AHIARA DIOCESE CRISIS: THE UNTOLD STORIES…25

Explosion of Initiatives … [vi]

The incredible speed, with which Bishop Victor Chikwe erased the scandalous infrastructural deficit of his new diocese provides another window into the ingenious initiatives that transformed the once rural, insignificant and laughable and almost loathsome Diocese of Ahiara into a major attraction for the Episcopal See poachers of Igbo Catholicism. In fact, a great and an amazing story of Ahiara Diocese that has remained untold until now is how quickly and miraculously it transited from being a veritable Ghetto for the indigenous priests of Mbaise expelled and deported from Owerri Diocese following the creation of the former, to a great diocese that was thrown up for grabs as a result of the sudden death of her first shepherd, Bishop Victor Adibe Chikwe.

It would be recalled that the new diocese of Ahiara had taken off on that January 31, 1988, on some makeshift structures. The face of the diocese in the earliest days of her existence seemed extremely disheartening. If not for the infectious enthusiasm of her people, Ahiara Diocese in her earliest days looked every inch like something that would sooner than later transform into a still-born child. The prospect that the ship of the new diocese might capsize midstream haunted the thinking of every Mbaise priest every once in a while. But what was not in short supply was the determination to give the experiment that was the new diocese a try. Every Mbaise person whether priest or lay person was totally invested in making the new diocese successful. That was the only thing the new diocese had going for her.

However, the odds were stacked against the enthusiastic wishes of Mbaise people in a very frightening way. The bishop’s house was just a temporary bedroom perching atop a transformed garage of the rectory of St Brigid’s Church. The quarters for the clergy chancery workers were a squeezed-in camp-like bungalow that was constructed within three weeks prior to the inauguration. Their sleeping beds squeezed into their 10’x10’ bedrooms were camp-size as well. The chancery was an elongated bungalow of six rooms that hastily came into being before the inauguration of the new diocese. So the new diocese was accommodated in a patchwork of temporary structures. Everything the new diocese took off from appeared perfunctory and temporary. It seemed as if the work to change the face of the new diocese into something modern would take decades if not a century to accomplish.

But from day one, after the inauguration, Bishop Chikwe appeared to have a clear vision of what he intended to accomplish in the new diocese. He was not at all intimidated by the monstrosity of the challenge confronting him. The makeshift nature of nearly everything in the diocese did not seem to bother him. Rather, he clearly understood that he would have to build up the new diocese from the scratch. He seemed to have exactly the type of frame of mind which the new diocese had needed.

Bishop Chikwe was such a person who could hold up steady his head when every other person was losing theirs. So as people worried how the monstrous challenge of the new diocese was going to be tackled, they did not know that he had made up his mind to build a brand new Bishop’s courtyard made up of an ultra-modern Cathedral, a state-of-the-art chancery and a highly secured bishop’s palace that would be fitted with modern facilities. He would keep most of his plans close to his chest.

As the inaugurated festivities gradually faded into the background, the new diocese began to settle down for business. All eyes were turned to the bishop to make a statement on how to address the temporary facilities the diocese was operating on. Many had thought that the new bishop would begin almost immediately to erect some permanent structures in the premises of the St Brigid’s Church. But Bishop Chikwe had other ideas. He was deep into thinking and planning.

At first, it was thought that the little delay in beginning to build something for the new diocese was because of a lack of space in the premises of St Brigid’s Church. However, musings about this were quickly shut down by priests who had lived and worked at the Church. Many had insisted that St Brigid’s Church compound has an expansive land holding by its left flank that could accommodate any diocesan facilities the new bishop intended to establish. According to this school of thought, the new bishop should get started with what he had available at St Brigid’s Church as the place had enough space to accommodate whatever was his dream for the new diocese.

As anxiety began to mount concerning the lack of activities in building up some permanent structures in the new diocese, the new bishop shocked almost everyone in one of the Presbyterium meetings when he announced that he did not intend to erect anything in the compound of St Brigid’s Church; that he would prefer to build a completely new Bishop’s courtyard with a brand new cathedral and chancery to match. The bishop insisted that he would prefer to leave St Brigid’s Church as a landmark in the diocese.

The news of the new bishop’s plan for the new diocese would shock not just a few. For many it had felt like a thunderbolt from the blues. While a few gave their enthusiastic support to the plan some were guarded in their responses and many others resigned themselves to following the bishop’s lead.

