AHIARA DIOCESE IN CROSSHAIRS: THE REAL STORIES …12 [EXCERPTS FROM A BOOK IN PRINT]

Chapter 5: Mbaise’s History with Injustice [i]

As I watched my Mbaise compatriots react quite hysterically, and, almost, violently against the appointment of Msgr. Ebere Peter Okpalaeke as the bishop of Ahiara Diocese, I became terribly agitated. My personal agitation had sprung from the fact that the line of action embarked upon by my people of Mbaise would necessarily throw up all the turbulent issues in our history that had lain hidden since the early 1900's.

I had asked myself; as Mbaise land re-emerges on world news headlines with the incipient revolt against the Catholic Church, more than a hundred years after a similar revolt against British colonial administration which had resulted in the tragic murder of a Briton, Dr Roger Stewart, in her land, would her elders and leaders be better prepared this time around to defend their actions?

Will their scholars and historians be able to tell their own side of the story to an ultra-critical, censorious and the ever-lacerating world that would immediately pounce on them with torrential criticisms and condemnations?

As the unfortunate incident of 1905 had brought Mbaise people permanent persecution, slander and stereotypes, will the current escapade of rejecting an Awka-born bishop given to them by the Holy Father not result in the usually hospitable land of the Mbaise people being labelled irredentist agitators, jingoists and angry xenophobes?

Also, I was worried whether the contemporary actors that had been called upon to mobilize for the defense against the present Mbaise challenge would understand why they were being so naturally fired up against what they considered another injustice being visited on their fatherland. Having come a long way from the era in which our ancestors fought the highly equipped British army with bows and arrows and lost, can we, their great grand children, who have learned the white man’s magic through education, hope to do a better job of fighting off an unjustifiable aggression this time around with a more advanced weaponry and good logic? That is to say, is Mbaise land of today better and more prepared to defend herself against unjustifiable attacks than the colonial Mbaise of more than 100 years ago had done? Has Mbaise land of today learned anything from her mistakes and tragic losses to colonial Britain in 1905?

But my preliminary and more important worry was whether my Mbaise people understood what had brought us to where we had found ourselves this time around. Do we understand the various intrigues that had ended up robbing us of what should be considered a birthright of ours? Do we understand the type of Catholicism that is booming in Igbo land and Nigeria as a whole? In our pious brand of Catholicism, do we know that some sections of Igbo land, and, in fact, Nigeria, have introduced some low-level criminality and business mentality into their practice of the Catholic faith? Are we prepared to put aside our pietistic demeanour and fight the good fight of the faith that is needed to rescue Igbo Catholicism from corrupt politicians, business men and women and from the culture of cronyism that seems as determined as ever to wrest the control of Igbo Catholicism from the hands of simple and authentic Catholics of Mbaise land?

Most important, I was particularly concerned about Mbaise priests and the lay faithful. I had asked myself; do our Mbaise priests and lay faithful understand where they were coming from and where they were headed with their resistance and group actions against Msgr. Okpalaeke’s appointment? Do they understand the enormity of the challenge in standing up to the Pope and the Vatican, something which had never happened before in this part of the world?

In view of our minimal knowledge of our own history, will our resistance not fall apart after a brief spell? Will our people have the needed courage and patience to carry out this war against injustice to the very end? Suppose the Pope declares Mbaise Catholics to be in schism, what shall we do? Will our resistance endure? Does Mbaise Church have the resources, courage and patience to stand on its own as it prosecutes her war against monumental injustice that has been inflicted on her?

I had equally the same kind of worry about non-Mbaise citizens who seemed absolutely shocked and offended by the apparent revolt that was taking place in Ahiara Diocese, especially those who were not keeping quiet about it. Can they and the outside world ever be fair to Mbaise people? Will they ever appreciate the fact that there could be some legitimate reasons, some background, and, in fact, a very important history motivating and inciting Mbaise people to act in the way they were doing? Can they ever be kind enough to listen to Mbaise people’s own side of the story?

And what about our Mbaise youths who were mobilizing for war? Do they know the reason why they were being called to arms against any attempt to forcibly impose Msgr. Okpalaeke on them as their Catholic bishop? Will their bravado not fizzle out as the fight and resistance lasts? Will their apparent patriotism on this one issue be able to weather and withstand all the condemnations and reprisal actions the outside world might unleash on them?

