AHIARA DIOCESE IN CROSSHAIRS: THE REAL STORIES …31 [EXCERPTS FROM A BOOK IN PRINT]

Chapter 12: Adding Insult to Injury [ii]

Another bishop from Anambra State, Most Rev. Hilary Odili Okeke, Bishop of Nnewi Diocese, previously a great friend of Ahiara Diocese, carried the vituperation against Ahiara Diocesan priests a notch higher in his controversial Facebook posting that raised hell among Mbaise and Owerri Ecclesiastical province faithful. In that essay entitled “Ahiara Diocese - The Parable of Peter”, which was posted on his facebook page on Tuesday, May 21, 2013, exactly the day, Bishop Okpalaeke was ordained at Seat of Wisdom Seminary, Owerri, Bishop Okeke noted among many other things,

One cannot but be worried about the rumours, falsehood, misrepresentations, hate and bad blood being systematically spread by a group of people of Mbaise origin who exploit the crisis to boost their ego, pursue private and hidden agenda or attempt to establish relevance.

The Catholic Church is dying in Mbaise! The spirit of the Catholic Church is being sacrificed on the altar of sectionalism, ethnicism and socio-political considerations.

On the other hand, why are Mbaise priests all over the world, especially in the United States of America? Do people not receive them and work with them as members of the One, Holy, Catholic Church?

In the unlikely event of the Church hierarchy being forced to change the decision in order to avoid the greater evil of continued scandal, the group leading the revolt in Mbaise against the hierarchy of the Catholic Church could claim victory. Ethnic bigotry would win and ecclesial communion would suffer fatality. Mbaise hegemony would triumph over Christian love, the hallmark of Christianity. Mbaise would become the reference point of revolt and arm-twisting in the Church! The long-term consequences would be perpetuation of indiscipline and bad blood in the Catholic Church. Parish communities and various groups could use the bad examples of disobedience to oppose the priests, leading to chaos in the Church. It could even lead to unhealthy relationship between Catholics and people from Mbaise and those from other places

The lies, falsehood, misinformation, jingoism and false attitudes that generated much bad blood and ill-feeling among the people of God in Mbaise will be overcome by truth. The Lord Himself said that scandals would come but woe to those from whom scandals would come! Those championing the cause of Mbaise hegemony against the hierarchy and with such bitterness and lack of restraint and good taste are really scandalising not only Catholics but also non-Catholics [highlights are mine].

There are numerous bones to pick in Bishop Okeke’s essay. His essay is absolutely in bad taste. Perhaps most offensive are some of the words he chooses to describe Mbaise people and their resistance to what they perceive as a glaring injustice against them. For him the method Mbaise people have chosen to resist the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as their bishop is through

Rumours, falsehood, misrepresentations, hate and bad blood being systematically spread by a group of people of Mbaise origin who exploit the crisis to boost their ego, pursue private and hidden agenda or attempt to establish relevance.

Bishop Okeke’s claim is both slanderous and libellous. Where are the “rumours, falsehoods, misrepresentations, hate, bad blood ego-boosting, hidden agenda, etc” in stating as Mbaise people have done over and over again that Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province has indigenous bishops for all of her seven dioceses and has already taken two out of the six dioceses of Owerri Province and is now gunning for one more to acquire half of Owerri Province for herself?

Where is the falsehood or misrepresentation in stating that Awka Diocese with an inferior number of Catholics and priests to Mbaise has six bishops and Mbaise has none?

Is there anything false or misrepresentative in stating that Awka through her connections at the highest levels of the Church is scheming to take over the home diocese of the Mbaise people?

I think Bishop Okeke is being terribly disingenuous and unfair to natural justice and Mbaise people. How can he be using words carelessly? Perhaps he does not quite understand the meanings of the words he has employed here to describe the resistance of Mbaise people.

Bishop Okeke asks some curious but false questions that tend to reveal his deep-seated animosity against Mbaise priests: “why are Mbaise priests all over the world, especially in the United States of America? Do people not receive them and work with them as members of the One, Holy, Catholic, [and] Church?”

First, it is a false claim that Mbaise priests are all over the world. Mbaise people cannot be all over the world. Only haters of Mbaise people would make such an overly exaggerated claim which cannot be substantiated.

But the more important question is; why is this bishop carrying his exaggeration to a ridiculous end? It is sad that a cleric of Bishop Okeke’s pedigree would indulge in such outrageous exaggeration that slanders Mbaise priests. Mbaise priests cannot be everywhere. It is a self-evident fact that Mbaise priests are more welcome in foreign countries than they are welcome in many other places in Nigeria. Many dioceses in Nigeria act xenophobically towards Mbaise people. The reason why Mbaise people are where they are is because they are very competent in their vocation as priests and religious. There is no place Mbaise priests and religious work without leaving behind solid legacies and drawing numerous accolades. Many other Igbo people hate to be defeated when in competition with Mbaise people. And that is the main reason why they envy them.

