AHIARA DIOCESE IN CROSSHAIRS: THE REAL STORIES …13 [EXCERPTS FROM A BOOK IN PRINT]

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

The myth of the creation of the world, which is treasured by Ezinihitte people of Mbaise, claims that it was at Orie-Ukwu Umunama and Oboama that the whole human race was created and assigned the places they occupy today. How about the fact that we have a myth right here in Mbaise land that claims with all authority any myth can muster that the Americans, the Europeans, the Indians and the Chinese, all peoples of the earth, were allotted their various places of abode by Chileke Oha from one little shrine in Umunama and Oboama in Ezinihitte Mbaise, called Ihu Chileke Oha? This, in fact, is the fabulous claim being made by a mythological account from Mbaise land!

If you think this is incredible it is only because you are using another people’s mythology to judge your own mythology. In other words, you are not being true to yourself. All myths are equal. The difference is in marketing. The myths that have been better marketed in history have risen to become definitive while the others that had not been that lucky like the myth of the creation of the world at Orie Ukwu have fared terribly poor in worldly appreciation and popularity.

The elaborate rituals and pilgrimages marking the celebrations at the shrine of Chileke Oha of Orie-Ukwu do suggest one thing. And that is that Mbaise people had had a civilization that thrived for many centuries before they would be visited by European explorers at the beginning of the 20th century. As Mbaise: Who We Are As A People tries to demonstrate, Mbaise land had achieved a stable culture, religion, social organization and political orientation that had served them for centuries before the arrival of the colonialists and their missionary collaborators.

But unfortunately, whatever was the achievement of Mbaise land before colonialism and missionary evangelization could not be properly documented and inventoried before the headwind of the colonial invasion would sweep them away. As a result, all that contemporary Mbaise people are left with today are fragments of information contained in colonial documents that began in 1902.

But as we would note in the welcome address to our brother priests visiting from across Igbo land on April 11, 2013,

The territories that would later be called Mbaise became known to the wider world through the effective takeover of the Southern Nigerian territory by the British colonialists in A.D. 1900. By 1902, the first colonial road that cut through the territory of the would-be Mbaise land to Arochukwu received its first construction equipment. The construction company was made up of a detachment of the West African Frontier Force and their local conscripts and collaborators. The new road was then called Douglas Road after the first district commissioner in Owerri, Mr. H.M. Brian Douglas. The so-called Douglas Road was being constructed to give access to a detachment of West African Frontier Force [WAFF], O Garrison, stationed in Owerri to carry out their expeditionary conquest of the famed Ibini Ukpabi in Arochukwu.

But by January of 1905, something tragic happened in the would-be Mbaise territory that had perhaps never happened in Nigeria before. A white explorer and physician, Dr Roger Stewart, who was embarked on this Douglas Road to an unknown destination was murdered in the territory. Unfortunately, Dr Stewart got lost without a trace in the territory of the would-be Mbaise land. Responding to their loss, the British colonial forces embarked on a killing spree throughout the territory. The soon-to-become Mbaise territory was reduced to a land of mourning and genocide. It is on record that Mbaise land was among the first places in Africa to suffer a massive genocide in the hands of the colonial masters. It can be said that the blood of the Mbaise patriots lies at the foundation of the Nigerian nation.

After committing their heinous atrocities in Mbaise land, the British colonial masters set up their military cantonment in Nkwogwu to ensure a total subjugation of the territory. But the aftermath of the murder of Dr Stewart in the Mbaise territory would include many reprisal actions that were consistently taken against Mbaise people to deplete their population. Mbaise people were captured and jailed at random. They were given lethal injections in hospitals and allowed to die some painful deaths. Successive colonial governments in Owerri, Enugu and Lagos at large, descended on the territory with draconian laws and policies. Through colonial fiat the territory was abandoned and earmarked to serve as a rural area as long as colonialism lasted. But unfortunately the subsequent indigenous provincial and federal governments took over from where the colonialists stopped. They abandoned Mbaise to be a stigmatized, undeveloped and made rural place for the foreseeable future.

However, a more enduring action against Mbaise people would come by way of the declaration of the panel of inquiry set up to investigate the death and disappearance of Dr Stewart in the territory. This panel of inquiry declared the territory as the land of hardcore criminals, savages and bellicose cannibals. In the panel’s report, the would-be Mbaise territory was described as made up of very wicked people who must be dealt harshly with by all civilized peoples. Colonial officials were warned accordingly to view Mbaise people with fear and suspicion and treat them without mercy. This was the origin of stereotypical stigmas against pre-colonial Mbaise which have endured till today. Many competitors of the pre-colonial Mbaise people swallowed hook, line and sinker the colonial stereotypes against pre-colonial Mbaise people and have been repeating them ever since.

