AHIARA DIOCESE CRISIS: THE UNTOLD STORIES…22

Explosion of Initiatives … [iii]

In view of his ever dogged and determined nature, Bishop Victor Chikwe would not just stop at rediscovering and re-creating the skills acquisitions’ legacies of the Irish missionaries to address the existential needs of his rural Diocese of Ahiara. He was determined to exceed and even excel on them. And that was what he determined to do as he began to unveil his initiatives towards transforming the landscape of Ahiara Diocese both spiritually and economically. Somewhere at the back of his mind he had a vision of the new diocese as a place where workshops are located at strategic corners with many people busy at work producing various things.

As anybody who had worked closely with him could testify, Bishop Victor Chikwe had a natural proclivity towards anything technical or practical. He had an inborn talent to figure out the solution of any technical or practical problem. Despite being a bishop, he was in fact a tools man in cassock. And he relished working with tools just like some Irish missionaries of old. And that reflected in the vision he had for the new diocese. He wanted Ahiara Diocese to be a practical, pragmatic and a problem-solving diocese. He believed that if Ahiara Diocese was made to be practical and pragmatic in her orientation, it would be able to solve most of her problems with little or no outside inputs.

From the get go Bishop Chikwe wanted the new diocese to be self-sustaining within a very short period of time. He was never a fan of going to Europe and America cap-in-hands to beg for aids and assistance. He believed that if we managed our little resources very well, we would all be fine and not depend on any other people in the world for our survival. As a result, Bishop Chikwe had a vision of Ahiara Diocese as a diocese that would not only proclaim the gospel loud and clear to her faithful but also as one that would help her constituent families put food on their tables.

Moreover, Bishop Chikwe had a personal conviction that was shared by almost all the priests of the diocese. There was consensus among Ahiara Diocesan priests and the lay faithful alike that the erection of the diocese in Mbaise land had created a new opportunity to begin the development of Mbaise communities that had been left fallow by both the Church and the secular governments for the greater part of the 20th century. The new diocese which had practically nothing to take off with was seen as a clarion call to all Mbaise people everywhere to come home and begin the development of their homeland. And Bishop Chikwe believed that fate had thrust upon his shoulders the burden of leading and steering the new energy created by the new diocese to some greater accomplishments among Mbaise people.

Bishop Chikwe understood very well the challenge he faced as the leader of the new Mbaise renaissance. He knew that part of the duty of the new diocese was to serve as a powerhouse and an integrative centre for a new push towards the overall development of Mbaise land. And facing up to these challenges the new bishop decided that the role of the new diocese would include creating some medium scale industries that would help transform Mbaise land, create job for the sprawling jobless population and help hurting poor families make a living. So, after putting in a place a channel through which many young people would acquire some skills, Bishop Chikwe plunged himself into creating medium scale industries. His first interest and foray would be into agriculture.

Bishop Chikwe had great love for agriculture. He saw it as having the greatest potential to transform Mbaise land into a religious beehive and an economic hub. So, he went head on into it. He talked about agriculture as if he had trained all his life as a professional farmer. People then wondered why he would be so interested in agriculture in Mbaise land especially as the popular myth about Mbaise was that the place was crammed up together with humans perching on a patchy non-productive landscape that did not hold much promise for anything else except for human procreation and habitation. According to this myth, it was because Mbaise land was bursting at its seams with an ever-exploding human population that its citizens loved to migrate out of the territory and seek to make a living elsewhere in other lands.

But Bishop Chikwe was somebody who liked to bust mythologies that were unfounded as we will try to demonstrate in this series later. He believed that the myth about Mbaise having no arable land for agriculture was just a myth and nothing else. As he prepared to launch the new diocese into agricultural ventures, he often said that the arable land available in Mbaise land for farming could produce enough food to feed the rest of the Igbo people. According to him, the arable land at the western bank of the Imo River that stretches miles upon miles has remained a virgin territory for agriculture till then. That alone, he contended, could feed the whole of Imo State if properly harnessed.

Again Bishop Chikwe pointed to the expansive lands available in the Oke Ovoro area and those that were available in Oparanadim and Obohia areas in Ekwerazu area, all of which, according to him, were crying for agricultural extensions and explorations. He believed that if the new diocese could lead the way in helping Mbaise people realize how agriculturally valuable those areas were for the transformation of Mbaise land, it would have accomplished a lot in helping Mbaise people realize their rich potential for development. He pleaded with the priests and the lay people as well to include in their pastoral programmes some agricultural ventures.

With the philosophy of agricultural entrepreneurship at the back of his mind Bishop Chikwe prepared to launch the new diocese into big time agro-business. First, he requested all the priests of the diocese to liaise with the communities of their different parishes for the availability of lands that could be acquired on a temporary or permanent basis to be used for diocesan agro-projects. While many priests began the long process of acquiring lands for agricultural projects in Mbaise land Bishop Chikwe reached out to one of his great friends and a former parishioner of his in Mount Carmel Parish Emekuku, Rev Fr Dr Godfrey Nzamujo, OP, who had made some world-class breakthroughs in agricultural research, developments and investments throughout the continent of Africa.

Fr Godfrey Nzamujo, OP, a world-class agro-business genius and scientist with doctorate degrees in electronics, microbiology and development sciences had founded the Songhai Agricultural Centre in the neighborhoods of Porto Novo in Benin Republic in 1985 to train young Africans as entrepreneurs in agro-businesses. Within a short space of time, Songhai Centre for agricultural experiments had become a veritable revolution in agro-research and businesses. Songhai blossomed and attracted a worldwide attention as a model that should be replicated all over Africa for agricultural developments.

