AHIARA DIOCESE CRISIS: THE UNTOLD STORIES…11

Mixed Reactions Trail The Announcement

As the announcement of the creation of Ahiara Diocese brought some tremendous joy to local folks and the clergy alike of Mbaise land, it appeared also to have brought some enormous anxiety and stress to the inhabitants of Owerri city and its environs. There was the feeling that the announcement had caused the balloon of anger and hatred against Mbaise people to explode all over the place.

Among the lay people who did not hail from Mbaise, there was palpable anger and frustration over the announcement. Many of them would open their mouths wide and disparage Mbaise people and their lineage for celebrating the creation of their new diocese. The whole situation appeared so surreal and almost unheard of throughout the Igbo heartland area. Never had there been such a great number of people crying and lamenting over the blessings God had visited on their neighbors.

Even among the clergy, many were telling Mbaise people in joyous mood over the new diocese to go home and get one another cannibalized and devoured. Many priests spoke openly that the new diocese would never be at peace as the priests of Mbaise hated one another. “They will all die one by one devouring each other”, some groups of ill-wishers often exclaimed. According to them, Ahiara Diocese would ultimately become a failure and a show of shame as priests and lay people of the diocese would eventually destroy one another.

There was hardly any kind of ill-luck that was not wished on Mbaise people as they rejoiced over what they believed was the fulfillment of their age-long desire to have a Catholic Diocese established in their homeland with the added advantage of their homegrown son becoming their first bishop. For quite a considerable length of time, there would be pride on the faces of Mbaise people. This contrasted starkly with the anger that was visible on the faces of many neighbors of the Mbaise people.

The irony of the period was beyond belief. It had never happened prior to that point in time in Igbo land that the erection of a Catholic diocese among a people caused anger and frustration in others. As a matter of fact, the contrary had always been the case. When in 1958 the vast Umuahia area, a lot of it with scanty Catholic population, was raised into a diocese, the whole of the heartland Igbo people, including Mbaise Catholics, stood up in joyful celebration. The same situation repeated itself in 1980 when Orlu was raised to a diocese, and once again in 1981 when Okigwe was created a diocese. Every part of Igbo heartland peoples rejoiced because that was the wish of the people that the church in the area grows into multiple dioceses.

But when in 1987 Ahiara Diocese was created, the mood changed completely among non-Mbaise peoples. Rather than celebrate with their rejoicing brothers and sisters, many of them went into mourning and wholesale disparagement. In many areas around the Igbo heartland area of Owerri, it appeared as if the general wish and prayer was that the new diocese fall flat on its face and her indigenes become humiliated for attaining the status of a Catholic diocese. The situation at that time was terrible and even traumatic for many Mbaise people. Many confessed that they hardly knew that they were that hated by their neighbors.

But the high-point of the strange mood of the period would be contained in an essay, which Chief Adolphus U.D. Mbah, the celebrated National Laity Council Chairman, would publish in one of the issues of the Leader Newspaper of December 1987. For the sake of fairness, especially to the dead, the late Chief A.U.D. Mbah, from Ikeduru, was one of the greatest friends of the Mbaise people. Some of his best friends were from Mbaise land. Chief A.U.D. Mbah was a great Catholic in every sense of the world. But he was also human and was perhaps swept along by the mood of the period. [Chief Mbah was not alone. Nearly every renowned Catholic around Owerri during that period, both priests and lay people, got swept along by the flood of anti-Mbaise sentiment that broke out as a result of the creation of Ahiara Diocese].

In his essay in The Leader, which was arguably well intended, Chief Mbah noted among many other things that with the creation of Ahiara Diocese, Ahiara people and Mbaise citizens in general had been given an opportunity to redeem themselves and perhaps their image as well. Chief Mbah obviously made that statement innocently. But there was hardly any doubt in people’s mind about some of the issues he was alluding to. He was referencing among other things the landmark events that had chipped away the reputation of Mbaise people since the beginning of the 20th century.

These included the murder of the Briton, Dr Stewart in 1905; the genocide and the devastating Douglas War [Ogu Odengalasi] that followed after it; the burning down of the colonial customary court in Nkwogwu in 1929, and the event of the Ahiara Declaration, which, though, heroic among the Igbo people, was, in fact, an inglorious show and an act of infamy among the victorious Nigerian government. Chief Mbah was therefore challenging the people of Mbaise to use the occasion of the new diocese to do better things with their lives much more than they had done previously.

The ultimate implication of Chief Mbah’s essay was clear to every Mbaise person who could reason at that time. For him, Mbaise people had not had a good reputation prior to the announcement of the creation of their diocese. Therefore, for him and for many other non-Mbaise people, what the creation of the diocese had accomplished was to provide the people of Mbaise a new opportunity and an avenue to redeem themselves as human beings and Christians - an opportunity, which, if well utilized, would help them clean up the mess in their lives. For Chief Mbah and many other people that did not hail from Mbaise at that time, the image of Mbaise people needed a serious brush work, clean up, deliverance and redemption. And the new diocese would be expected to deliver all that to Mbaise people.

