AHIARA DIOCESE IN CROSSHAIRS: THE REAL STORIES …9 [EXCERPTS FROM A BOOK IN PRINT]

Chapter 3: The Gathering Storm [i]

Having officially registered her rejection of the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as her bishop-elect with petition letters sent to Rome, the diocese became calm again as it awaited for any responses from the Vatican. The priests and the laity were very anxious for any responses both from the Vatican and from the local authorities that had received copies of the protest letters. Everybody in the diocese was anxious for some information on the outcome of the petitions that had made their way to the Vatican and to the Apostolic Nunciature in Abuja.

But as the wait continued, people who were knowledgeable in the way the system operated kept advising and cautioning for vigilance and patience since according to them the Vatican had never had the habit of responding to any complaints and petitions promptly. The tradition of the Vatican, they maintained, was to take all the time in the world to consider issues and respond only when they have absolute reason to do so.

However, within this period in which some kinds of responses were being awaited, there would be actions on several other fronts. But nobody in the diocese was under any illusion that the battle to force Rome to reverse her decision on the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke would be fierce and exerting. The consensus opinion among priests was that whatever it would take to achieve the goal of stopping Fr Peter Okpalaeke from becoming the bishop of Ahiara Diocese would be worth all the efforts and patience. Meanwhile, action continued on several fronts.

First was that of the Nuncio, Archbishop Kasujja. After getting his own copy of the petition letters, and when he realized that the College of Consultors had not made the scheduled trip to Awka to pay homage to the bishop-elect, he began to intensify his pressure on the administrator so as to get him and the College of Consultors to do so. He would make several late-night telephone calls to try to sway the administrator and the College to embark on some kind of a goodwill trip to Awka to congratulate and pay allegiance to the bishop-elect.

On his part, the administrator would come under very intense pressures not only from the Nuncio but also from the metropolitan who was himself apparently under some kind of pressure from the Nuncio. The whole concerted effort was to get the administrator and the members of the College of Consultors to visit Awka and meet up with the bishop-elect so as to begin preparation for his Episcopal ordination and installation in Ahiara Diocese.

On the other hand, the administrator and the members of the College of Consultors were also under the pressure of the priests of the diocese not to accede to the requests of either the Nuncio or the metropolitan. The priests would insist on prevailing on the administrator and the College not to make any overtures to the bishop-elect that would signal that the diocese was backing off from the petition she had sent to Rome rejecting his appointment as the bishop of the diocese. Every one of them, administrator and the members of the College, was being watched like a hawk by the members of Ahiara Presbyterium and their canonists. Some young priests took turns to keep vigil around the homes of the members of the College of Consultors and around the Cathedral.

The determination of the priests of the diocese not to allow the administrator and the members of the college to make any move that could be seen as undermining the principles of the petition letters that had been sent to Rome was unbelievable. At that juncture, every priest in Ahiara Diocese became a canonist sort of. The whole game plan was to make sure that the administrator and the members of the College of Consultors did not provide the occasion for the ratification of the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as the bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese.

The canonists of the Presbyterium would warn quite repeatedly that all that it would take for the rejected bishop-elect to gain a canonical possession of the diocese and start meddling into the affairs of the diocese was for the College of Consultors to meet him in person and for the Papal Bull appointing him bishop of Ahiara Diocese to be read before them and taken note of by the chancellor of the diocese. According to the canonists advising Ahiara Presbyterium, should such a thing happen then the battle to prevent Msgr. Okpalaeke from becoming bishop of Ahiara Diocese would be partially lost. As a result of this potential, there was tension all over the diocese. The activities of the administrator and the members of the College were being kept at a very close watch. Every bit of their moves was monitored and analyzed to ensure that their allegiance was with the cause of the majority of the priests of the diocese.

The one who felt the pressure the most was the diocesan administrator, Msgr. Theo Nwalo. He was being harassed from all corners of the crisis. While the Nuncio and the senior bishops of Nigeria would not let him have a sound sleep at night, they would not let him have any respite during the day. The whole situation began to get seriously under his skin. The administrator who all of his life had been known for his mildness and calm demeanour began to appear cranky and irritable most of the time as a result of the pressure he felt because of the crisis.