The bishop’s announcement in this regard would bring to the fore what appeared to have been happening quietly at the background since the inauguration of the diocese. All the while when it had been thought that nothing was happening, the bishop was quietly searching for some expanse of land within Nnarambia community where the permanent structures of the new diocese would be sited.

As his intentions became known, suggestions began to pour in both from the priests and the laity. There was a flurry of suggestions on how to go about acquiring the lands that would be needed for the new site of the diocese. But gradually there appeared a near consensus that the best place to locate the permanent site of the diocese would be the large expanse of land between Nnarambia and Oboama Nguru by the left side on the Interstate Highway between Owerri and Umuahia.

Unfortunately, that site that had been eyed from the late 1970s as the possible place a diocese for the Mbaise people would be sited was at the beginning of the 1980s taken over by the civilian state administration of Imo State headed by Governor Samuel Onunaka Mbakwe. The Imo State governor had seized that piece of land on the spot the diocesan headquarters was being dreamed of for the establishment of the headquarters of a construction company called Hydrotech. When eventually Ahiara Diocese was created, everybody rued the fact that that wonderful piece of land on the Highway between Owerri and Umuahia was no longer available to be used as a diocesan centre.

But Bishop Chikwe was not a man to just throw in the towel in the face of such a challenge. He made some contacts to see if he could purchase the property from the company or from the state government that had custody over it. But its price was put way beyond what the diocese could afford at that point in time. And with the Hydrotech site shot way beyond the reach of the new diocese the bishop decided to look elsewhere for a permanent site for the new diocese.

The bishop, the senior priests and the laity of the diocese all intensified efforts to see if a new site could be acquired for the proposed diocesan centre. As there were no spaces in the immediate vicinity of St Brigid’s Church, the search was extended a little bit in all directions around the community of Nnarambia.

The opening up of the search for a suitable site a little more widely would encourage other communities in Ahiara such as Oru, Ogbe, Aguneze and Obodo Ahiara to indicate their willingness to offer some large expanse of lands if the bishop would agree to move the headquarters of Ahiara Diocese to their particular community. But Bishop Chikwe could hardly entertain such a proposal. He was adamant in maintaining Nnarambia as the seat of the new diocese. He seemed to indicate that the headquarters of the new diocese would have to be located in Nnarambia community and in a place proximate to St Brigid’s Church where the missionaries had first established the Catholic Church in Mbaise land.

The search for a permanent site for the new diocese in the very congested community of Nnarambia would take a lot of time to the effect that many began to think that the bishop would have to shelve his decision to build the new diocese on a virgin territory that was outside of St Brigid’s Church. There was some kind of a push to get the bishop to rethink his decision to move the headquarters of Ahiara Diocese away from St Brigid’s Church. The argument in support of the push was that St Brigid’s Church had all it would take to accommodate modern structures that would be needed in the new diocese. If that was the case, the argument went, why would the bishop continue to stress himself and the entire diocese trying to acquire virgin pieces of land from Nnarambia people who appeared very unwilling to excise even one inch of their territory for the up-building of the new diocese?

But Mbaise people would soon realize that Bishop Chikwe was not a man who could give up easily on any project he had set his sight on. He kept on making contacts and consulting with the various leaders of Nnarambia community. Gradually some breakthrough began to appear when some leaders of Nnarambia community especially from the villages of Umuezereugwu and Umunnachi made a suggestion that the fairly expansive piece of property that was currently occupied by their community elementary school could be used as the place to site the diocesan headquarters if the school could be relocated to some other place. On learning about this suggestion, Bishop Chikwe moved into action. The suggestion appeared every inch like the breakthrough he had been hoping for.

However, there were multiple problems associated with the Umuezereugwu-Umunnachi property in question. First, it was located on the road between Aboh Mbaise and Eke-Ahiara Junction. The site of the property was a little off the location from where many people had thought the headquarters of the diocese could be sited. Many had taken it for granted that for the new diocese to make some real impact in Mbaise land it would have to be sited somewhere along the Highway between Owerri and Umuahia. But Bishop Chikwe saw that as no problem at all. In fact, he believed that the Umuezereugwu-Umunnachi site would fit perfectly into his vision as it sat on the road between the political headquarters of Mbaise in Aboh and the large Mbaise community on the northern side.

