AHIARA DIOCESE IN CROSSHAIRS: THE REAL STORIES …16 [EXCERPTS FROM A BOOK IN PRINT]

Chapter 6: Struggle for Igbo Heartland [i]

Another issue that had dominated my reflection during the lull created by the Christmas celebration of 2012 was what I had termed “Anambra State’s adventurism” in the heartland Igbo communities that largely fall into present-day Owerri Ecclesiastical Province. I had written in my biographical work to mark the celebration of the Silver Jubilee of my priestly ordination entitled Marvels the Almighty Has Done for Me, the fact that right from the major seminaries we attended together with many students of Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province in both Ikot Ekpene and Enugu, seminarians of the present-day Anambra State appeared to have an agenda of domination of the rest of Igbo seminarians and priests. I had complained of the fact that in whatever association they shared with other Igbo seminarians, they would either lead every arm of it or they would make it difficult for whoever was leading it to do so effectively.

I had been forced to expand my reflection on this matter by three main issues. First was the petition the Ahiara diocesan Catholic Men and Women Organization had jointly forwarded to the Cardinal Prefect of Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples of the Vatican City, which they had copied to the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Augustine Kasujja, as well as to the president of CBCN - Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama and the metropolitan of Owerri Ecclesiastical Province, Archbishop AJV Obinna. In that letter of complaints, the two organizations had made some disturbing claims:

1. The culture of the people of Awka who are still romancing with pagan practices is quite different from that of Ahiara Diocese who has fully embraced Christianity – the Catholic Church in all its ramifications.

2. The dialect of the people of Awka, who as far as they are concerned have seen no language in Ahiara Mbaise, is not welcome to us. They often make a caricature of our dialect and see us as inferior to them. For this reason, we do not accept somebody who will look down on us and whose dialect is at variance with ours.

3. Ours is a rural and poverty stricken community. Our late Bishop and priests were able to cope with us because they are part and parcel of the place and understand us. This bishop elect is from an urban and rich city - a money conscious society. We are afraid; he cannot cope with our situation. For as the Igbo adage says, “Mmakpu ka nwa eghu na nne ya mma” – the kid sleeps more comfortably well with the mother than any other animal.

4. The people of Ahiara Mbaise have since done away with pagan practices. Whereas the bishop elect is from [a] community that is still celebrating death and accommodates fetish practices. Ahiara Diocese has since done away with these and buries our dead within a short period of time.

5. In contrast with Dunukofia where most of the Igbo bishops come from, Ahiara Diocese has the greatest number of priests spread all over the world. We see no reason someone from among us who shares similarities in culture and worldview with us cannot be given to us as a bishop. Are they not qualified?

The second force that had challenged me to think deeply on this matter was the treatises of Professor Adolphus Amadi-Azuogu. Dr Amadi-Azuogu had coined the word “Anambranization” as a term that captures the agenda of the north-western Igbo communities against the rest of their brothers and sisters in the Owerri Igbo heartland areas. Using irrefutable charts, graphs and statistics, Dr. Amadi-Azuogu demonstrated quite convincingly that the persistent appointments of bishops from the dioceses in Anambra State was perhaps not the work of the Holy Spirit but that of a political machinery that is programmed to take over and dominate the rest of the communities in Igbo land.

As a result of the irresistible power of Dr Amadi-Azuogu’s arguments many began to probe issues of our relationships with Anambra State indigenes more deeply in order to convince themselves that Dr. Amadi-Azuogu was not just blowing smoke. And as I delved deeper into his line of thinking, I was shocked by my findings. The so-called “Anambranization” gambit might have begun long ago in other phases before its hands would become most visible in the Ahiara Diocesan bishopric crisis. For instance, long before the birth of the Nigerian nation, the area today described as Anambra State had asserted her dominance over the economy and politics of the future Nigerian nation. Immediately Nigeria was born as a nation through the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in January of 1914, citizens of the would-be Anambra State were the first to take over the reins of the new nation.

This gambit to be the dominant force in every aspect of Nigeria especially in the Igbo nation was extended to the Catholic Church from the early 1900s. Catholicism arrived in Onitsha in present-day Anambra State in December of 1885. But it would remain wobbly and a mix-bag of Christianity and paganism for more than the twenty five years it would take for Catholicism to touchdown in the Igbo heartland represented today by Owerri Province. Catholicism arrived in Owerri and Emekuku communities between 1911 and 1912. It would settle permanently in Ezedibia Emekuku on July 16, 1912.