Second, Mbaise priests are in the United States, but not as many as Anambra priests. Anambra priests in the United States outnumber Mbaise priests by two to one. Moreover, Anambra priests have taken up most Church position available to foreigners in Germany, Italy, Rome and especially at the Vatican. Mbaise priests have nothing to match them. However, for Bishop Okeke’s style of strange reasoning because Mbaise priests are welcomed in some parishes in the United States of America, that is why they have lost the right to challenge an obvious injustice perpetrated against them by their Anambra brothers and sisters. I don’t get it! This quality of reasoning is obviously beneath the capacity of a church legal luminary like Bishop Hilary Okeke.

I think Bishop Okeke has the same problem which many Anambra priests tend to exhibit today. When they are not totally in control, they feel that they are in minority and are being cheated and marginalized. What seem to make them happy is when they take full possession of anything and dish out only crumbs to their other Igbo brothers and sisters. But when others say that they need a piece of the cake for themselves as a matter of right, they charge them of practising ethnic hegemony and bigotry.

The basic philosophy of many priests and religious of Anambra State in today’s Igbo Catholicism has nothing to do with Christianity. It has everything to do with politics and business. And that is why it will never endure. Mbaise people are blazing the trail for its future challenge and defeat. Such a philosophy is unsustainable. It is the same born-to-rule philosophy that we accuse the Muslim Sokoto caliphate of. Trust me; this philosophy has no future in Igbo Catholicism.

Bishop Okeke uses some very strange terms to describe the resistance by Mbaise people. He describes it as “Mbaise hegemony” and “ethnic bigotry.” I do not believe he thought through the appropriateness of such terms in this context. The people he alleges as perpetrating “hegemony” have no single bishop in the Nigerian episcopacy while their counterparts have more than five. Yet in the strange world of Bishop Okeke, it is not the assailants with five bishops who are practising “ethnic hegemony” and “bigotry” but the Mbaise people who have none. To be charitable to Bishop Okeke, I think his reasoning stands rationality on its head! A bishop in the Catholic Church should not identify with such low-quality reasoning. Bishop Okeke seems to be allowing his emotions and biases to becloud his ability to perceive a brazen injustice.

Bishop Okeke’s misrepresentation of the crisis as an opportunity some Mbaise people were exploiting “to boost their ego and pursue private and hidden agenda and establish relevance,” is absolutely meaningless and unfortunate. It shows that the bishop decided to close his eyes to the scandalous injustice and lopsidedness in the appointments of bishops in Igboland. If Bishop Hilary Okeke wanted to be fair, he could have acknowledged that from available statistical data, the appointments of bishops in Igbo Catholicism needed to be revisited for there to be fairness among all Igbo Catholics. That he left to acknowledge an obvious truth that over the years naming of bishops in Igboland had been skewed in favour of priests from Anambra State makes his essay less credible and in fact, laughable.

Moreover, it is absolutely unfortunate that Bishop Okeke could not accept the fact that Mbaise priests have a point in saying that the wishes of the late Bishop Chikwe should have been respected and that the numerous priests of Mbaise origin should have been given priority attention in the selection of a bishop to run their home diocese. Is it not funny and tragic as well that one who enjoys himself running his home diocese as her bishop could not extend the same benefit to a place like Ahiara Diocese that desires to have her own son as her bishop just as Nnewi has her son, Bishop Hilary Okeke, as her own bishop? Is Nnewi that has Bishop Hilary Okeke, her son, as her bishop, superior to Ahiara Diocese that desires the same treatment?

The irony of the position of Bishop Okeke is that he was one of the few Anambra bishops who were close to Bishop Chikwe. In one of the numerous masses he concelebrated with Bishop Chikwe in Ahiara Diocese, Bishop Hilary Okeke confessed how much he admired Bishop Chikwe and how much he had learned from him. If his admiration of the person and skills of Bishop Chikwe had been sincere and genuine, he could have acknowledged that Mbaise people were right in demanding that the successor to Bishop Chikwe be somebody who was likely to follow in his footsteps and not a complete stranger who neither knew Bishop Chikwe nor the ingenious ways through which he built one of the most unique and successful dioceses in the continent of Africa.