On the part of the priests and laity of the diocese, everybody was calling the administrator out and making suggestion of the way forward. The priests in particular were very suspicious of the administrator’s loyalty to the cause. Many a time they would accuse him of selling out. The Nuncio and many other bishops of the country were calling the administrator out as if he held the keys for the acceptance of Msgr. Okpalaeke as the bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese. There was confusion all over the place.

The priests of the diocese were in deep suspicion of every move of the administrator. Many of them believed that he and the metropolitan, Archbishop AJV Obinna, were working together against the decision of the diocese to fight the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as the bishop of Ahiara Diocese. Many thought that the two leaders were working in cahoots in their efforts to surreptitiously plan and execute the ordination and installation of Msgr. Okpalaeke in Ahiara Diocese. As a result, tempers flared up all over the place. Every now and then there would be a threat of an open fight breaking out among the priests of Ahiara Diocese. Mbaise land began to look like a place open fisticuffs could break out at any time. Things were not normal again. And there was no peace both in the minds and actions of priests of Ahiara Diocese.

Another development during this period would be that of many sons and daughters from all parts of the world embracing the struggle and insisting on making their own contributions to it. It appeared that the announcement of Fr Peter Okpalaeke as bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese had galvanized all Mbaise sons and daughters throughout the world. From every corner of the world where Mbaise people resided, there were threats of mayhem should Fr. Okpalaeke be allowed to assume the Episcopal See of Ahiara as her bishop.

And from the United States of America in particular would emerge a very strong force in support of the struggle of the priests at home. The United States’ front would be led by a very erudite biblical scholar called Professor Adolphus Amadi Azuogu based in California, USA. Dr Adolphus Amadi-Azuogu, who, until a few years before the outbreak of the crisis, was a Catholic priest of the Claretian Missionary Fathers [CMF] would so much dedicate himself to fighting what he perceived as a gross injustice done to the people of Mbaise by “a gang of some privileged clerics from Anambra State” that it did not take long before some detractors of the cause would begin to chant the false hymn that the Ahiara Diocese crisis was incited as well as being led by an ex-priest.

Dr. Amadi-Azuogu would publish his first essay on the struggle on December 15, 2012, entitled “The Anambranization of the Igbo Catholic Hierarchy.” The piece would be subtitled: “Agwo no n’akirika”- literally translated as “There is a snake on the roof mats”, but ultimately means that “there is something strange and fishy, there is danger about the whole situation.” Agwo no n’akirika means that things are not as they appear, that there is a looming danger that must be addressed. And that would become the essential philosophy of Dr Amadi-Azuogu. Dr Amadi-Azuogu was not in the picture when the first petition was sent to Rome.

He was not consulted for it and could never have been a part of the decision to reject the bishop-elect and send a petition to Rome. Of his own accord Dr Amadi-Azuogu jumped into the fight because he saw the whole situation as a grave injustice to the Mbaise people. He believed and so did many Mbaise sons and daughters that the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese portended a great danger for the people of Mbaise and therefore must be wrestled to submission.

Notwithstanding the efforts of detractors and saboteurs of the cause to distract him, Dr. Amadi-Azuogu, would through his numerous essays, venture into some areas of Igbo Catholicism that had remained hidden since the early 20th century. Basking in the freedom he enjoyed for not being a Catholic priest anymore, Dr Amadi-Azuogu would say most of the things that had until then been hardly mentioned about the festering rot of injustice in both the Igbo and the Nigerian Catholic Church. With charts and graphs, he would make a strong case of endemic injustice and corruption in the Catholic Church of the Igbo people.

Dr. Amadi-Azuogu would declare with uncommon courage that some powerful and well-placed Church elite from Anambra State appeared to be using higher appointments in the Catholic Church to pursue a clannish domination agenda. Through his powerful essays, Amadi-Azuogu would open up a new chapter in the struggle. He began to analyze what had happened to Ahiara Diocese in the context of what was happening throughout Igboland and Nigeria as a whole. His conclusion was that fighting to prevent Fr Peter Okpalaeke from becoming the bishop of Ahiara was in fact a moral obligation for every Mbaise adult.

According to Dr Amadi-Azuogu, what was actually happening about the bishopric crisis in Ahiara Diocese was not Christianity as such but a systematic political scheme by some senior clerics from Anambra State to turn over the government of the Igbo Catholic Church to their kith and kin. Dr. Amadi-Azuogu coined the word, “Anambranization” as the conceptual framework to understand what was happening not only in the Igbo Church but throughout the Nigerian Catholic Church.

