AHIARA DIOCESE CRISIS: THE UNTOLD STORIES …9

Insistence on Indigenous Bishop

The basis of the struggle for an indigenous bishop hinged on the argument that for the rural diocese of Mbaise to get off on a right footing, it must be piloted by a bishop, who understood Mbaise people clearly, empathized with them and shared in their historical ordeals. Such a person, it was argued, would have to be open-minded in dealing with the different segments of Mbaise people. The elite of Mbaise believed that they could ill-afford a bishop who would arrive in Mbaise land with loads of social and historical prejudices that could be terribly harmful to the faith and health of the people in general.

In the days leading to the intensification of the struggle for a diocese, the preponderant belief was that Mbaise people needed someone who shared in their historical ordeals of bias and injustice in Igbo land and Nigeria as a whole. There was a palpable consensus that the first bishop of Mbaise would have to be an Mbaise man in order to provide a new facelift to the battered image of Mbaise people across Igbo land and Nigeria. There was this felt need to repackage Mbaise land for the rest of the world to behold the quality that abounds in the place. And the person to be trusted the most to accomplish this would have to be an Mbaise person.

From the early 1960s when the idea of a diocese was first mooted in Mbaise land, it was generally believed that the new diocese would be a great opportunity, and perhaps, the last one for that matter, for the Mbaise people to improve their image, embark on a serious introspection, return home and embark on the long overdue development of their homeland.

Among the many other advantages the new diocese was believed to be able to deliver to the Mbaise people, besides the principal one, which was bringing the channels of salvation closer to the people, was the fact that it would be a great public relations outfit to repair the terribly compromised image of Mbaise people among the Igbo people of Nigeria.

To that effect, both priests and the lay people of Mbaise believed that if an Mbaise man did not arrive first as a bishop to chart the course of building the new diocese, an outsider might come in with loads of socio-historical prejudices against Mbaise people and in the process mess the new diocese up thereby wasting the opportunity it would offer to the people of Mbaise. At the backdrop of this anxiety to maximize the advantages of a new diocese was the disconcerting presence and experience of historical prejudices and injustices against Mbaise people.

From the earliest decade of the 20th century, Mbaise people have been suffering humiliating and debilitating prejudices among the Igbo people in particular and the Nigerian society in general. To hear the name “Mbaise,” many a time, elicited negative reactions in the minds of non-Mbaise people. Many of them always thought of Mbaise people as bad people, criminals, evil, wicked, greedy, domineering and all what not. As a result, many Mbaise people could hardly catch any break in any situation because of their place of origin. Suddenly the name “Mbaise” appeared to have become a drag and a great burden to many Mbaise people everywhere, whether in politics, civil service, or even in priestly and religious lives.

To make matters terribly worse for Mbaise people, many criminals, when caught, often identify Mbaise as their home of origin. In the early 60s for instance, criminals from neighboring territories caught in Aba, Port Harcourt, Umuahia, Owerri, Enugu, often mischievously identified themselves as Mbaise people. As a result Mbaise land became all about crime and negativities of all sorts. This compounded the image problems of Mbaise people.

Many Mbaise people who had been living through this nightmare over the years have wondered endlessly about its origins. They have often questioned why they came into the world to inherit such debilitating prejudices that result in their becoming perennial victims of injustice in the larger Igbo societies. It has often been a source of heartbreak for many Mbaise people why many people from other parts of Igbo land and beyond easily attribute the worst of everything to them.

Adding to the perplexity of many Mbaise people on the matter is the fact that many of those negative attributes or stigmas callously pasted on Mbaise people are not real and do not actually exist in reality in Mbaise land. They are hardly found in the lives of the overwhelming majority of innocent individuals from Mbaise who go about their daily businesses trying in all honesty to do their best for their families and the human society at large.

Many Mbaise people who interact with the larger society hardly exhibit such negative attributes or stigmas as character traits. But rather, when given the opportunity to showcase who they are, many Mbaise people usually turn out to be among the best of human beings. For instance, Mbaise priests and religious who fan out across Nigeria and beyond on missionary work often turn out to be among the best missionaries that could be found anywhere in the world. This often proven fact notwithstanding, the prejudices and injustices still persist. And Mbaise people are often victimized wherever they go because of that name “MBAISE”.

The experience of the paradox of this perplexing situation gave rise to at least two approaches. First, it drove many Mbaise scholars to search endlessly for the origin of the complex prejudices that have continued to dog the people of Mbaise for many decades. Many Mbaise scholars, including, yours truly, have spent a good chunk of our scholarly lives trying to unravel the roots of these stigmas and prejudices against Mbaise people. Second, it led to a strong desire for a Catholic diocese that would afford Mbaise people an independent means to showcase who they truly are to the rest of Igbo people and the world.

Over the years, there has emerged some consensus among Mbaise scholars that the origin of the prejudices against Mbaise people dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. It all began according to a good number of Mbaise scholars with the tragic encounter between ancient Mbaise people and Dr Roger Stewart, the British physician who was murdered in the present-day Mbaise territory in January of 1905. This tragedy that is well documented in colonial history is at the roots of whatever Mbaise people have ever suffered by way of prejudices and injustices among Igbo people and Nigeria as a whole.

The body of the murdered Dr Roger Stewart was never recovered from ancient Mbaise people. This caused the British Parliament to set up a powerful investigative panel to trace the whereabouts and if possible recover the remains of the deceased colonial official for a proper burial in Britain. But the investigation committee came back empty-handed.