Since Fr Nzamujo kept a close contact with his former parish priest and friend who had become the new bishop of the new diocese of Ahiara, Bishop Chikwe wanted Ahiara Diocese to be among the first dioceses that would benefit from Songhai agricultural experiments and establishments. He made haste to position the diocese to send young people to Porto Novo for training as agricultural entrepreneurs when Songhai would open its doors for such. In mid-1990s Fr Nzamujo and Songhai centre signaled their willingness to admit some entrepreneurial trainees in agriculture from the new diocese of Ahiara Mbaise.

Bishop Chikwe did not hesitate to send two of his vibrant young priests for a yearlong training in Benin Republic in the farms and laboratories of Songhai Agricultural Project. Being ambitious in his vision for agricultural development in Mbaise land, Bishop Chikwe dreamed of replicating Songhai Agricultural Centre in Ahiara diocese. That was the reason behind his sending two of his younger priests brimming with energy to spend a full year in Benin Republic learning everything they could from the master himself in order to be able to replicate a Songhai type of farm project in Mbaise land. The two young men departed and would spend a whole year learning from Fr Nzamujo and the Songhai establishments.

As the preparation went full throttle ahead for the establishment of an agro-based medium scale industry in Mbaise, Bishop Chikwe embarked on the acquisition of the lands where the industry would take off. The large expanse of land in Egberede Nguru that was used for the rehabilitation of the physically challenged, Egberede Rehabilitation Centre, became available for purchase. Bishop Chikwe made haste and bought it. He renamed it Mater Farms with a view to using it as the headquarters of the agro-based industries he was trying to establish in the diocese. He reached out all over the diocese and started to acquire lands in areas like Oke Ovoro and Oparanadim in preparation for the take-off of the large farm project he was dreaming of.

As Bishop Chikwe set the ball rolling towards the establishment of a big farm project in Ahiara Diocese he moved full speed ahead to the explorations of other medium scale industries he had in his view. He quickly founded a bakery that began to produce very delicious bread called Mother Care Bread. He handed the management of the bakery to one of the female religious congregations working in the new diocese. The project would become an instant success among bread eaters in Mbaise and its environs. Its products could hardly last an hour on the stand before being devoured by hungry consumers.

Moving over from commercial bakery, Bishop Chikwe established an Altar Bread factory at the Bishop’s Court to cater for the heavy population of holy communicants in the diocese. This also became an instant success and was managed directly by the priests of the diocesan chancery. Parishes in Mbaise, Mbano and some parts of Owerri and Umuahia turned to Ahiara Diocese to procure their altar bread. Almost in a quick succession Bishop Chikwe established other little industries such as a Gasoline [Petrol] Station in the bishop’s court, a bookshop, a pharmaceutical store and others in the new media family which we shall discuss later in this series.

As the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN] opened its doors allowing communities to establish and run community banks Bishop Chikwe was one of the earliest applicants for a license to establish a community bank in Ahiara Diocese. The license was immediately granted. But the establishment of the community bank quickly ran into a problem. The community, Nnarambia Ahiara, in which Ahiara Diocese is located had already applied and obtained a license to establish their community bank exactly at the place where the new diocese was eyeing. And by CBN rule at that time, according to Bishop Chikwe, it was not permissible for two community banks to co-exist within such proximity in a single community. This development would frustrate the bishop to no end. It eventually resulted in the abandonment of the establishment of a diocesan community bank at Eke Ahiara.

After establishing those small-scale industries at various locations in the diocese, everybody, including the bishop, looked forward to some results. But something terrible happened. The projects failed one after the other. Not many people, including the bishop himself, had realized that the key to the success of any establishment was its management. And that priests and religious sisters were not the best economic managers in the world. So, without proper managements the experiment at establishing some medium scale industries in Ahiara Diocese quickly turned into a nightmare as the industries themselves quickly collapsed and vanished from Mbaise land.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking was the collapse of the dream to establish a large farm project in Ahiara Diocese. The two young men returned from their intensive training at the Songhai facility in Porto Novo in Benin Republic. Mater Farm establishment with its real and potential projects at various locations of the diocese was turned over to them. But after a few years the Mater Farm Project collapsed alongside its noble vision. The young men failed to deliver on their expensive and intensive one-year training at Songhai in Porto Novo. The rest is now history.

Following in tandem the disappointment from Mater Farm Project were the failures of the other small scale industries the bishop had established. The bakery that produced the delicious Mother Care Bread collapsed at the height of its popularity and so also did the Altar Bread factory and the other establishments. The Pharmacy held up for a while and has been hobbling ever since.

With the collapse of the small-scale industries Bishop Chikwe had started off the diocese with, a big lesson was hopefully learned throughout the entire diocese. The first lesson had to be that priests and lay religious, especially female religious are not great economic managers after all. Left on their own and without good supervision they most certainly will run a viable economic venture aground. And the second follows from the first, namely, management is the key to the success of any economic venture. If a good management cannot be found, it will be sheer foolhardy to embark on the establishment of any economic venture.

In line with the vision of the late Bishop Chikwe, Mbaise land remains a potentially viable agricultural venture. Prospects on this are lying there waiting to be taken by a highly organized body such as Ahiara Catholic Diocese. Our prayer is that the vision of the late Bishop Chikwe to lead the way in the transformation of Mbaise land through the establishments of medium-size industries will not die with him.

We pray that there will arise one day a leader in the Catholic Church of Mbaise land who will revisit Bishop Chikwe’s vision of transforming Mbaise land through agro-business and bring it to a full reality with a good management. We see in Mbaise land in the second half of the 21st century and beyond booming with agricultural projects and feeding her people not only with the eternal word of God but with foods from her richly endowed farm projects.

To be continued….