AHIARA DIOCESE CRISIS: THE UNTOLD STORIES… 32

Exploiting Bishop Chikwe’s Illness [ii]: The Rumor Mill

At the conclusion of the celebration of the 70th birthday of Bishop Chikwe, the entire diocese was in an overdrive mode over the success of the whole celebration and the overwhelming gratitude that was poured on the great shepherd of Ahiara Diocese. At the celebration the entire Mbaise land inhabitants arose with one voice in salutation of the one they truly considered a great hero of their land. It was a unique moment of great solidarity in Mbaise land. Mbaise sons and daughters came from far and near to participate in the celebration. Almost everybody had something wonderful to say about the way Bishop Chikwe had been shepherding the diocese since its creation. On their part, those who initiated and saw to the successful execution of the 70th birthday celebration were heartily congratulated for what they had accomplished. People all over Mbaise land were relieved that the entire diocese had been able to show gratitude to Bishop Chikwe while he was still alive, hale and hearty!

However, on the part of Bishop Chikwe, it was not possible to ascertain immediately how much he had appreciated the whole celebration. Even though he had said all the beautiful words of appreciation on the day of the celebration, there was still lurking in his face and demeanor at least a great uncertainty about how he deeply felt about it all especially in view of the unclear motives of the principal initiators and organizers of the occasion. But what would become very clear shortly after the celebration was that his entire attitude of running the diocese had undergone a very serious transformation. He gradually became a little more edgy and isolated than usual. His handling of matters in the diocese became a little more impatient and sloppy. At times he appeared to throw overboard the vaunted principles with which he had brought the diocese to that great height. Among his critics he appeared a little erratic and distracted than normal. In certain situations, he would contradict the principles he had laid down for the running of the diocese. Gradually it would become obvious that there was something troubling him deep inside. But no one, perhaps, beside the members of his inner circle could place his or her hand on the matter.

Yours truly would become one of the earliest victims of the bishop’s confusing attitude. Since 2006, Bishop Chikwe and I had been engaged with an effort to bring the Dominican sisters of Pompey Napoli, to settle in the diocese. He had brought me into the whole effort because he wanted me to help him fulfill a promise he had made to my home parish, Our Lady of Victory, Amumara, in August of 1988 during his first familiarization tour of the diocese. He had made a promise to build a General Hospital in our home parish. The people of the parish had roared in appreciation and looked forward to his fulfillment of that promise.

But as time went on the bishop would find out that he could no longer keep his promise because of lack of foreign funding and the monstrous cost of building a brand new hospital in the diocese. Rather he had opted to upgrade one of the existing maternity homes in the diocese into a full-fledged hospital. The choice of the maternity home to be upgraded to a hospital had fallen on Holy Rosary Maternity Home Ogbor Nguru as a result of its easy accessibility having been located on the major high way between Owerri and Umuahia. The limited resources of the dioceses were focused on building up the Holy Rosary Maternity Home to be used as the main diocesan hospital. And that meant that the promise the bishop made to Our Lady of Victory Parish, Amumara Ezinihitte Center had been overtaken.

But the people of my home parish of Amumara would not give the bishop any respite as they pestered him year in and out to fulfill the promise he had made to them at the beginning of the diocese. After about eighteen years of enduring such pestering in the hands of Amumara people, the bishop asked me to come on board so as to help him acquire a piece of land in my village that could be used to set up a diocesan institution so as to satisfy my people who had continued to worry him to fulfill his promise. But midway into our efforts to acquire lands, the bishop decided that since the diocese had no money available for the project, he would rather invite a religious congregation that had been worrying him to allow them to come and establish in the diocese to come in and take over the project. I was charged with working with my people to provide the lands for the Dominican Sisters’ project in my village.

The bishop and I had gone into the effort with some ground rules laid down by him. He was afraid to allow a repeat of the confusion that set in when two other foreign religious congregations that had arrived earlier in the diocese got ready to open up their institutions in two communities of the diocese. The two female congregations, Sisters of Providence for the Deaf and Dumb at Obodo Ahiara and the Vocationist Sisters at Ibeku Okwuato, having fulfilled the requirements of the land owners and got ready to move in, their host communities came up with fresh demands that brought enormous confusion and unnecessary delays in the whole arrangements. The bishop was saddened by the developments and vowed to handle such issues differently in the future.

