AHIARA DIOCESE CRISIS: THE UNTOLD STORIES…5

Onitsha Recaptures Owerri

With the enormous power at his disposal as the Metropolitan of Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province, Archbishop Arinze was vested with all the freedom in the world to impose his will on the relatively vacant Diocese of Owerri. And he was not going to miss that opportunity to exercise his God-given authority over a diocese that had spent more than two decades asserting and living out her independence from a behemoth which the Onitsha Church had become in comparison with all other Churches of the then Eastern Region.

Moreover, the Diocese of Owerri being run by a young priest, Rt. Rev Msgr. Ignatius Okoroanyanwu of Obodo Ahiara Mbaise, who was appointed Vicar Capitula by the departing Irish missionaries with very little powers not higher than that of a middle-level supervisor in a big corporation, meant that the Metropolitan would have no hindrance whatsoever imposing his will on the hapless diocese. And that was exactly what he did. The late Msgr. Okoroanyanwu never got tired of recounting his many frustrations working under the Metropolitan as a young Vicar Capitula in charge of a huge diocese.

There are many stories illustrating the near pathetic situation of Owerri Diocese once Bishop Whelan and his colleagues were driven out of Igbo heartland area by the vicious Nigerian government in early 1970. It will not be appropriate to recount many of them here because their veracity cannot easily be ascertained. But a good illustration of the helpless situation of Owerri Diocese vis-à-vis Onitsha Archdiocese at that point in time could be found in the publicly available story of how the Sisters of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Christ, under Reverend Mother Mary Joseph Uzoigwe, apparently, in agreement with the Metropolitan of the Province, abandoned the headquarters established for them at Urualla in present-day Orlu Diocese by their great founder, Archbishop Charles Heerey, and relocated to Waterside and Odoakpu in Onitsha Archdiocese.

A parallel story that could equally illustrate the dire situation of the period as far as Owerri Diocese was concerned is that of the Brothers of St Peter Claver in Uturu Okigwe. It relates how some members of the Brothers of St Peter Claver in Okigwe in present-day Okigwe Diocese abandoned the partnership created for them by Bishop Whelan with the Marist Brothers of the Schools and returned to Onitsha. Some of those returnees were used by the Metropolitan to form the base members for the new congregation which he had formed called Brothers of St Stephen. Some more stories of this nature could be found in the memoirs of the former Vicar Capitula of the Owerri Diocese, the late Msgr. Ignatius Okoroanyanwu entitled: Lest It Be Lost.

All these examples are indicative of the fact that sensing the terribly hobbled situation of Owerri Diocese immediately after the civil war, the Metropolitan began in very subtle ways to try to reverse some of the gains that Owerri Diocese had made under Bishop Whelan when she tried to chart a course for herself independent of that of Onitsha Archdiocese. Bishop Whelan had spent all of his 22 year reign in Owerri Diocese creating the overly desired independent identity for the people of the Igbo heartland. Owerri area relished greatly her autonomy from Onitsha. She hated living under the shadows of the Onitsha church. But all her aspirations in this regard came under a very serious threat once the lost civil war accomplished the task of driving the Irish missionaries away from Igbo heartland thereby opening the entire region up for untrammeled domination by the Onitsha Church.

It would be recalled that the quest for autonomy for Owerri area which was the heartland of the Igbo nation from the religious and political hegemony of Onitsha area had resulted in suspicions and clashes between the two areas beginning from the late 1920s when Owerri began to eclipse Onitsha area as the real bastion of Catholicism in Igbo land. Once Catholicism touched down in Emekuku in 1912, it caught fire. The book: “A Hundred Years of the Catholic Church in Eastern Nigeria 1885-1985” edited by Fr. Celestine A. Obi and others, details the exponential growth in the Catholic population of Eastern Nigeria as from 1912 when the Catholic Church was planted in the heartland Igbo community of Emekuku.

What was happening within her southern borders created some kind of a dilemma for the Church in Onitsha. While it apparently applauded the miracle of the Catholic faith taking place in the Igbo heartland region of Owerri, it was quite leery of losing her position and influence as the centre of Catholicism in Nigeria because of the new kid on the block that was the rising Owerri Church. So the leaders of Onitsha Church began quite early to embark on subtle measures that would both secure their motherly seniority and priority in the Catholic Church of Eastern Nigeria but also ensure that the Owerri Church maintained her status as the baby of her Onitsha mom for the foreseeable future. The burden of sustaining this privilege over the Owerri Church was thrust on the shoulders of the first indigenous bishop of Onitsha Archdiocese. And he would not be expected to fail in this all important assignment.

The astronomical growth in population and infrastructure in the Owerri Church would be sustained in the Igbo heartland area all through the 1920s, 30s and 40s. It would ultimately result in the erection of Owerri area as a vicariate and a diocese in 1948 and 1950 respectively. Igbo heartland area of Owerri, sensing that her strength lay in the tumultuous population that was trooping into her Catholic Church, and realizing the opportunities that had created for her, demanded for more recognition and autonomy from the shadows of the Onitsha Church. She demanded parity and equal representation in everything. She demanded that the language of the liturgy be made into a central Igbo language instead of the domination of the Onitsha dialect. She would win a significant victory in the translation of the rite of the Igbo mass called Usoro Emume Missa. But the battle for parity was far from being over. Onitsha Church was always seeking for ways to circumvent the whole journey towards parity in the Igbo Church.