The harder problems in the bishop’s view would be associated with the acquisitions of other lands around the elementary school compound. The bishop knew what land had meant for Mbaise people. He said it repeatedly that an Mbaise person would hardly give up the title of his land for anything even when such could be used for some project that could turn his life around completely. So, he expected to be involved with a very hard and lengthy negotiation with the land owners of the proposed site. But little did he envisage what had waited for him in the Umuezereugwu-Umunnachi site. While some landowners in the place expressed willingness to donate or let their lands be purchased, one or two of the families that owned some large properties there were not willing to do business with the diocese.

Feeling undaunted the bishop initiated some two-pronged high stakes negotiations with the villages of Umunnachi and Umuezereugwu in Nnarambia community on the one hand and the Imo State Government on the other for the relocation of the elementary school to a nearby place. None of these negotiations would come easy. At every juncture there was a roadblock to be scaled. The roadblock would stall the negotiation for a while until the bishop and his team figured out the way to move forward. The journey would become arduous, very distressful and tasking. But the bishop moved on anyway. He had his goal firmly in view and nothing could dissuade him from attaining it.

But the negotiation with Imo State Ministry of Education for the permission to relocate the school to a nearby piece of land that had been acquired for it would prove surprisingly difficult. Some people including some notable Mbaise sons and daughters with the ministry of education would prove a little uncooperative with the quest of the bishop to obtain the permission of the state government to move the elementary school to a different location. This was most disheartening to the bishop. He could not understand the situation. There was a lot of enthusiasm back home in Mbaise land for the new diocese to succeed. Yet there were some elite Mbaise citizens resident in Owerri who were less enthused by what was happening back home in the new diocese and were positioning themselves to frustrate some of her moves. Notwithstanding all that, the bishop chose to continue pushing until eventually the permission was signed and the contract for the erection of the new school buildings in the new site of the school was signed and work began in earnest.

However, where the monster difficulty would be encountered was in the efforts to acquire other pieces of land that were buried at the heart of the site. While many Nnarambia families that owned properties in the site willingly and happily cooperated with the diocese, a family in the community that owned a small palm plantation at the site vowed never to give it to the diocese either through purchase or by exchange. Every effort was made to convince the owner of that property to allow the diocese to make use of it through negotiation. But he bluntly refused. This would delay the commencement of work at the new site for a very long time. The bishop would wait for an indefinite amount of time in order to see whether there would be a change of heart in the man. But he refused to budge.

After waiting for a long time, the bishop had no other option than to authorize work to start at the new site. Bulldozers were ordered into the site beginning from the pieces of lands already acquired. When the uncooperative landowner realized that there was no way his piece of land would be spared in the construction at the new site he instituted some multiple law suits against the bishop and the new diocese. This development would open up a new era in the new Diocese of Ahiara Mbaise.

With the law suits multiplying by the day, Mbaise lawyers led by the veteran legal luminary, Barrister B.S.C. Nzenwa formed themselves into a crack team of Ahiara Diocesan lawyers to take care of the ever multiplying law suits against the bishop. At a particular point during the process for the acquisition of the land for the new site of the diocesan centre, the bishop had about twenty litigation instituted against him and the diocese. Mbaise people were shocked to learn how a Catholic family in Nnarambia was so fastidious in trying to prevent the new diocese from taking off in their neighborhoods.

The assistant secretary of the diocese during that tumultuous period when the diocese was facing those numerous court challenges, Rev. Fr. Dr. Peter Chidi Osuagwu makes fun today of some of their encounters in the court during that time. The presiding judge for most of those cases was the veteran bench wizard in Imo State known as Justice Nsofor. One of the numerous litigations was against the Bishop of Ahiara Diocese. When the case was called up in the court, before Barrister Nzenwa would respond, the diocesan surveyor, Nze Hilary Anyanwu alias Otokoro, chimed in to tell His Lordship, Justice Nsofor, that the suit was invalid since the word “Bishop” was a title and not a name and that anybody could go with that title. This caused a huge laughter in the open court.

At another time, the plaintiff complained to the Judge that despite his interim injunction retraining the defendants from entering the disputed property, work had continued in the place unabated. When the Judge questioned the diocesan representatives led by Chief D.O. Onu and Barrister Nzenwa about the real situation on the ground, the ever humorous Chief D.O. Onu responded ahead of Barrister Nzenwa saying “We did not enter the land. It was the bulldozer that entered the place. With all due respect, Your Lordship, ask the bulldozer why it entered the place.” The entire court exploded into laughter!

To be continued….