It was believed that the communities of ancient Mbaise cannibalized the body of the hapless European and shared out his meat according to their different enclaves. Not even his skull was left to be recovered. Dr Stewart vanished in the jungles of ancient Mbaise without a trace. This situation frustrated colonial investigators to no end. The fact that they could not recover even his empty skull drove the colonial investigators mad.

The unsuccessful result of the investigative panel of the colonial masters led the British government to label the territory of ancient Mbaise people as occupied by the most wicked and dangerous and most sophisticated criminals in the whole of the British Empire. As a result, the British colonial government in Nigeria took all sorts of drastic measures against Mbaise people to avenge for the death of Dr Stewart including a horrendous genocide which resulted in the massacres of ancient Mbaise peoples at market squares, village arenas and even in their private homes.

But that was not to be the end. Many ill Mbaise people who ventured into colonial hospitals in those days were said to have been given lethal injections which resulted in their premature deaths. There was uncountable number of drastic measures that were aimed at ancient Mbaise people to avenge for the death of Dr Stewart.

But of lasting effect was the fact that the colonial government of Britain embarked on a massive campaign to denigrate the image of ancient Mbaise people. They labeled them as hardcore and unrepentant criminals among the peoples of Nigeria. As a result, the image of ancient Mbaise people was totally besmirched by the colonial British government because of the murder of Dr Stewart. And with their incessant campaigns the Brits made sure that the image of Mbaise people was damaged for a long time to come.

The campaign to besmirch and blacklist Mbaise people was picked up and turned into a political tool that has been used against Mbaise people ever since. Subsequent Nigerian governments and ordinary Igbo people who felt threatened by Mbaise people took off from where the colonialists had stopped in the project of besmirching the image of Mbaise people. And for more than 100 years the campaign to damage the image of Mbaise people has not stopped.

The second approach towards addressing the problem of prejudice and injustice against Mbaise people was believed to be the new diocese and the need to have an Mbaise son as her first bishop. It was discovered that with the Roman Catholic Church commanding between 80% to 90% allegiance among Mbaise population it would be easier to showcase the best of Mbaise people from the Church. And the best way to accomplish that would be to have an Mbaise son as its first bishop.

There was this overriding desire to make sure that a rural diocese created for the Mbaise people got off on a right footing. Mbaise people believed, rightly or wrongly, that many of their competitors outside Mbaise were rooting for them to fail in all things including in their quest for a diocese. As a result, they insisted on managing their affairs by themselves. The local adage that was often on the lips of Mbaise people including the soon-to-be-appointed Bishop Chikwe was: Anyi ji mmiri anyi emewe nwa-nkwu anyi [We are using our little water to extract our little palm oil]

The new diocese being dreamed of by Mbaise people was considered a very special case in that the entire diocese would be located in a starkly rural area. Mbaise people knew that theirs would be considered the first rural diocese in Nigeria. So, they determined to get it right and avoid becoming a laughing stock in the comity of dioceses in Nigeria. That was why there was a lot anxiety about who eventually would be appointed the bishop of the place. Mbaise people wanted a mild-mannered, peaceful homely man and a peace maker as their bishop. Msgr. Chikwe, who had proven his mettle in the premier church of Owerri Diocese, namely, Mount Carmel, Emekuku, appeared to fit the bill perfectly.

On his part, knowing full well that he might one day be considered for the office of a bishop, Msgr. Chikwe shunned controversy completely. In Owerri Diocese, he was appointed into positions that did not entail controversy. As a canonist, his other jobs in Owerri Diocese included serving perennially as a judge in Owerri Diocesan Marriage Tribunal. He was also the powerful chaplain of the Catholic Women Organization of the diocese. He was a member of the College of Consultors and a member of Diocesan Senate or Presbyteral Council. He was made a member of nearly every committee of significance in Owerri Diocese. As a result, he was believed to be the right hand man of Bishop Unegbu.

And perhaps because of his preoccupations and busy schedules in Owerri Diocese, Msgr. Chikwe did not quite identify with the intense struggle for the creation of a diocese for the Mbaise people. The fact remains that he hardly attended Mbaise Indigenous Priests Association meetings where strategies for the struggle were hatched.

Alongside a few other priests from Mbaise, Msgr. Chikwe was considered a solid ally of Bishop Unegbu who was generally believed to be the one delaying the creation of the diocese. In the heat of the struggle to force the creation of a diocese for Mbaise people, priests like Msgr. Chikwe were sometimes looked upon as sabotaging the efforts of the struggle by cozying up with the man who was standing in its way, namely, Bishop Mark Unegbu.

But looking back on the overall character of the then Msgr. Chikwe; he was never a man given to struggling for anything. He was a laidback person by nature and by upbringing. The cantankerous struggle for the creation of a diocese for Mbaise people hardly suited his nature. Msgr. Chikwe then was more of a peacemaker, a mediator and a pacifier than an activist. As he often argued in the days leading up to the creation of the diocese for Mbaise, Msgr. Chikwe believed in persuasive presence than in intense struggle and rough skirmishes. He often saw himself as one who could win his case by standing firm but not by fighting it out with anybody.

Later on as bishop of the new diocese, Bishop Chikwe believed that he made as much an effort in the creation of the diocese by relating closely with Bishop Unegbu and persuading him from within rather than to struggle and antagonize him from without thereby incurring his wrath in the process.

As we will see later in the series, both the intense struggle of the Mbaise Indigenous Priests with their lay counterparts and the mild persuasion from within by the Mbaise friends of Bishop Unegbu converged eventually to achieve the desired result which was the creation of the long desired diocese for the Mbaise people, called AHIARA DIOCESE.

To be continued …