All the demands and mini-victories of the Owerri Church did not sit quite well with the powers-that-be in Onitsha Church who would rather keep Owerri area as the baby of the Onitsha Church forever. But this situation was loathsome to the vibrant Church of the Owerri people. It was this back and forth that would constitute the initial source of tension and mutual suspicion that has ever existed between Onitsha and Owerri Churches. The emergence of the new Metropolitan in Onitsha Archdiocese coupled with the expulsion of the Irish missionaries from Owerri Diocese gave the Onitsha Church an unassailable advantage.

Other factors which fed into this resentment of Owerri area towards the hegemony of Onitsha area were cultural and historical as well. While people from urban Onitsha labeled Owerri people and other rural people living outside Onitsha urban as “Ndi Igbo” which has the connotation of “bush and uncivilized people,” the indigenes of Owerri and their kin all over the place labeled Onitsha people as “Ijekebee” meaning itinerants, migrants or non-aborigines of Igbo land.

The difference in linguistic dialects between the two areas did not help matters in any way. The Onitsha area spoke an entirely different Igbo dialect from that spoken in Igbo heartland area of Owerri. Each of these areas resented the dialect spoken by their counterpart from the other area. And each felt that the other should learn their dialect as the aboriginal Igbo language before it was corrupted and distorted by the other.

During the missionary period the dialect of Onitsha people was forced down the throat of people from the Owerri area. The earliest teachers and catechists were all from the Onitsha area. The catechism books and all other spiritual books were all in Onitsha dialect. Unfortunately many of the words and concepts of the Onitsha dialect did not make much meaning to the people who listened and used them from the Igbo heartland area of Owerri. Both the lay teachers who came predominantly from Onitsha and the missionaries as well forced everybody to learn and use the Onitsha dialect as the language of the Roman Catholic Church in Igbo land. But that would not happen without some serious reservation and even resentment of people from Owerri area that often made mockery of the dialect the Roman Catholic Church was using to hand on the doctrines of the Church in their areas.

This resentment would intensify as many in the Owerri area acquired western education and began to think through their history and culture. The self-consciousness created with the acquisition of western education resulted in more resentment towards the Onitsha dialect and more demand to enthrone the dialect of the heartland Igbo people represented by Owerri. This ultimately would result in the raising of Owerri area into a diocese of its own. And the great bishop of Owerri Diocese, Bishop J.B. Whelan sought to satisfy the longing of the people of heartland Igbo headquartered in Owerri, Umuahia, Aba and Port Harcourt areas with the production of some new catechism and prayer books that employed and reflected their dialect and culture.

All these mutual suspicions between the two sister areas played deeply at the background in the historical tension that had always dogged the relationship between the peoples of Onitsha and Owerri areas. While the missionaries and the Catholic Church as a whole did quite a lot to tamp down the adverse effects of the anomaly of mutual suspicions, it did not eliminate it entirely as we shall see later in this series. At every level of relationship until this day there exist some residues of a mutual suspicion between Onitsha and Owerri Churches.

This mutual distrust played up most recently in the disagreement over the title of the Igbo Bible that was unilaterally entitled Baibul Nso by the powers-that-be in Onitsha Church instead of Akwukwo Nso that had attracted almost a consensus among the Igbo speaking dioceses of Southern Nigeria. But the then Archbishop of Onitsha, Archbishop Obiefuna conjured up a veto authority that had never been there to entitle the common Igbo Bible according to the wishes of his Onitsha faithful. If not for the matured intervention of the senior bishops of Igbo land, who brokered an agreeable resolution between Owerri and Onitsha by harmonizing Baibul Nso of Archbishop Obiefuna with a subtitle, Nhazi Katolik, proposed by Archbishop Anthony Obinna, the Metropolitan of Owerri Province, this would have resulted in a scandalous explosion in the Igbo Church.

The truth is there has always existed some low-level mistrust between the Onitsha and Owerri Churches. The Irish missionaries had no answer for it. They tried the much they could but did not solve the problem. The problem thrives even till today as the elephant in the room in the Igbo Church. It is solidly at the roots of the current crisis in Ahiara Diocese.

Bishop Whelan made a tremendous effort to give the Owerri Church what she desired the most, namely, autonomy from the Onitsha Church. But once he was expelled from Owerri Diocese as a result of the loss of the civil war, Owerri Church returned to square one in her relationship with the Onitsha Church and the struggle for autonomy began all over again.

Immediately Bishop J.B Whelan was shown the door through repatriation, the metropolitan, Archbishop Arinze and his successors began to impose their will over the entire province and even beyond it, especially when Owerri had become a separate province. This imposition of will is usually aimed at reversing what the missionaries had gained for the heartland Igbo area represented by Owerri. And that means for many people in Igbo heartland area of Owerri that the territory is heading backwards instead of moving forward on the path the missionaries had set her. This is usually an unacceptable situation for the Owerri Church. And it is at the root of the present crisis. It may generate more crises in the future if Church leaders do not take into heart this portent mistrust and treat each area according to the freedom it desires.

To be continued…