocese.”

There was no cry of anti-Mbaise sentiments or stereotype then when Ahaji was not selected. What was largely being decried then was what was seen as a suspicious manipulation of the system by the white Holy Ghost Fathers to favour members of their congregation. There was that perception then that the White Holy Ghost Fathers wanted to handover the Igbo Church to their members and the few diocesan priests they were able to convince to join their congregation. As a result, the Holy Ghost Congregation was seen as the sure route to Ecclesiastical office in Igboland. The trio of Fr Mark Unegbu, Fr Anthony Nwedo and Fr Godfrey Okoye were sent to Ireland for studies. The Holy Ghost Fathers of Ireland descended on then and succeeded in convincing Anthony Nwedo and Godfrey Okoye to join the Holy Ghost Congregation. Mark Unegbu, whom they could not convert, they left stranded in Ireland. When Anthony Nwedo and Godfrey Okoye returned to Nigeria alongside Mark Unegbu, they quickly made them bishops while Mark Unegbu was left out as an agitator.

Nowhere did these counter-currents play out most poignantly than in the struggles to find a replacement for the late Archbishop Charles Heerey in Onitsha. Following his death in 1967, it was an assumed fact that the late archbishop was going to be succeeded by young Bishop Francis Arinze who was his auxiliary and coadjutor. But this was not to be without some pronounced struggles. The Holy Ghost Fathers did not want Francis Arinze to succeed their man, Archbishop Heerey. According to stories usually told by some elderly priests most of whom are dead now, the Holy Ghost Fathers wanted one of their own to succeed the late Archbishop Heerey. As a result, they wanted to transfer Bishop Nwedo from Umuahia Diocese to Onitsha. But to counter their move, Bishop Francis Arinze and his allies from Onitsha Archdiocese together with the support of Bishop Arinze’s long-time mentor, Fr Mark Unegbu, insisted that only a son of the soil from Onitsha was qualified to serve as the archbishop of Onitsha. Bishop Mark Unegbu allegedly sent a petition to the Pro-Nuncio in Lagos and also participated in the delegation that pressured and succeeded in securing the Episcopal See of Onitsha for the young Bishop Francis Arinze. This was more or less seen as laying down a marker on how Episcopal succession was to be carried out in dioceses of the Igbo Church.

However, the eyes of some Mbaise priests and lay people would be opened a little more when in 1970 another Mbaise priest was bypassed in the choice of a bishop of one of the dioceses in the present-day Owerri Ecclesiastical Province. Some twelve years after Edward Ahaji was not made a bishop, another Mbaise priest was bypassed in what became an apparent “payoff” for the fight to secure the Episcopal See of Onitsha for Archbishop Arinze. It would be recalled that the venerable Bishop Whelan when he was forced out of Nigeria by the victorious Nigerian armed forces chose to handover the old Owerri Diocese to an Mbaise young priest, Fr Ignatius Mmereole Okoroanyanwu. What Bishop Whelan did in the process was to announce to everyone including the Vatican that Fr Ignatius Okoroanyanwu was the one he had found worthy throughout the entire diocese to take over the baton from the missionaries.

But this holy wish of the great missionary was not to be with Archbishop Arinze as the metropolitan of Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province. In a non-subtle manoeuvre, Archbishop Arinze cornered the Episcopal See of Owerri Diocese to his mentor, Fr Mark Unegbu while blocking the will of Bishop Whelan and the missionaries that stated quite clearly that they wanted Msgr. Ignatius Okoroanyanwu to shepherd the Episcopal See of Owerri Diocese. By so doing the duo of Archbishop Arinze and Bishop Mark Unegbu deprived the Mbaise people of a bishopric of Owerri Diocese which the missionaries had arguably willed to them. Archbishop Arinze clearly seized the position given to an Mbaise man, Msgr. Okoroanyanwu, by the missionaries and used it to reward his long-time mentor for the favours he had received from him in both 1945 and 1967.

According to an account in the autobiography of Bishop Unegbu, in 1946 to 1947 when Fr Mark Unegbu became the second parish priest of Dunukofia after Fr Michael Iwene Tansi, the young Francis Arinze was completing his primary education. The then parish priest of Dunukofia, Fr Unegbu, was in favour of the young Francis entering the minor seminary. The young man was ready to enter the seminary but his mother could hear none of that. He wanted Fr Unegbu to take any other son of hers for the seminary but not Francis. According to Fr Unegbu, the father of Francis was indifferent either way. To get Francis to be allowed to enter the minor seminary, Fr Unegbu as both parish priest and manager of schools had to play what he described as “a trump card” by threatening to withdraw from the school system the two elder brothers of Francis, Christopher and Linus unless they went home and convinced their parents to allow Francis to enter the seminary. According to him, the threat worked. Francis’s parents reluctantly allowed him to enter the minor seminary in 1946. The rest is history.