It was these types of questions that would dominate my reflection throughout the remaining days of December 2012, especially during the brief lull provided by the Christmas celebration of 2012. Even as I worked hard preparing for the celebration of the Silver Jubilee of my priestly ordination on December 28, I could not quite find peace in my soul, nor was I able to remove my mind from the fact that what Ahiara Diocese had embarked upon had the potential to lead to an unmanageable crisis of faith among Mbaise Catholics. I was restless trying to decipher what was the right course of action for the priests and lay faithful of our diocese some of whom believed in my ability to help chart the right course for the resistance. As a result, all through the few days that preceded December 25, and all through the Christmas Octave, I would be absolutely absorbed in my thought. I went to bed thinking and woke up still thinking about what would happen to our beautiful diocese and how best we could avoid the looming crisis, or how best to respond to it appropriately.

I also feared greatly that no matter what we would be able to do along the line of explaining our efforts and motives to our people, it would not be enough to save our actions in the crisis from being completely misunderstood and mischaracterized by both Mbaise indigenes and people of the outside world. However, the more I thought about the possibility of a total misunderstanding of the stance of Mbaise people regarding the potential bishopric of Msgr. Okpalaeke in Ahiara Diocese, the more I felt an internal poise and obligation to do something about providing some context that could help guide both Mbaise and non-Mbaise peoples as they reflected on what was happening in Ahiara Diocese.

It would be after a hard thought on this matter that I would decide on truncating and reshaping some research materials I had begun to gather for the second volume of my book, titled, Mbaise: Who We Are As A People, so as to provide some written perspectives on the crisis in our diocese. Mbaise: Who We Are As A People, which was begun in May of 2010 as a part of some newspaper essays in the Guide Newspaper I had opted to do as a part of the centenary celebration of the coming of the Catholic Church in Owerri Ecclesiastical Province was first published in April of 2012 as the first of a proposed two-volume work on the history of ancient and contemporary Mbaise peoples.

I had two main reasons to write such a book in spite of the fact that the field of historical writing was a little bit outside my specialty. First, I was appalled that famous Igbo historians like Adiele Afigbo, V.C. Uchendu and Elizabeth Isichei, following an erroneous and perhaps a fraudulent hypothesis on the origin of the Igbo people, had declared that Mbaise land was first peopled by immigrants from Amaigbo, Isu-Ama, Orlu, Arochukwu, etc. I told myself that such an erroneous claim must be responded to and declared false and untenable by an Nfunala Mbaise scholar like myself.

Second, I was also concerned at the rate at which the memory of the authentic history and culture Mbaise was fading and vanishing from contemporary Mbaise indigenes. I told myself that I needed to do something to document and keep some inventory of our original culture and tradition. And that was what Mbaise: Who We Are As A People had attempted to accomplish.

While the already published first volume of the work had focused on recovering what was left of ancient and pre-colonial Mbaise, I had begun to gather materials in order to start painting the portrait of contemporary Mbaise, that is, Mbaise from AD 1900 to the present time. In the course of trying to do this research work, crisis broke out in our diocese with all its demands that the spontaneous reactions of the priests and lay people of Mbaise be put into a proper historical perspective. As a result, I began to think that I might harness some of the materials I had already gathered for the second volume of my work for the new challenge of trying to provide some kind of a narrative context and enlightenment on the critical situation of Mbaise land. I saw this as a more pressing problem than producing a chronological history of colonial and post-colonial Mbaise which is what the second volume of Mbaise: Who We Are As A People, was billed to accomplish. A little bit of this material would be included in the welcome address we would present to the Igbo Diocesan Priests Association [ANIMAEE] that had come on a fact-finding mission to Ahiara Diocese on April 11, 2013.

As anybody who has ever researched on Mbaise land could testify, any effort to recover the past of the Mbaise people usually meets with a very serious obstacle. There are only few materials to work with. It is usually very frustrating to a researcher to discover that the territory called Mbaise has little or nothing to help reconstruct its past. The eras of Mbaise land before 1900 seem shrouded in an impregnable darkness. It is known and believed throughout Mbaise land and beyond that the histories of the territories that would constitute “Mbaise” from the middle of the 20th century should go far longer and deeper than any extant documents could suggest. But there is little or nothing to help recover these all important histories. The little facts we are unearthing in our current researches are coming from secondary and tertiary sources. Those who could have given us a much more authentic and firsthand stories of ancient Mbaise have all passed on through death without leaving behind any writings or documented stories or interviews.

In spite of this almost insurmountable difficulty, the efforts to recover some facts about ancient Mbaise must go on. This is because the territory called Mbaise land today had been inhabited for at least 1000 years before it would be mentioned in any history documents. As I tried to demonstrate in the first volume of the book, Mbaise: Who We Are As A People, Mbaise territory is obviously one of the founding territories of the Igbo nation. This is based on the fact that Mbaise has one of the most ancient myths of origin in Igbo land.

To be continued ....