On my part, I had gone into this effort as an inexperienced negotiator. And that would cost me dearly. In the process of acquiring the pieces of land the bishop had requested, my kinsmen and women accused me of nearly every crime in the book including colluding with a foreign institution to acquire their lands unfairly. I regretted ever venturing into the process of acquiring any pieces of property in my village. Overnight I had transformed from being a hero of my village to becoming the village villain. I had gone into the effort of helping my bishop establish some institution in my village with the hope that it would help provide some social amenities in the rural village I had hailed from. But I had ended up surrendering my entire self for a complete besmirching by the villagers.

However, after many tasking and tiring efforts, I had to meet the bishop’s request with the donation of my father’s landed property and many others from the people of my immediate relatives who sacrificed to save me from a total embarrassment. A section of the village had vowed never to allow me to acquire their lands. But when my relatives saw what was happening they decided to surrender their own properties so that I could save myself from the hand of the bishop who was desperate to establish an institution in my village which could put paid the incessant request of my community for him to fulfill the promise he had made them for nearly twenty years.

With the land acquired the bishop gathered the land owners in October of 2007 and set the ground rules which were to be obeyed to the letter by the incoming Dominican sisters and the villagers. This was published in one of The Guide Newspapers of that month. But around June of 2008 the leader of Dominican sisters, a Cameroonian sister, aligned with some priests of the diocese while I was away attending a centenary planning committee meeting in Owerri who advised her not to obey the ground rules set by the bishop and published in the Guide Newspaper. This would introduce a huge confusion in the proposed project. I promptly reported the matter to Bishop Chikwe who was vacationing in the USA. He promised to look into the matter when he returned home with a view to restoring the rules he had established for the execution of the project.

But in the aftermath of the changed mood of the post-70th birthday celebration, Bishop Chikwe violated his own ground rules thereby throwing me under the bus before my restive kinsmen and women in the village. I was humiliated beyond my imagination. I cried like a little baby and prayed for death that would not come. His action in upturning the rules he had laid down for the establishment of foreign congregations in the diocese would convince me beyond any reasonable doubt that something had gone terribly wrong with our beloved bishop. Initially I had thought it was the activities of the caucuses and clannish groups that were worrying him. But when he began to act against his own principles and ground rules, I realized that something more terrible was worrying him.

My fears in this regard would become confirmed when the bishop suffered a serious health scare around Christmas of 2008. The health crisis was so severe that many people who witnessed what happened thought that the end had become so near for him. But he took his medication and precaution and eventually got back on his feet again to the joy of everybody in the diocese. Even though some from the caucuses envied his office and had very much insisted on having a say in who would replace him, there was hardly anybody in Ahiara Diocese who wished Bishop Chikwe ill. So when he survived the health scare almost everybody in the diocese was happy for him and for the entire diocese.

But shortly after Christmas, and early into the New Year of 2009, Bishop Chikwe would relapse into another health crisis that would necessitate his being immediately flown to Germany to meet with his doctor. With this second occurrence of his health crisis, tongues began to wag among the elite of the diocese. Some were murmuring that his case had become so severe that he might not make it. The rumor mongers began to have a field day. All sorts of rumors were being peddled on the health situation of the bishop. A lot of it was an exaggeration to scare people and make them think of a successor that would take his place.

As dangerous rumors took centre stage in the life and activities of the diocese the leaders of different caucuses working on a possible replacement for the bishop upped their ante. They met in their different groups and their leaders also met to coordinate activities. The whole project was to plan ahead in case of any eventuality in the diocese. The rumor mill fed them with all sorts of updates on the bishop’s health. And what they were getting through rumors only empowered them to work harder in case the bishop would not come home alive.

While Bishop Chikwe was convalescing in a German hospital and making a very steady recovery from what had attacked him around January ending and early February of 2009, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria [CBCN] was planning her first plenary meeting for that year in Abuja. When Bishop Chikwe realized that he would not recover well enough to be physically present at that meeting he called on the former rector of the minor seminary of the diocese in Nguru who had from the beginning of that year been transferred to Sacred Heart Parish, Nguru Centre to head to Abuja and stand in for him. The bishop did that without the knowledge of his vicar general who had been deputizing for him while he had been away in Germany recovering from his illness.