In 1909, a native court was established at Nkwogwu, the military headquarters of the O Garrison of the WAFF. But in December of 1929, the women of pre-colonial Mbaise while responding and participating in the rebellion of Igbo women in general against colonialism and its draconian taxation system burnt down the Nkwogwu court and the military headquarters located there. This was a huge embarrassment to the colonialists and another public relations disaster for the pre-colonial Mbaise people. This ultimately led to the complete decentralization of the court system in the territory. From the Nkwogwu and the Okpala courts, five court areas were created in the territory. It was these five court areas that would be renamed Mba-Ise in 1941 when colonial court system of administration yielded to county system. That was how the territory transited from a territory of five courts to that of five clans [Mba-Ise].

While the history of colonial invasion of pre-colonial Mbaise land commenced with the firm establishment of British interest in the territory that would become Nigeria in 1900, that of the arrival of Christianity, nay, Catholicism, had begun about a decade behind the introduction of colonial administration in the area. As we would note in the afore-mentioned address to the visiting Igbo priests,

As the would-be Mbaise land struggled and languished under the pains resulting from the wicked genocide of British colonialists and their numerous other restrictions and privations, both the Anglican and Catholic missionaries were making their ways into the territory. The Anglican missionaries arrived first in 1911 through the Imo River water ways. But by 1912, following the establishment of Mount Carmel Church, Emekuku; Catholic missionaries started showing interest in the territory that would become Mbaise later in the century. It was an indigenous warrant chief of the colonial masters, Chilaka Ukpo of Umunama Ezinihitte, who would first visit Emekuku and ask for Catholic missionaries to venture into the territory in 1912. However, it would be through the agencies of such notable sons of the territory as Chief John Njoku Akpaka and Chief Joseph Patrick Anyamele of Umuopara and Ogbor Nguru respectively that would enable the territory to have her first Catholic Eucharistic celebration in 1914. But it would be through the dogged efforts of Chief Pius Onyekwere Njoku of Nnarambia Ahiara that the Catholic Church would settle in the territory with the establishment of St Brigid’s Catholic Church, Nnarambia, Ahiara, in 1933.

As the Catholic Church entered into the territory of the would-be Mbaise people from around 1912 to 1914, the people flocked into it en masse. The influx of pre-colonial Mbaise people into the Catholic Church was immense and almost unprecedented. Instinctively, pre-colonial Mbaise people preferred the Catholic Church to the other protestant churches in the area competing for attention and loyalty. A testimony to the evangelization wonders in the territory would come some four years after the first Eucharistic celebration in the territory. In December of 1918, the prefect apostolic of Southern Nigeria, Fr Joseph Ignatius Shanahan CSSp, embarked on a pastoral visit to the Cameroons. As he reminisced on how the great feast of Christmas was being celebrated that year in his missionary base in Southern Nigeria, he began to lavish praises on some particular communities including the very illustrious towns of Nguru and Inyeogugu [Enyiogugu] [Cf. Bishop Shanahan of Southern Nigeria p. 164]. From that period onwards the Catholic Church in the territory would continue to grow in leaps and bounds.

However, the booming Catholicism among the people of Mbaise would appear to paper over the fact that the prejudices and stigmas the colonialists left behind against them were still alive and active. In colonial government circles and other areas where the church did not have much of a say, Mbaise people were still subjected to treatments arising from colonial stereotypes and stigmas. But in and around the Catholic Church, the situation was tamed by the fact that the principal missionaries to Igbo land were all Irish who had a cat-and-mouse relationship with the British colonialists. It was a self-evident fact that there was no love lost between the colonial British government of Nigeria and the Irish missionaries of Southern Nigeria. Whatever each one loved the other hated and vice versa. As long as Irish missionaries were in charge of the affairs of Igbo land Mbaise people seemed to enjoy a kind of reprieve.

This would contribute a great deal to the special love the Irish missionaries showered on Mbaise. Besides their love for the people of Mbaise for their uniquely active Catholicism in Nigeria, the Irish would love them for their ability to stand up and show some resistance to colonial Britain. When therefore Owerri Vicariate/Diocese was created in 1948 and 1950 with Bishop Joseph Brendan Whelan as her first bishop, Mbaise became the favourite of the new bishop. He so loved Mbaise that he used to call Mbaise people, “my beloved Mbaise people.”