It is safe to assume that when Francis Arinze became the Archbishop of Onitsha and the metropolitan of Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province, he remembered the indispensable roles Fr Mark Unegbu had played both in his vocation to the Catholic priesthood and his rise to power in the Catholic Church. He therefore decided to reward him accordingly. It is very clear that Bishop Mark Unegbu got the bishopric of Owerri Diocese ahead of Ignatius Okoroanyanwu thanks to the scheming and manipulations of Archbishop Arinze. We could say in hindsight that that was the Holy Spirit at work. But the fact remains that the first person the Holy Spirit had willed Owerri Diocese to through the Irish missionaries was not Bishop Mark Unegbu but Msgr. Ignatius Okoroanyanwu of Ahiara Mbaise.

However, to achieve this highly suspicious purpose of his, Archbishop Arinze had to do two things that were incomprehensible and a little bit unfair. First he shoved an Mbaise man aside from a position the venerable Irish missionaries had willed for him and found him worthy for and substituted him with his mentor and preferred person. Second, he contradicted the principle that he had employed to secure himself the Episcopal See of Onitsha. Archbishop Arinze got the archbishopric of Onitsha against the onslaught of the Nwedo camp on the principle of Son of the soil. Archbishop Arinze was the inventor of son of the soil syndrome in the Igbo Church. When he became the archbishop of Onitsha he instituted a policy whose relic is there till today. All seminarians from the Igbo heartland, namely, Owerri Ecclesiastical Province of today, who passed entrance examinations into All Hallows Seminary, Archbishop Arinze and his then right-hand man who served then as rector of All Hallows Seminary, Msgr. Emmanuel Otteh, pushed them back to the junior seminaries in their parents’ home dioceses. The people who were victimized the most by this policy were arguably innocent Mbaise children who did not understand what son-of-the-soil policy meant. But they were victimized and treated unfairly by a policy whose proponents were quoting the Holy Spirit as the author. How can the Holy Spirit do what is unfair? This is a question that must be answered in the current fight in Ahiara Diocese. Can the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity do what is unjust? Can He tolerate injustice? Of course, the answer is emphatic “No!”

When the son-of-the-soil policy began in the mid-60s with the installation of Archbishop Arinze, the missionaries who were still around then saw it as a terrible injustice and a great scandal. Some of them challenged it to no avail. But when the missionaries left, it became the permanent policy of Onitsha Archdiocese. And this would be later copied by some other dioceses such as Enugu, Abakaliki and a few other dioceses of northern Igbo. It would be only during the archbishopric of Albert Obiefuna that there would be some change of policy that enabled seminarians whose parents came from heartland Igbo dioceses to study steadily in All Hallows Seminary, Onitsha. Some of who would go all the way to become ordained Catholic priests in Onitsha Archdiocese.

As Fr Mark Unegbu was preferred by Archbishop Arinze in place of Msgr. Ignatius Okoroanyanwu, he became ordained and installed as the bishop of Owerri Diocese on September 20, 1970. Besides the situation of no-love-lost between him and the man he edged out to become the bishop of Owerri Diocese, there was no pronounced faceoff between Bishop Unegbu and the Catholic faithful of Mbaise. He ministered to the faithful of Mbaise as dedicatedly and faithfully as he could. However, one aspect that showed that Bishop Unegbu was totally different from the Irish missionaries in his treatment of Mbaise Catholics was in the quest for the creation of more dioceses from the old Owerri Diocese.

Around 1966, one Lawyer Mbaegbu of Ahiara had made a passionate request to Bishop Whelan for the creation of the Catholic Diocese of Mbaise. The request had shocked Bishop Whelan who promised to look into it. According to eyewitness account, responding to the request of Lawyer Mbaegbu, Bishop Whelan quickly set up a committee to study the possibility of raising Mbaise and Orlu as independent dioceses from Owerri. The panel eventually came up with the recommendation that infrastructure in the respective places be upgraded and new ones be constructed in preparation for the two places to be raised into dioceses in the coming decade. While Orlu region had good infrastructure to build upon, that was not the case with Mbaise. Church infrastructure in Mbaise was almost nonexistent. But the determination of Bishop Whelan to begin the construction of such infrastructure could not see the light of the day as a result of the civil war.

When Bishop Unegbu replaced Bishop Whelan after the civil war, he saw the agitation for a diocese for the Mbaise people as a kind of a slight and sabotage. He therefore decided to either work against it or play it down. But his nonchalance attitude could not deter the dogged Mbaise priests and lay faithful from pressing ahead with their struggle for an Mbaise diocese. As the battle for the creations of both the dioceses of Orlu and Mbaise heated up, Bishop Unegbu chose to work primarily for the creation of Orlu Diocese rather than Mbaise that first originated the quest.