It so happened that the CBCN had also invited the leaders of the laity organizations from the different dioceses of the country to come to Abuja and meet up with them at the meeting. And when the representatives from Ahiara Diocese got there, they saw that Bishop Chikwe was being represented at the meeting by the former rector of the diocesan minor seminary. Immediately they sent words home reporting what they had seen. And when words got home that the bishop had appointed the former rector of the diocesan minor seminary to represent him at the CBCN meeting thereby bypassing his vicar general, hell broke loose especially among the leaders of the different caucuses in the diocese. While the vicar general took the whole thing as a snub by the bishop, the leaders and members of the canvassing groups and caucuses saw it as a very surreptitious way the bishop had promoted the former minor seminary rector as either his auxiliary bishop-to-be or his potential bishop successor in the diocese.

This development would change the whole dynamics in Ahiara Diocese. All sorts of interpretations were given to the representation of Bishop Chikwe at the CBCN plenary in Abuja by the former rector of the diocesan minor seminary. As members of the different caucuses had spent a few years demonizing the former rector of the minor seminary because they believed he was being privileged and projected as a potential bishop by Bishop Chikwe, the new toga he now wore by serving as bishop’s representative at an Episcopal conference meeting in Abuja only made matters worse. Not a few priests from the caucuses thought that the former minor seminary rector’s participation at a CBCN meeting in Abuja was a tactical way Bishop Chikwe was trying to present him to the bishops of Nigeria as his preferred candidate for the position of either a substantive bishop or auxiliary bishop of our diocese.

As a result, many from the caucuses ratcheted up their rhetoric and efforts not only to stop the former minor seminary rector from being considered for the position of a bishop for the diocese but also to stop any other person who might be in line for the same purpose by the ailing bishop. As a result the diocese was set on edge as the different caucuses strategized on how to stop the plans of Bishop Chikwe regarding the one he would likely present as his successor in the diocese. On their parts, the leaders of the various caucuses were fuming against the ailing bishop and planning to confront him immediately he returned home from his medical trip to Germany.

Shortly after the Easter of 2009, Bishop Chikwe returned home from Germany looking quite healthy and relaxed. According to reports, the leaders of the two caucuses did not waste any time before confronting him with what was simmering in the diocese. Both the vicar general and his counterpart of the other caucuses met the bishop individually to inquire about what was happening and why he chose to send somebody other than the vicar general to represent him during the CBCN meeting in Abuja that year. It is not clear the answer the bishop had given to their questions on that issue. But it did not take long before the bishop would call an emergency meeting of the Presbyterium to address the issue of his potential replacement or auxiliary bishop of Ahiara Diocese.

After many behind-the-scenes meetings with the various leaders of the two agitating blocs in the diocese, Bishop Chikwe finally called an emergency Presbyterium meeting on May 3, 2009. After the opening prayer, Bishop Chikwe addressed the issue head on. He acknowledged the fact that there were some rumors back home while he was convalescing in a German hospital. But he said that he would like to address the issue of succession in the bishopric of Ahiara Diocese. Humorously he said that if he had his way, he pointed at two priests he would love to be made substantive and auxiliary bishops of the diocese. But since he could not have his way in such a matter, he enjoined the priests of the diocese to exercise patience and allow God to make a decision on the matter. According to him, only God could decide who would eventually emerge as a bishop in Ahiara Diocese. Until then he said everybody should exercise some prayerful patience.

Having gotten that vexed issue out of the way, the meeting went into the other business of the day. And with those few words the bishop put paid to an issue that had assumed a very contentious and dangerous dimension during his absence from the diocese as a result of ill health. With that the caucuses and groups went back to their usual clandestine modes of operation.

Shortly after the Presbyterium meeting, the former minor seminary rector secured Bishop Chikwe’s permission to embark on a sabbatical leave in the United States of America. As he stepped out to begin his sabbatical leave the rumor mongers of the various caucuses spun it to mean that Bishop Chikwe had sent out his favorite candidate for the bishopric overseas to get him ready to be named an auxiliary bishop of the diocese. Gradually this rumor would take another life of its own. People talked about it hushed tones. And the caucuses went into an over-drive to try to kill the possibility of that ever happening. Rumor mongering on the potential bishopric candidates and the nefarious activities of the various groups and caucuses would set the tone of life in Ahiara Diocese on the eve of Bishop Chikwe’s demise in September of 2010.

To be continued…