Dr Adolphus Amadi-Azuogu, who would go on to publish more than ten well-researched essays on the Mbaise crisis from December 2012 to July 2013, finger-pointed the retired prefect of the Office of Divine Worship and the Sacraments at the Vatican, His Eminence, Cardinal Francis Arinze of Onitsha Archdiocese of Anambra State, as one of the masterminds of the policy of “Anambranization” in the Igbo and Nigerian Catholicism. With irrefutable charts and graphs showing the number of bishops appointed in the Nigerian and Igbo Church since the advent of Christianity in Nigeria, Dr. Amadi-Azuogu was able to demonstrate the fact of a systematic policy of choosing bishops from a particular clan in Anambra State called Dunukofia where the cardinal hails from.

Another chapter which the Amadi-Azuogu-led front would open up was the examination of the canonical validity of some of the actions that had been taken or were being taken by the Nuncio and all other forces working towards the realization of the bishopric of Msgr. Okpalaeke in Ahiara Diocese. Dr. Azuogu, a biblical scholar, who migrated from his field into Canon Law would comb through the pages of the canonical books and commentaries in his valiant efforts to demonstrate that the propagators of the bishopric of Msgr. Okpalaeke were in every step of the way contradicting the basic laws laid down by the Church for the proper appointment of a diocesan bishop. He succeeded in demonstrating that those who were supposed to keep the law of the Church to the letter actually made nonsense of it in a contrived effort to hurt the people of Mbaise. It was as if the biblical scholar-turned lawyer called Dr Amadi-Azuogu was using the Canon Law to convict the protagonists of the bishopric of Msgr. Okpalaeke in Ahiara Diocese.

On a personal note, I was never a fan of Dr Amadi-Azuogu’s essays. There was not a single one of them I read more than a page and a half. His essays were extremely acerbic and his filthy and unacceptable language impeded almost all that he wanted to communicate in the struggle. Each time I attempted to read his essay I would find myself stuck with the first page. His terrible language was an insurmountable impediment I could never overcome.

I knew Dr Amadi-Azuogu, a great scholar of his own right, had great arguments to help the struggle. But I believed he did a great disservice to the whole struggle in Ahiara Diocese with his very poor use of the English language. His methodology was terribly flawed in that he almost diverted from addressing the issues of the struggle to attacking and destroying personalities in the Nigerian Catholic Church. It almost appeared that he was carrying out some vendetta against the leaders of the Catholic Church in Nigeria. Though the Nigerian Catholic hierarchy had not treated the situation in Ahiara Diocese with fairness, wisdom and understanding I did not believe that we needed to destroy and tear them down one after the other in order to make our case. That was a part of my overall disagreement with Dr Amadi-Azuogu and many others who were engaged in the struggle.

With Dr. Amadi-Azuogu leading the way, many eminent scholars from America of Mbaise origin joined the fight and made valuable contributions to the fight. Such great scholars as Professor Odinaka Nwachukwu, who developed a long mailing list with which he communicated with large spectrum of people across the world, contributed numerous essays highlighting the implications of the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as Ahiara bishop. Others like Professor Edward Oparaoji, Professor John Michael Adinuso, Dr. Mel Igbokwe, Dr Emeka Okoro, and a host of many other patriotic Mbaise citizens in the USA would embrace the fight and go on to make invaluable contributions to it. While many would contribute great essays and commentaries analyzing what was happening with the appointment of Okpalaeke as bishop of Ahiara Diocese, some other people like Professor Oparaoji, went a step further by launching a campaign for funds with which the American front would execute some specific projects in favour of the struggle.

Professor Oparaoji and his American group would organize a fax campaign by which the dicasteries of the Vatican were flooded with protest fax messages on the grave injustice done to the people of Ahiara Diocese with the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as bishop of Ahiara Diocese. The involvement of Mbaise people in diaspora, especially in America and Europe, brought some new energies and initiatives to the struggle. It was said that nothing in history had galvanized and united Mbaise peoples throughout the world more than the struggle “to prevent the Anambra clique from stealing the Catholic bishopric of the Mbaise people” as most of the diaspora commentaries on the internet had concluded.