But once Catholicism reached the Igbo heartland of Owerri Province it caught fire. Within a period of five years Catholicism in Igbo heartland of Owerri had outpaced and outclassed her counterpart in Onitsha Province that had been there for more than a quarter of a century. A little bit of information on how Catholicism was faring in the two areas in this early period is contained in John P. Jordan’s Bishop Shanahan of Southern Nigeria [Dublin: Elo Press, 1949] and Desmond Forristal’s The Second Burial of Bishop Shanahan, [Dublin, Veritas, 1990].

Some specific information about Catholicism in Igbo heartland of Owerri Province is found in the report of the Apostolic Visitor from Rome, Bishop Arthur Hinsley, rector of the English College in Rome, later to become Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, who arrived in Southern Nigeria on August 25, 1929, to investigate the role of education in Church’s missionary work in British Africa. Bishop Hinsley would in his diary sum up his impression of the Church in Igbo heartland of Owerri Province thus: “one of the most dynamic and progressive missions in the Vicariate” [Cf. Forristal, p 220].

The Apostolic Visitor would arrive at Emekuku mission “in the middle of a tropical rainstorm… [He] was greeted by an immense crowd of Catholics and catechumens and was indignant to find that there were only two priests in the mission.” He would quip; “When I get back to Rome, I will shout at the top of my voice for more missionaries to be sent to Nigeria” [pp 220-221].

Bishop Hinsley would end his visit to Southern Nigeria at the end of 1929. He had a fourfold plan for the Vicariate among which was that it would be divided into two vicariates, made of east and west, with the east headquartered in Calabar and the west headquartered in Onitsha. A part of the divided vicariate would be given over to the new society of diocesan priests, called St Patrick’s Society, to be led by Fr Pat Whitney of Emekuku fame.

When Pat Whitney was approached to lead the St Patrick’s Society, he accepted but disagreed with the division of the vicariate along the lines of east and west. “Instead, he asked that the new society [St Patrick’s Society] be given the central part of the vicariate, the area familiar to him around the missions of Emekuku and Eke which included two of the biggest towns in the Ibo heartland, Enugu and Owerri. This was agreed to unknown to Shanahan” [Forristal, pp 221-222].

According to Forristal, when Shanahan learned of the new division of Southern Nigeria mission requested by Pat Whitney and agreed to by Pope Pius XI, “he was totally opposed to the proposed division which meant that the St Patrick’s Society would have the central portion of the vicariate, while all the fringe areas were left to the Holy Ghost Congregation” [Forristal, 222].

What this little snippet of information does reveal is that as early as 1929 the Owerri heartland area of Catholicism had so outpaced her counterpart that is Onitsha area that the missionaries were describing Onitsha area as a part of “the fringe areas” of Catholicism in Igbo land. The Owerri heartland area took over as the focus of the missionaries that it became the object of a scramble by the various missionary organizations in Southern Nigeria. The new St Patrick’s Society wanted the area as much as the Holy Ghost Fathers who founded it. At the end Pat Whitney’s favoured division of the vicariate was reversed by Pope Pius XI in deference to Bishop Shanahan.

The astronomic rise of Owerri area in Catholic missionary estimation was indeed a miracle. Within a decade of its establishment the Church in Igbo heartland area of Owerri had taken over the leadership of Igbo Catholicism from Onitsha. But from all indications what was happening in Igbo heartland area was not going down well with the Catholics of Onitsha area. It was only natural that they would feel threatened by the ascendancy of Catholicism in the Igbo heartland area.

On seeing the miracle that was taking place in the Igbo heartland, the ever crafty Catholic politicians from Onitsha Province manufactured a way to maintain control over the progressive province of Igbo heartland by insisting on babysitting her till God’s kingdom come! This would result in low-level tension and misunderstanding between the two sister-provinces - a situation that had begun to be felt right from the early 1920s. But all through the earliest periods of this tension, Onitsha Province held the ace as she provided lay teachers and hosted all the higher schools attended by people from the Igbo heartland of Owerri area. But as an Igbo proverb states: Ogbede na-eto – the young shall grow up. It was only a matter of time before the Owerri area of Igbo Catholicism would begin to assert her prominence in Igbo Catholicism.