Orlu Diocese would realize their quest for an independent diocese in 1981 with Bishop Ochiagha from Umuahia Diocese, and later on, of Okigwe Diocese, as her first bishop. Unfortunately, the quest for Mbaise diocese was put in a cooler. This development would reinvigorate Mbaise people who saw Orlu getting a diocese ahead of them as some sort of a slight. The battle for a diocese would rage in many fronts for several years. Mbaise people fought a battle on two main fronts. They wanted a diocese of their own and an Mbaise son as their first bishop. This was in view of what they considered the peculiarities of Mbaise people which consisted mainly in their history of being easily misunderstood by people from outside. Mbaise people had always wanted one of their own who would understand them and take them as they presented themselves to the world. They fought several battles in the 70s and 80s in order not to be given a bishop that would arrive in Mbaise with a load of prejudices and biases.

The double wishes of Mbaise people would be fulfilled in November of 1987 when a diocese was given to them with the name “Ahiara Diocese”, and one of their own, Msgr. Victor Adibe Chikwe, was appointed their first bishop. The celebration that attended this announcement was unlike anything that had been seen in both Mbaise and Igboland before. The people felt fulfilled and transformed with the announcement of the new diocese and her new leadership. Even though the diocese was considered poor and rural in every sense of the word, the people of Mbaise saw it as their own piece of heaven on earth. Mbaise people saw Ahiara Diocese as their own Zion, their own Land of Promise. The processions that followed the new bishop of Ahiara Diocese from Port Harcourt International Airport to Owerri and from Owerri to Ahiara on January 30, 1988, were characterized as akin to the biblical exodus. In those unending lines of processions, the people sang songs that were reminiscent of those the Israelites sang when they were headed to the Promised Land. The new diocese brought unbelievable joy in the hearts of Mbaise Catholics.

But in a strange twist, the bishop of Owerri Diocese, Most Rev Mark O Unegbu appeared to retaliate against the creation of the new diocese by ordering all indigenous priests of Mbaise incardinated and working in what was remaining of the Old Owerri Diocese to return to the new diocese en masse. That entailed a glut of priests in the new diocese. The primary implication of Bishop Unegbu’s order was that some 80 priests of Mbaise origin would be forced to work in the 18 parishes of the new diocese. The situation was largely seen as an unfair attempt by Bishop Unegbu to hobble the new diocese. It would take a lot of negotiation between Bishop Chikwe and Bishop Unegbu for the latter to allow about ten of the eighty priests of Mbaise origin incardinated in the old Owerri Diocese to remain behind in the diocese of their incardination and continue their work there. That meant that the new diocese of Ahiara made up of 18 parishes began its life with a great challenge of trying to fix a whopping number of 70 priests in 18 parishes.

And as the Catholic faithful of Mbaise had pledged when they were seeking for the diocese, the people decided to close ranks around their new bishop and work for the growth and development of their new diocese. The world marvelled as they saw their long-held biases and stereotypes shattered in Mbaise of the new diocese. Through the help of the new diocese, Mbaise people began to be seen in a new light around the world. The new diocese became a model of unity, dynamism and orthodoxy not only in Nigeria but throughout the continent of Africa.

Unfortunately good things do not last forever. On that fateful September 16, 2010, the wicked hand of death snatched Bishop Chikwe away from his beloved Mbaise people thereby throwing the whole land into convulsion and confusion. The level of trauma in Mbaise that resulted from the sudden death of Bishop Chikwe has not subsided till this very day. The land of the great Catholics of Mbaise is still reeling in pain and confusion over the death of their beloved Bishop Chikwe.

Through the leadership of our administrator, Msgr Theo Nwalo, the people of Mbaise managed to put aside their trauma and confusion and pull themselves together in order to move our beloved diocese forward. As the diocese got down to business, the issue of succession to the late Bishop Chikwe confronted her. The entire diocese resolved to allow the process to play out according to the dictate of the Canon law. A very beautiful prayer for the emergence of a bishop of God’s own choosing was composed and prayed throughout the whole diocese. By this prayer Mbaise people believed and understood that a bishop of God’s own choosing would have to be one who would continue in the footsteps of the late Bishop Chikwe. By this prayer, the people of Mbaise prayed for a humble bishop of Mbaise origin who would understand and appreciate the historical pains and predicament of Mbaise people. The entire diocese participated in one way or the other in praying and working for the emergence of a credible bishop to continue the good work begun by Bishop Chikwe.

During the period of waiting for the announcement of a new bishop for the diocese, there were at times rumours of Mbaise priests petitioning against the selection of certain candidates for the bishopric of Ahiara Diocese. All these were dealt with and found to be lacking in substance. All incidents of confusion and misunderstanding were dealt with as much as possible. All those who received inquiries concerning some potential candidates for the bishopric of Ahiara Diocese answered them sincerely according to their abilities.