Furthermore, Bishop Okeke’s much publicized public admiration of the late Bishop Chikwe could have enabled him to question why the list of potential bishopric candidates stockpiled by him before he died could not factor in strongly in the appointment of his successor. Through his Facebook essay, was Bishop Okeke trying to present himself as one of those who had backbitten the late Bishop Chikwe and auctioned out his Episcopal See to the most connected and the highest bidder?

How would a Bishop Okeke feel if when he retired or fell asleep in death all his works would be subtly discredited and the names of those he had submitted as his possible successors thrown overboard in preference for a stranger who would not know anything about the tradition he had established, the language and culture of Nnewi people? Were such a thing ever to happen to Nnewi Diocese, a retired or resting Bishop Okeke would roll around in his bed or grave to ask; “what did I do to these people that they chose to sabotage all my efforts in Nnewi Diocese?” This, in fact, is what Bishop Chikwe is obviously doing in his grave these days. He must be rolling in his grave and asking the same question: What did I do to the Nuncio and the bishops of Nigeria that they have chosen to sabotage all my efforts in Ahiara Diocese?

Bishop Okeke’s alarmist cry that “the Catholic Church is dying in Mbaise” is reprehensible and utterly false. It is the Awka and Anambra Church that must die unless it changes its ways. It will surely die unless it practises justice and fairness in all its rank and file. The Church in Awka and Anambra State of today is filled to the brim with injustice. Anambra Church is too business-oriented and political to survive. A church built and based on fickle and transient politics and business will ultimately die. And that is the fate that likely awaits the current church of Awka in Anambra State. Unless it changes and repents it will die. But Ahiara Church will still be there when our Lord Jesus will return in glory!

Bishop Okeke’s charge stems from the same arrogance that has always been exhibited by some Awka and Anambra priests that only they held the key for the survival of Igbo Catholicism. But evidence on the ground does not bear them out. Since the 1920s, Igbo Church in the heartland Igbo area of Owerri Province has outperformed their Onitsha counterpart by more than 50%. People who are interested in statistics should review them.

Right from 1912 when the Emekuku Church came on stream, the missionaries and their successors had consistently noted that the powerhouse of Igbo Catholicism is in Owerri area and not in Onitsha area where a lot of labour had gone in for many years with very little success in the efforts to bring her people out of paganism. That was why Bishop Shanahan fought like a wounded lion to persuade the Holy Father to return Owerri area to the Holy Ghost Fathers when the place was erroneously ceded to the newly formed Society of St Patrick Fathers that was stationed in Calabar at that time.

Moreover, evidence abounds to demonstrate that Anambra priests and bishops have done little or nothing to prevent the resurgence of paganism in their home territories. Rather, they have been aiding and abetting it. The current crisis in Awka Diocese bears us out. The people are too rooted in paganism as to be good Catholics. Awka is not a place that should send missionary bishops to any place. There is a lot of mission work to be done in Awka right now. The place is deeply entrenched in paganism. A clear example of their deep-rootedness in paganism, as cited in the petition of the Ahiara Diocesan CMO-CWO, is found in the pagan burial rituals which survive and flourish in Awka and Anambra State of today more than any other part of Igbo land. The truth is Awka Diocese needs missionary bishops and priests because the ones that have been working in her since its creation in 1978 have not done much to root out paganism in the place.

The so-called Catholics of Awka and Anambra State still bury their dead like their ancestors who did not convert to Christianity did many many years ago. But in places like Mbaise and Owerri Ecclesiastical Province in genral, a lot of work has been done in the area of burial rites through evangelization. Even though the battle against neo-paganism is not yet completely won, there is some consistency in the effort to root it out in Owerri Ecclesiastical Province. Such efforts are hardly found in the churches of Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province. Yet they would want to be appointed missionary bishops to dioceses in Owerri Province. How could a barely converted priest, a priest who had not had a total break from paganism, serve as a bishop of a highly advanced Catholic Diocese in Owerri Province? The Catholic Church in Owerri Province is light years ahead of their counterpart in Anambra State.

We agree with Bishop Okeke that “the spirit of the Catholic Church is being sacrificed on the altar of sectionalism, ethnicism and socio-political considerations.” But the guilty party is the Anambra bishops and priests who have injected sectionalism, ethnicism and socio-political considerations in ensuring that only they and their kith and kin occupy every available Episcopal See in Igboland and Nigeria. It is terribly unfair to charge Mbaise priests of sectionalism and ethnicism for asking that the only Episcopal See open in their home diocese be given to one of them while at the same time praising Anambra priests who want to take over the see only on the basis of ethnic consideration.

