AHIARA DIOCESE CRISIS: THE UNTOLD STORIES…7

Mbaise’s Quest For A Diocese Relegated!

As Bishop Mark Unegbu began his ministry as the new bishop of Owerri Diocese in the last quarter of 1970, it was hardly a surprise to many Mbaise Catholics that their quest for the creation of Mbaise Diocese, which the departed Bishop Whelan had promised and even embraced as a sign of progress in the diocese, would be relegated or totally abandoned by him. Considering the new bishop’s antecedents in both Owerri and Umuahia Dioceses it was almost a foregone conclusion that Mbaise’s quest for a diocese would not make his priority list.

But somehow everybody understood that the new bishop would take as much a chunk of time as he wanted to settle down before listening to any request or agitation for a new diocese to be carved out of Owerri Diocese. However for a very long time after he took office, the new bishop would not even discuss the matter or entertain any question on it. He appeared determined to maintain the status quo ante being the big diocese of Owerri he had inherited from the missionaries.

However that was neither the vision of the diocese as conceived by the first bishop of the diocese, Bishop J.B. Whelan, nor was it the expectation of many Catholics of Igbo heartland areas. Both the unspoken and spoken wishes of Igbo heartland Catholics had been that the rapid growth of the Catholic population in the area would be equally matched by creations of more local dioceses for a more focused administration and a grassroots evangelization of the people.

Igbo Catholicism had always loved growth both in population and in infrastructure. And that was the tradition the Irish missionaries had laid down as its foundational philosophy. But when Bishop Unegbu came on board as the new bishop of Owerri Diocese, it appeared that he had a slower vision of growth in the diocese than the Irish missionaries that had founded it. As stations and parishes took a far longer time to be created, not a few people became uncomfortable. The same philosophy he had in creating parishes very slowly became even more evident in his reluctance or inability to entertain discussions on the creation of more dioceses from the big Diocese of Owerri.

Igbo heartland Catholics such as those of Mbaise land had from the earliest times looked forward to a time when their rapid growth would be universally recognized and they accorded a diocese of their own. It was nothing political, but a sign that their Catholicism had come of age. They wanted an opportunity which a diocese would offer them to creatively bring their own initiatives into the practice of their faith. It was simply a matter of taking pride on one’s faith. Mbaise Catholics have always taken pride in their faith. They love to do things a little differently with their Catholic faith, not out of pride though, but as a way to demonstrate their love for the Catholic faith. Mbaise Catholicism has always been a great source of new and invigorating initiatives in both Igbo and Nigerian Catholicism.

For the first couple of years, the new bishop would be allowed some period of grace to settle down and learn his new job which was extremely challenging in view of the fact that the disastrous hangover from the lost civil war was still weighing down heavily on both the people of Owerri Diocese and the Igbo church as a whole. Moreover, the infrastructure level of the two potential dioceses of Mbaise and Orlu was nothing to count on. The former bishop, J.B. Whelan had made improving the infrastructure of the two zones of Owerri Diocese a priority of his administration even as he worked feverishly towards raising the two areas into independent dioceses.

But the devastation of the bitter civil war eventually took its toll as new infrastructures were not built and even the little the two areas had was devastated by the war. The new bishop and many Catholics from the areas did not think it reasonable to press immediately that new dioceses be erected on the rubble and debris of the civil war. They preferred to hold off their push for their own dioceses. So, as thought for new dioceses to be created out of Owerri Diocese was temporarily put on hold by the new administration of Bishop Unegbu, almost everybody, including Mbaise people, appeared to understand. They were willing to give the new administration of Owerri Diocese a bye for some reasonable amount of time.

But as the civil war gradually began to wane in people’s memories; and as the people of the diocese became much more determined than ever before to move forward with their lives and their Catholic faith, the cry for the creation of dioceses from the big Owerri Diocese became even much more elaborate and vociferous. Both Mbaise and Orlu areas increased the tempo of their demands for their own dioceses. From the early 1970s, the intensity of the demands increased in leaps and bounds. The new bishop was no longer being allowed any grace or peaceful sleep as a result of the loud demands for the two dioceses. Being the type of a person he was, he seemed to cope with relative ease the mounting pressures coming from demands for the creation of the two dioceses.

As a result of the way the new bishop had emerged as the bishop of the diocese, the demand for Mbaise Diocese at that point in time became a little more complicated than in 1966 when the request was first made. Now other interests had apparently factored into the demand for a diocese for the Mbaise people. The new champions for the creation of Mbaise Diocese had fortuitously become the same people who had pushed but had failed to realize the transition of Msgr. Ignatius Okoroanyanwu to the bishopric of Owerri Diocese. There was obvious conflation of motives in the pursuit of the creation of Mbaise Diocese. This perhaps made Mbaise appear in the eyes of the new bishop as the bastion of opposition to his administration.