The whole of Mbaise believed that there would be no true search for a bishop for Ahiara Diocese that would not produce at least a host of credible candidates out of the more than five hundred priests of Mbaise origin. This was why every Mbaise person relaxed and waited patiently for the announcement of the name of the new bishop from the Vatican. During this period of searching for a new bishop, the papal nuncio to Nigeria, Archbishop Augustine Kasujja, gave both the priests and the lay faithful in Ahiara Diocese the impression that justice would be done to them in the process of choosing a new bishop for the diocese. With this promise and impression from the Papal Nuncio, Mbaise priests and lay faithful took it for granted that the Nuncio would look critically within their ranks and select one of their own from Mbaise as the new bishop to succeed their late brother, Bishop Chikwe. There was no time the Nuncio gave an impression that he was looking elsewhere for the bishop of the diocese. He always gave the impression that a bishop for Ahiara Diocese would emerge from among Mbaise sons who are already great priests in the many dioceses and congregations across the world.

Unfortunately, this wait would go on for more than two years without an announcement. That was the time both priests and lay faithful began to suspect that something untoward was happening. As a result of this suspicion, some information was regularly and severally sent by Mbaise priests and lay faithful to the Nuncio warning of dire consequences should he not follow through with his promise to give Mbaise people one of their sons as their bishop. This demand did not arise out of xenophobia but from the need to sustain and continue the progress which Ahiara Diocese had recorded during the reign of Bishop Chikwe. Ahiara Diocesan priests and lay faithful believe that only a priest from the diocese would have the patience, humility and sacrificial disposition to pilot the challenging affairs of Ahiara Diocese.

The priests and lay faithful of the diocese would be in this anticipatory mood till that fateful day of December 7, 2012. Shortly after the Noon hour words started spreading that a bishop had been named for the diocese. The curriers of the information were directing people to the internet. Not a few Ahiara Diocese doubted that a bishop could be announced for the diocese via the internet. We believed that the internet was a very unreliable channel to disseminate vital church information like the appointment of a diocesan bishop. Some of us had dismissed the information as rumour planted on the internet by some mischievous persons. We believed that if the information had been true, the metropolitan or the Nuncio would have come down to the diocese to personally make the announcement to priests and religious.

We would be in this doubting mood when a text message was sent to Ahiara Diocesan priests by the chancellor summoning the priests to an emergency meeting. That was when some of us began to realize that the information might be true. The so-called emergency meeting convened around 5.00 p.m. Within that meeting, the Diocesan Administrator, Msgr. Theo Nwalo, read a letter to the priests from the papal nuncio announcing the appointment of one Fr Ebere Peter Okpalaeke as the bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese.

On hearing the announcement, the priests of the diocese with one voice rose and declared that the method of the announcement was strange and that the appointment of an unknown person called, Ebere Peter Okpalaeke, as bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese was a very sad development in the history of the Catholic Church in both Ahiara Diocese and Nigeria as a whole. That was how the process that culminated in the total rejection of the appointment of Ebere Peter Okpalaeke as the bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese began.

In the documents already released and widely published on the issue, the people of Ahiara Diocese, both the clergy and the lay people, have made it clear that we do not accept the appointment of Msgr. Peter Okpalaeke as our bishop. The reasons for this categorical rejection have been well articulated in the already published documents. We would plead that you try to reread the documents that are available on this issue.

However, what we intend to restate here is we have made peace with our decision to reject Msgr. Okpalaeke as our diocesan bishops. We will not go back on our decision. We therefore plead with you to communicate our total rejection of Msgr. Okpalaeke as our bishop to your respective dioceses. It is our collective decision and determination to resist to the last man standing any attempt to forcefully impose him on us and on our beloved Diocese of Ahiara. We pray that you help the Nigerian bishops, the Papal Nuncio to Nigeria and the Vatican Office of Evangelization of Peoples to understand that there will be no need to continue to flog a dead horse. The question of Msgr. Okpalaeke becoming a bishop in our diocese is long dead and buried. They should immediately begin another process of selecting a credible bishop for our diocese.

Once more, thank you for visiting our diocese on this very important occasion in our history. Thank you for listening patiently to us as we told you our stories. Please help us to give a correct perspective to your people on the critical situation in our beloved Diocese of Ahiara. We are not threatening to unleash violence on anybody on this issue. But what we are determined to do until justice is restored is to peacefully resist any attempt by anybody to impose the very unpopular Ebere Peter Okpalaeke on us as the bishop of our beloved Diocese of Ahiara.

Finally, we pray that as you leave for your respective destinations, may the good Lord guide you safely home and fulfil all your good wishes. Amen.

Signed:

________________________________ ___________________________

Rev. Fr. Austin Ben Ekechukwu Rev. Fr. Dominic Ekweariri

President, ANIMAEE, Ahiara Diocese Secretary, ANIMAEE, Ahiara Diocese