If there were no ethnic consideration in the appointment of bishops in Igboland how could a person like Msgr. Okpalaeke be named the bishop of Ahiara Diocese? Peter Okpalaeke was undistinguished in every way. He was unknown in the Igbo Church. He had done nothing in the wider Igbo or Nigerian Church to distinguish himself as a priest with special qualities. He was just an ordinary parish priest whose only accomplishment was that he was chancellor of Awka Diocese for some years. The chancery of Awka Diocese was never known for order and administrative competence during and after Okpalaeke had left it. Where did he acquire the skill and experience that enabled him to be appointed the bishop of Ahiara Diocese?

Moreover, Msgr. Okpalaeke was never made an auxiliary bishop. And suddenly he was named the bishop of the sophisticated diocese of Ahiara. How did that happen? According to the priests and laity of Ahiara Diocese, the only reason Msgr. Okpalaeke could have gotten such a plum appointment was because of nepotism, clannishness and his private connections. In as much as these were self-evident truths, Mbaise people would have been most unpatriotic and idiotic if they failed to challenge his appointment. When they did so, they were not being sectional or ethnic but patriotic. In fact by doing so, they are being protective of the great Catholicism of their homeland. It is those who pushed the candidacy of such an unaccomplished and undistinguished person that are purely ethnic, clannish and sectional. The people who suggested Okpalaeke to the Holy Father are the ethnic and clannish Igbo people and not Mbaise people who are challenging and refusing his disastrous appointment into the episcopacy.

Bishop Okeke’s essay stirred the hornet’s nest. Many people demonstrated through their responses that the bishop had been unfair and shallow in his assessment of the crisis. Among the numerous responders to Bishop Okeke were Rev Fr Maurice Jiwike of Okigwe Diocese and Rev Fr Callistus Nwachukwu of Ahiara Diocese. According to Fr Jiwike,

Your Excellency, our problem in the Catholic Church is not with the Pope and what he says or not says. Our problem is, and you know it too, Your Lordship, the Pope’s name has been compromised; the Holy Father’s name has been painfully manipulated in our days, little wonder then why Pope Benedict XVI has to resign in our own time.

Your Excellency, you said in page two of your write-up, “that the Catholic Church is dying in Mbaise, the spirit of the Catholic Church is being sacrificed on the altar of sectionalism, ethnicism and socio-political consideration.”

May be this is one of the statements that should have been avoided by you in your write-up, but it is unavoidable. And when is ‘what is good for the goose no longer good for the gander’.

Can you now see why Mbaise may deserve praise instead of crucifixion!

According to Fr Nwachukwu.

It is very clear from the tone of your article that it is your earnest longing to see the Catholic Church in Ahiara go into extinction. You want to have it stolen, killed and destroyed {Jn 10.10}. Mbaise Catholic community is aware whose agenda you wish to carry out. You are not alone in this unholy intention against Ahiara Diocese

I wish to state categorically that the Mbaise people are not having problem with the universal Church. They are not having problem with the hierarchy either. They are not rebellious because they cannot obey injustice. They are simply making genuine complaint against [a] wrong decision taken by the hierarchy, which if accepted, may likely stagnate their spiritual growth.

Many have taken so much joy to call Mbaise people all kinds of bad names, totally misrepresented them but it does not change the situation. Calumny and other negative propaganda cannot win the battle in favour of injustice.

Another priest from Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province, Fr Stan Chu Ilo, who hails from Enugu Diocese, pushed further the envelope of the slander of Mbaise people because they dared to question a fundamental issue of injustice that was meted to them. In his Saharareporters.com essay, Fr Ilo advertised further the slander that Mbaise priests were the architect of their won misfortune. He said

The internal wars, petition writing, nocturnal visits, horse-trading, envy and recriminations of Igbo-on-Igbo hatchet-bearing head hunters ate up the heart of Mbaise Catholicism. Why will Mbaise priests wage wars against each other before ‘foreigners’ washing their dirty linens before ‘outsiders’ and ripping each other apart just for the unholy ambition of the winning the prize of lucre?

In Fr Ilo’s contradiction-riddled essay, he recognized that all is not well with the Igbo Church. But in a strange turn of event he appeared to criticize Mbaise clergy and the faithful for blazing the trail in challenging the heinous injustice he decries in Igbo Catholicism. According to him,

Just as in Nigerian politics, Igbo Catholicism seems to be losing its inner spiritual and intellectual influence and strength because it is wrecked by internal politics, clannishness, nepotism, mutual animosity and hatred, unhealthy rivalry among Igbo clergy and religious, rancor, envy, bitterness, dictatorial tendencies among church leaders, an empty cult of personality, and a seemingly laughable invention of new titles and effete honors doled out with frightening regularity to deserving and undeserving people just for the sake of money. Our churches have been turned into an ecclesiastical shopping mall populated by fake products masquerading as sycophants, bootlickers, spiritual marabouts, gossips who are spiritually indigent, and whose low moral tenor is reflected in empty spiritual claims, and run-away materialism which are all eviscerating the evangelical callings and challenges of our times.