The mischaracterization of Mbaise’s demand for a diocese as an opposition to the new bishop became even much more believable in the heart of the new bishop and his allies in Owerri as a result of the fact that Msgr. Okoroanyanwu himself appeared to have assumed the role of a moral and psychological leader of the group. In fact, he was the group’s rallying point. It is not unimaginable to think that in the minds of Msgr. Okoroanyanwu and his allies, to get a quick diocese erected in Mbaise land might compensate for what was lost with the emergence of Bishop Unegbu as the bishop of Owerri Diocese. Some of them might have believed that it could grant them what they could not achieve in Owerri Diocese, namely, the bishopric of Msgr. Okoroanyanwu.

In other words, the presence of ulterior motives could not be ruled out in the intense struggle that broke out in the mid 1970s to have Mbaise area raised as an independent diocese from Owerri Diocese. With such an added motive, the protagonists for Mbaise Diocese might have upped the ante for a quick creation of the new diocese shortly after the new bishop settled down in Owerri. Such an attitude could never have made for a good working relationship between the new bishop and the people of Mbaise.

On the part of the new bishop, he might have thought that he was continuing the same battle that had preceded his appointment as the bishop of Owerri. For him, that might have meant that the group that had opposed his emergence as the bishop of Owerri had reconstituted and transformed into an opposition group pushing for the balkanization of Owerri Diocese and the creation of Mbaise Diocese to spite him. Being the type of a person he was, frustrating the desires of such an opposing group would automatically become a battle worth fighting for. Such was the type of a battle the new bishop of Owerri relished to wage. In a very methodic way he chose to frustrate all moves to advance the creation of Mbaise Diocese especially in line with the urgency and speed the protagonists had desired it.

That was how the demand for the creation of Mbaise Diocese in the early 70s entered into a quagmire with variant motives and desires in play. It became a test of wits. The leaders of the Mbaise Catholicism would push hard forward only for the new bishop of Owerri to push even harder backwards. All through the 70s the battle for the creation of Mbaise Diocese would remain a ding dong affair between Mbaise Catholic leaders and the bishop of Owerri Diocese.

Working under such a cloud of mistrust and squabble between the leaders of Mbaise Catholicism and the new bishop, it was no surprise that the new bishop would gradually and secretly pivot towards the creation of a diocese for the Orlu people first, which included his home community of Arondizogu. All this would become manifest on November 29, 1980, when Orlu Diocese was raised to a diocese leaving Mbaise behind without any future or any mention of their own request. But as this was being secretly worked out, Mbaise people were left to hang in a lurch. Nobody knew that Mbaise’s quest for a diocese had been left behind in preference for Orlu Diocese.

This was essentially the genesis of the many problems between Mbaise land and Bishop Unegbu. The pre-civil war quest for Mbaise diocese got caught up in the complicated post-civil war realities of Owerri Diocese. The result was that there was suspicion galore. The new bishop, thinking that Mbaise quest for an autonomous Diocese was aimed at undermining his new administration, and Mbaise people on their part thinking that the slow pace in granting them a diocese was as a result of prejudice and bad will. All this would result in a strained relationship between many Mbaise Catholics and Bishop Mark Unegbu.

When Mbaise people arrived at the conclusion that there was not the strong desire on the part of the new bishop to grant them a diocese, they upped their pressure for it. Their audacity, their fearlessness and insistence became much more pronounced. As a result Mbaise people were labeled “stubborn”, “headstrong” and “uncompromising” by the bishop of Owerri Diocese. The relationship between Mbaise people and Bishop Unegbu continued to sour as the years went by. Many people including priests and lay people believed that they were getting a raw deal from Bishop Unegbu.

But when on the bright morning of November 29, 1980 Orlu area was established as an independent diocese and Mbaise left behind, hell was let loose in Mbaise land. Many elderly priests casting their minds back to December 1966 when they first made a request for a diocese for the Mbaise people, and how Orlu people had tagged on to it through a casual comment made by Fr Peter Onyewuchi, they were very sad that Orlu had overtaken them in the struggle for a diocese simply because their son became the bishop of Owerri Diocese.

Mbaise lamented how their fortune had changed drastically as a result of the loss of the civil war and the repatriation of their beloved Bishop Whelan, the former bishop of Owerri Diocese, which had paved the way for the emergence of Bishop Unegbu from Orlu area as the new bishop of Owerri. They reasoned that as the man from Orlu became the bishop of Owerri Diocese he reversed the order of the request for new dioceses from Owerri Diocese and put his Orlu people’s request ahead of that of Mbaise people that had initiated the whole process of asking that new dioceses be created out of Owerri Diocese.

There was a lot of sadness in Mbaise land as a result of that development. The whole adage used commonly in Mbaise land came back to haunt the people, namely, Onye na anoghi eba ahu, ji ya na-ahu n’aga oku. Ya bu; onye na-anoghi n’ebe a na-anya oku, ji nke ya ji-ahu n’agiga oku [One who has nobody around the fire area always has his or her own yam roasting not at the heart of the fire but by the side of it]. Realizing that since they had nobody among the top echelon of the church administration they would not get anything due to them, Mbaise people decided to fight for everything due to them. That would be how the battle for a diocese erected for the Mbaise people was intensified in the 1980s. And this philosophy lies squarely at the base of the current crisis in Ahiara Diocese.

To be continued….