Peering behind Chief Mbah’s essay, one could notice the type of prejudices Mbaise people have been struggling against from the earliest period of the 20th century. Many people, including the high-ups in the Catholic Church, believed and still believe that Mbaise people committed some kind of an original sin in their remotest past, and would need a kind of redemption, and, in fact, a type of "baptismal cleansing" that could wipe away their sins and make them worthy of anything in the church. How such a “baptism” could be administered nobody has been charitable enough to tell Mbaise people. Rather, Mbaise people have continued to be treated in all spheres of life, including in the Catholic Church of Nigeria, as people who do not measure up to others because of some defects or a historical sin. And this indeed is a classic euphemism for prejudice and injustice!

For many non-Mbaise people at that time, the creation of Ahiara Diocese was not a matter for celebration but a new opportunity for some sort of a ritual cleansing of the sins of the Mbaise people. That is to say, the new diocese was more of a chastisement than an elevation for the Mbaise people. It was a delegitimizing factor and not a cause for a celebration. It would be useful if it fulfilled the ritual cleansing of the Mbaise people from their original sins. This is the source of the prejudices Mbaise people have been suffering both in the society and in the church till today. There is always a desperate effort to spin any blessings or progress of theirs into an adversity. And this is the meaning of de-legitimization!

The enduring campaign by adversaries to delegitimize every little progress in Mbaise land is at the root of the current crisis in Ahiara Diocese. While many Mbaise adversaries appear hell-bent on delegitimizing Mbaise people and their Catholicism, Mbaise people on their part are vowing never to accept any de-legitimization, no matter the cost. This is the basis of the current impasse in the bishopric crisis of the diocese.

The truth is that no other diocese in the Igbo heartland area was similarly burdened at its creation as Ahiara Diocese was when it was announced. Both Orlu and Okigwe Dioceses that rivaled or even surpassed Mbaise in the so-called popular virtues or vices were only celebrated and given a pat in the back when they were announced. The hoopla about what the new diocese was expected to offer Mbaise people stemmed from the malignant prejudice that had ever afflicted Mbaise land. For most part of the 20th century, it had operated under the radar. But the announcement of the creation of Ahiara Diocese had provided an occasion for the buried prejudices to break free and be extravagantly expressed by non-Mbaise peoples.

There are many non-Mbaise people who cannot find it in themselves to forgive Mbaise people of whatever sins they were said to have committed against them from time immemorial. So, whenever anything good happened in Mbaise land they cried. And if an ill-fortune befell on Mbaise people they celebrated. And should it become their responsibility to grant Mbaise people anything, even if it is their entitlement, they either exercise their liberty to deny them their right, or, they consciously give them the worst of everything, as retaliation for a crime Mbaise people never committed against anybody.

This is the ordeal every Mbaise man and woman has been carrying since the dawn of the 20th century. Mbaise people feel like serving a life sentence of prejudice among their Igbo brothers and sisters. And this life sentence of prejudice is at the root of the needless bishopric crisis in Ahiara Diocese. If this sentence had not been handed down to Mbaise people, there would never have been a crisis in the Catholic Church of the Mbaise people. But the enemy sowed the weed in a garden of wheat!

Immediately Ahiara Diocese was announced, the negative reaction that erupted from Owerri area in particular was so disconcerting and worrisome that the veteran Superior General of the Congregation of the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus, Rev. Mother Gertrude Nwaturuocha, a native of Nguru Mbaise, who was spending her retirement in the HHCJ Convent beside Assumpta Cathedral Owerri, rushed down to Mbaise in tears on the third day of the announcement. She warned and pleaded with Mbaise priests who were gathered at Sacred Heart Parish Nguru Centre for their monthly Deanery Recollection to take a special note of how non-Mbaise peoples were reacting to the creation of the new diocese.

Mother Gertrude recounted what she had heard said about how life was going to be an animal farm in the new diocese. She told the priests of Mbaise that many people were rooting for them to fail in their new diocese. According to her, Mbaise priests owed it to themselves and to the whole communities in Mbaise to remain united. She admonished them not to fail in building up the new diocese into a model diocese in Nigeria. The very elderly Mother Gertrude pleaded passionately with her brothers not to disappoint her thereby bringing shame to her fatherland of Mbaise.

The scene at Nguru on that day was absolutely solemn. The priests were totally absorbed and pensive as they listened to the flailing voice of the frail old Mother Gertrude plead in tears with them to work hard in unity so as to exceed expectation and chart a new course for the success of the new diocese.

Also, paying a solidarity visit with the Mbaise priests on that day of their recollection was a group of Mbaise laity led by Chief Donatus O. Onu. The make-up of the delegation came predominantly from the Knights of St Mulumba. It included the who’s who among the Catholic laity of Mbaise. They had come specifically to allay the fears and quell the anxiety of Mbaise priests some of whom had begun to think that the new diocese would not succeed in view of the negative comments it was attracting from many non-Mbaise commentators.

Speaking on behalf of the delegation, Chief Donatus Onu told Mbaise priests to relax and celebrate their great accomplishment in witnessing to the reality of their great new diocese. He warned against listening to what he described as “the ranting of the enemies of Mbaise people”. According to him, the diocese was already on course to succeed and even to blossom in Mbaise land and Nigeria as a whole. Chief Onu would go on to assure the priests that the new diocese would surprise the world with the speed of her success.

Chief Onu and his group advised the priests not to panic and not to pay attention to the negative comments being made by their adversaries about the new diocese. According to them, the laity and the priests of the diocese would work closely together to build a model diocese out of the rural communities that inhabited the Mbaise land.

This was how Ahiara Diocese was received in the Igbo heartland area following the announcement of its creation on December 2, 1987.

To be continued …..