If Fr Ilo truly believes that this is what Igbo Catholicism has become in our own time, he should rather hail Mbaise Catholics for daring to challenge what has in fact become an unsustainable status quo. For consistency sake, Fr. Ilo should be singing the praises of Ahiara priests and not slander them. But rather than do this, he allowed himself to become a megaphone for all those allegations against Mbaise priests that have absolutely no substance to them.

It is absolutely baseless to allege that there were “internal wars, petition writing, nocturnal visits, horse-trading, envy and recriminations of Igbo-on-Igbo hatchet-bearing head hunters ate up the heart of Mbaise Catholicism” prior to the announcement of Msgr. Okpalaeke as bishop-elect. As far as priests of Ahiara Diocese were concerned, we conducted ourselves in the most professional way as we waited for the announcement of our bishop. In hindsight that was perhaps our undoing. We kept quiet thinking that everything would work out as provided for in the code of the canon law not knowing that some people were busy at work manipulating the whole system in favour of the Awka-Anambra mafia.

Since the outbreak of the bishopric crisis in Ahiara Diocese the forces that have always hated Mbaise people have been baring their fangs. A greater percentage of these neo-Mbaise haters has been manifesting in Anambra State. This made Mbaise people suspicious of Anambra people’s mission in Mbaise land. Were they coming to bring Mbaise people to their knees or were they coming for missionary evangelization of the territory as the Okpalaeke patrons have been claiming of late? What is the interest of Anambra people in the rural diocese of Ahiara, Mbaise? The inability to resolve the confusion created by such questions made it impossible for Mbaise people to get over the hump of accepting an Anambra priest as their bishop.

The slander and insult on the great people of Mbaise permeated all cadres of Anambra people. There appeared to have been a consensus among Anambra people that Mbaise would have to be punished for unknown sins of theirs. And this decision was being pursued even by those everyone thought were immune to such base thoughts. According to a report included by one Charles Onuma of Nnarambia Ahiara and published on the email list of Professor Anthony O. Nwachukwu of the USA, on August 4, 2012; at Mbutu-Okahia, Ngor Okpala, during the golden jubilee celebration of the priestly ordination of Msgr. Theophilus Okere, Francis Cardinal Arinze was briefed by Bishop Amatu of Okigwe Diocese that Mbaise people were quarrelling and writing petitions against every potential candidate for the bishopric position in their diocese.

In response, Cardinal Arinze was quoted as saying - Fa ga-afu – [They will see]. By that response Cardinal Arinze poised himself towards punishing Mbaise people for a sin they did not commit. And his punishment became the appointment of Fr Peter Okpalaeke as the bishop of Ahiara Diocese. As believed widely by many Mbaise and non-Mbaise people in Owerri Province, Cardinal Arinze was a part and parcel of the process that resulted in the monumental injustice done to Mbaise people with the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as their bishop. If this is true, what would a high-ranking official such as Cardinal Arinze say that Mbaise people did to him personally? Is his hatred of Mbaise people inborn in him or what? If such a highly placed church official will hate a people like Mbaise for no just cause, what can we say about his moral and spiritual situation? We leave that to the judgement of present readers and posterity.

The same Cardinal Arinze would encounter Fr Celestine Chinenyeze Anyanwu, rector of Mater Ecclesiae Seminary, Nguru Mbaise in a function outside Mbaise. He chided him saying, “Fr Celestine, O bukwa unu ana-edugbusila onwe unu na petition? – [Fr Celestine, have you people continued to betray and kill one another through malicious petition writing?]. Cardinal Arinze’s question to Fr Celestine Anyanwu in this situation confirms the truth of the report made about him by one Charles Onuma. He was obviously one of those Anambra Church officials going about and telling the world that Mbaise people were killing themselves through petition writing so as to procure an excuse to appoint an Anambra cleric into the bishopric of Ahiara Diocese. That is to say, Francis Cardinal Arinze was whole and entire one of those who were on a fishing expedition looking for excuses for appointing a non-Mbaise priest the bishop of Mbaise. In other words, the prince of the Catholic Church, His Eminence, Francis Cardinal Arinze, was from the very beginning a passionate member of the Anambra group that slandered and denigrated the image of Mbaise people without toeing the charity line of coming down to Ahiara Diocese to see things for themselves.