AHIARA DIOCESE CRISIS: THE UNTOLD STORIES…4

The Birth of The Son-Of-The-Soil Syndrome

After the little drama that preceded his appointment, Bishop Francis Arinze easily emerged the Archbishop of Onitsha on June 26, 1967, to the delight and relief of the indigenous priests and the laity of the province. He would hold this position all through the turbulent period of the Nigeria-Biafra civil war [1967-70].

Archbishop Arinze’s appointment to the Archdiocese of Onitsha would confer on him the title of “Metropolitan”, or, in a lay man’s language, “supervisory prelate” over the vast territory that was then the Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province. This encompassed the vast geo-political territory that was labeled “Eastern Region” by the Nigerian government. His supervision stretched from Onitsha to Calabar, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Ogoja, Owerri and deep into the Niger Delta regions. The greater part of this territory he would not be able to access until the end of the tragic civil war in 1970.

With his new position the new Archbishop had a lot of leverage and even clout in deciding the fate of the Roman Catholic Church in the vast Roman Catholic Province of Eastern Nigeria, which was arguably the most active and promising territory for the Catholic Church throughout the continent of Africa. His challenge in the territory was enormous and even monstrous because of the tragic civil war. The entire province was staring down gazillion barrels of deadly guns booming from all of its corners and wasting innocent lives as a result of the ongoing war. And being a young and largely inexperienced prelate who was manning a vast territory could not have helped matters in any way for him. Talk of being embattled, the new Archbishop of Onitsha was plunged into the thick of the Biafran survival battle right from the day he was installed the bishop and the Metropolitan of Onitsha Province in the historic Cathedral dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

To his credit the new Archbishop handled his very challenging situation with dignity, grace and courage similar to those exhibited by both the missionary and indigenous bishops who were there in the province before him. It must be said with immense gratitude and joy that the civil war brought out the best from both the Metropolitan and the entire Catholic bishops of Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province. They must take their due places in the chronicles of heroes of the civil war. Their heroism saved millions of lives that could have been lost if they had not been alive to their duties. In fact, their efforts contributed immensely to the survival of the Igbo race.

While Archbishop Francis Arinze, Bishop Joseph Brendan Whelan, C.S.Sp, Bishop John Cross Anyiogu, Bishop Anthony Gogo Nwedo, C.S.Sp, Bishop Godfrey Mary Paul Okoye, C.S.Sp., and the rest of them in the province made sure that the refugees and all the starving Biafrans received some good daily meals that kept them alive, Bishop G.M.P. Okoye, C.S.Sp., who himself had become a refugee in Mbaise land, having been driven away from his diocese of Port Harcourt, transformed into a world-trotting ambassador plenipotentiary for peace on behalf of the war-torn region. The Igbo Catholic bishops with their priests made themselves everything to every Igbo person during the civil war and in the process saved uncountable number of lives. No praise can be enough to appreciate the noble role the Catholic bishops and priests of the then Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province played during the civil war under the leadership of the young Archbishop Francis Arinze.

One unfortunate thing the new Metropolitan unwittingly allowed to become institutionalized in Onitsha Archdiocese was a benign practice that would eventually grow into a monster in Igbo Catholicism as the years went by. In the battle to make the young Bishop Arinze the new Archbishop of Onitsha some elements in the diocese had insisted that only the “son of the soil” of the diocese was qualified to become the Archbishop. According to some of them, making a “son-of-the-soil” the local ordinary of the Archdiocese was the logical conclusion of the indigenization policy of the Igbo Church which the Irish missionaries were emphasizing.

However, the insistence on the “son-of-the-soil” appeared to have been a harmless statement then even though it was perhaps heartily believed as a viable strategy by those who wanted to see the young Bishop Arinze become the new Archbishop of Onitsha. And it appeared to have been primarily aimed as a dig to dim and ward off the prospect of considering Bishop Anthony Nwedo, C.S.Sp., a native of Oguta in the old Owerri Province, as the new Archbishop of Onitsha.

This rather innocuous political gambit made its debut as a diocesan practice during the waning days of Archbishop Charles Heerey’s tenure, especially as prominent Onitsha priests began to assume positions of responsibility in their local church. But that political strategy to win the archbishopric seat for the young bishop from Onitsha gradually mutated into an insistence that only indigenes of the archdiocese would be allowed to train in the diocesan seminary of All Hallows Seminary, and be ordained priests for the archdiocese. This was arguably the first hint of what would eventually grow into a big monster and a great scandal that persists in Igbo Catholicism called son-of-the-soil syndrome.