While the battle was raging especially on the international scene, the priests at home used the period to reflect on what had happened to us, and also to try to adopt some strategies we believed could help advance the course of the struggle. With the guidance of some diocesan canonists the priests of the diocese would go ahead to make a very important decision concerning the strategy to be employed in the fight ahead. With the guidance of the canonists, there was an agreement that the battle would be unwinnable if it was turned into a canonical battle.

One of the prominent canonists of the diocese often warned that there would not be much headway made in the fight if the priests of the diocese embarked on trying to defeat the Vatican with the Canon Law. According to him, the Canon Law must be left aside in a search for the basis and strategy for the battle. The diocesan canonist would repeat ad nuseam the dictum that the law giver was in fact the law’s best interpreter. According to him, since the Vatican owns the Canon Law, it would be impossible to debate or even match them on its interpretation. So, for the battle to be successful the Canon Law would have to be pushed aside and the focus turned to some existential issues that would make it impossible for us to have Msgr. Peter Okpalaeke as bishop of Ahiara Diocese.

This would be how and where the strategies of the North American fighters and those of their counterparts at home would diverge. While the North Americans led by Dr Amadi-Azuogu would insist on duelling it out with the Vatican and any other individuals that mattered on the canonicity of the process that produced Msgr. Okpalaeke as bishop-elect, the home front opted to keep the canon law aside as the struggle continued on other fronts. Heeding to the admonition of the principal diocesan canonist and the other canonists of the diocese, the priests decided to search for the basis of the struggle outside the canonical provisions. It was at that point in time that two main principles would be adopted for the struggle going forward.

First, it was agreed that we emphasize in our argument the fact that what was done to Ahiara Diocese was a veritable injustice. We would have to insist that injustice pervaded the entire process that brought about the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as the bishop-elect of our diocese. And since we conceived it as a monumental injustice to us and to our people of Mbaise, we were naturally obligated and morally bound to fight it. We believed that every good Christian, talk less a Catholic priest, has a moral obligation to fight injustice wherever it existed. That is to say, by rejecting the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke, Ahiara Diocese was not disobeying the Pope and the Catholic Church but exercising her moral obligation to fight injustice that had been visited on her.

The second principle that we wanted emphasized at every juncture was that which derived from the Latin adage and canonical principle: Salus animarum suprema lex – salvation of soul is the supreme law. This is the principle upon which the entire laws of the Church are based. We decided to emphasize at every juncture the fact that the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke to the bishopric of Ahiara Diocese would endanger the souls of the Catholics of the diocese. And that makes us morally bound to oppose it. We believed that as pastors of souls in our parishes we have an obligation to dissuade and prevent whatever could endanger the souls of our flock. And having identified the potential bishopric of Msgr. Okpalaeke as one with the capacity to accomplish such destruction, we found ourselves bound to oppose it.

The two principles of “justice” and “salvation of souls” would form the bedrock upon which the arguments of the struggle would be based. For instance, the arguments on dialectic variation and peculiarities of Ahiara Diocese as a rural diocese derived from the principle of the salvation of souls, while as the arguments on treatment of the numerous priests of the diocese, their demoralization and slandering, derived from the principle of natural justice. And so also were the arguments on the lopsided appointments of Catholic bishops in Igbo land and all other related arguments.

Nearly every argument that would be advanced by us during the struggle was based on those two key principles. We wanted to emphasize the fact that the appointment of the bishop-elect did a grave injustice to the priests and laity of Ahiara Diocese as well as endangered the souls of the Catholic faithful of the diocese. And this being the case, we had no other option than to fight so that it did not become a reality. For the greater part of early December 2012 we would spend it both collectively and individually trying to iron out the basis of our struggle.

In line with the work I was doing for the second volume of the book I had published earlier that 2012: Mbaise: Who We Are As A People, I would use this period to try to study harder and deeper in order to unveil the historical treatment of the Mbaise nation over the years by both the Catholic Church and the successive secular governments in Igbo land and Nigeria as a whole. As I researched deeper into this aspect of the struggle, I was struck by the fact that so many issues in the life of Mbaise land had remained unmentioned over the years. It dawned on me that the people of Mbaise land had until then been living their lives oblivious of their very challenging history. I therefore realized that the bishopric crisis in Ahiara Diocese like the death of Bishop Chikwe had provided another occasion for the Mbaise nation to plumb the depth of her history in order to understand why things had been turning out a little awkward for them in the wider Igbo nation.

To be continued....