That insistence on indigenous seminarians for All Hallows Seminary developed into a full blown policy during the reign of the new Archbishop of Onitsha. With its rigid implementation many young people, some of whom were born in Onitsha urban and its environs, and whose parents did not originally hail from Onitsha area, were refused admission into All Hallows Seminary, Onitsha. Once the entrance examination was conducted, successful candidates whose parents did not hail from Onitsha area were fished out during the interview and failed in the process. Some lucky ones were given letters to seek admissions into seminaries of their parents’ home dioceses. This policy was targeted mainly at the many candidates from Owerri, Umuahia and Enugu Dioceses whose parents or guardians lived in the commercial City of Onitsha and its environs around that time.

Msgr. Emmanuel Otteh as rector of All Hallows Seminary, Onitsha saw to a rigid implementation of this policy. Hardly was any intending candidate allowed to go through the entrance examination and the interviews into All Hallows Seminary, Onitsha, successfully, whose parents did not hail from the Onitsha area and its environs. This was the birth and origin of the “son-of-the-soil” syndrome in the Igbo Church. It was the first manifestation of the discriminatory policy that consumed many aspiring vocations from Mbaise land and its environs.

Meanwhile, many students whose parents came from Onitsha and were living in such Igbo heartland cities as Aba, Umuahia, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Enugu, etc., flooded St Peter Claver Seminary, Immaculate Conception Seminary Umuahia and Sacred Heart Seminary Port Harcourt, and were readily embraced and allowed to study up to the priesthood unhindered. But the hierarchy of Onitsha Archdiocese refused to extend the same grace and good will to the so-called children of “foreigners” living in Onitsha. The leaders of Owerri and Umuahia Dioceses often protested this policy all to no avail. Both the Metropolitan and his collaborators refused to budge on this one particular issue. And that was how the monster called son-of-the-soil was born in Igbo Catholicism.

The irony of this policy was that while it thrived in Onitsha Archdiocese, all other dioceses of the province shepherded by senior bishops kept their minor seminaries open for priestly candidates from all over Nigeria. Owerri, Abakiliki, Umuahia, Enugu and Port Harcourt dioceses maintained an open-door policy regarding admissions of priestly candidates into their minor seminaries. Only Onitsha Archdiocese was different. It hardly admitted candidates from outside Onitsha Archdiocese into its seminary.

The case of Port Harcourt Diocese seems emblematic of the practice of majority of the bishops and dioceses of Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province then. Bishop G.M.P Okoye admitted priestly candidates into Sacred Heart Seminary, Port Harcourt, from across Nigeria. And when unfortunately he was driven out of Port Harcourt as a result of the loss of the civil war, he did not abandon his seminarians. He took many of them irrespective of their places of origin right into his new diocese of Enugu.

Contrary to what many uninformed people are thinking and propagating today, the son-of-the-soil syndrome was not invented in Mbaise land in 2012 as a result of the rejection of the appointment of Bishop Okpalaeke by the Mbaise Catholic faithful. It has been there since the beginning of the indigenization of Igbo Catholicism’s leadership. In fact, it must be said that Mbaise people have been by far the largest victims of this discriminatory policy. It is one singular policy that has always been bemoaned in Mbaise land. In places where it is practiced openly or discreetly, candidates of Mbaise origin have always been targeted and in the process turned into its major victims.

This discriminatory policy would perhaps remain in place in Onitsha Archdiocese all through the episcopacy of Archbishop Stephen Ezeanya who succeeded Archbishop Arinze in Onitsha. It was the late Archbishop Albert Kanene Obiefuna, a successor to late Archbishop Ezeanya, who would do away with the discriminatory son-of-the-soil policy in Onitsha Archdiocese. Archbishop Obiefuna opened up Onitsha minor seminaries, especially All Hallows Seminary, Onitsha, to all those who were living and perhaps born there, who wished to try their vocation and perhaps become priests in the archdiocese.

Thank goodness, the abrogation of that discriminatory policy survived Archbishop Obiefuna and was embraced by his successor, Archbishop Valerian Okeke. It is that abrogation that accounts for the presence of many “foreign” priests in Onitsha and Nnewi Dioceses today. It was the late Archbishop Obiefuna who gave portent teeth to the annulment of the son-of-the-soil practice instituted in Onitsha in the early 1960s when the archdiocese was being turned over to the indigenous leadership.

To be continued …