AHIARA DIOCESE CRISIS: THE UNTOLD STORIES… 34

Exploiting Bishop Chikwe’s Illness [iv]: Bishop’s Aides

If there was any one particular place where Bishop Chikwe showed some profound weaknesses and misjudgments in the nearly twenty three years he shepherded Ahiara Diocese, it would have to be in the choices that he made or were made on his behalf of his personal assistants and advisers. This was one area he never appeared to have any grips on what he needed for and from his personal staff. He never was able to figure out what to do to make better choices of those who worked closely with him on a day to day basis.

Sometimes Bishop Chikwe made choices of his assistants and aides for which people exclaimed: “how on earth did our beloved bishop choose such and such a person for such and such a function? He should have known better. This individual is not a material for the position he has put him into. He will surely disappoint him at the long run.” And to a great extent almost all such prophecies came true. Most of Bishop Chikwe’s appointments turned out a huge disappointment to him at the end. He could only come to grips with his history of disappointing appointments in the year he died. For him unfortunately, it had become way too late to effect any major changes!

However, it would be totally unfair to heap the whole blame on Bishop Chikwe. The truth about his initial problem in selecting competent aides had a lot to do with the nature of the new diocese of Ahiara and how he emerged as her bishop. We have noted quite often in this series that Ahiara Diocese was a child of a monumental struggle in the old Owerri Diocese. So many forces were opposed to the creation of a diocese for the Mbaise people. To fight the battle that would lead to its eventual creation there were some Mbaise priests and lay people who devoted themselves totally to making sure that a diocese for the Mbaise people became a reality. This group was led by the never-say-die leader of the Mbaise people at that time, the Right Reverend Msgr. Ignatius Okoroanyanwu and seconded by his able deputy Fr Donald Sonde Okoro. The structures on the ground at the creation of Ahiara Diocese belonged to the group led by this duo. They were the prime heroes of the creation of the diocese.

Msgr. Okoroanyanwu and Fr Donald Okoro [all late] as well as many others including many religious and lay people of Mbaise formed a great team that fought and wrestled the powers-that-be to ensure the creation of Ahiara Diocese. The then Very Reverend Monsignor Victor Adibe Chikwe, of Mount Carmel Church Emekuku fame was not a core member of this group that had fought and won the battle for the creation of the diocese from the territory of the Mbaise people. He chose to fight the battle indirectly by aligning with the diocesan bishop of Owerri Diocese, Bishop Mark Unegbu. Msgr. Chikwe and his group had their own method of realizing the dream of the people of Mbaise to have a Catholic diocese of their own. They preferred to work closely with the reigning bishop of Owerri to achieve that. As it turned out, it would be from Bishop Unegbu’s camp that Bishop Chikwe was appointed the bishop of the new diocese of Ahiara Mbaise.

At the beginning of the diocese in January of 1988, Bishop Chikwe, an Mbaise man to the core, was nonetheless walking a very tight rope into a territory he was not quite familiar with. And he was very careful and afraid lest he would offend anybody. What the moment had demanded from him was a lot of consultation and horse trading to keep the balance in the new diocese. And that was what he had set off doing. Before embarking on giving assignments in the diocese Bishop Chikwe consulted widely. He was determined to carry everybody along. He was particularly sensitive to the demands of those who had invested much fighting for the creation of the diocese. So, he was determined to make them happy and carry them along. He listened to them always and took their suggestions very seriously.

This rather handicapping situation would reflect very strongly on how his assistants emerged during the inaugural year of the diocese. Perhaps the only position he could extract as his personal choice was that of the vicar general which he had earlier promised the then Rev Fr Matthew Onyemma in order to lure him home from Owerri Diocese. Other core positions such as those of the secretary/chancellor, assistant secretary and financial administrator had to surrender to the need to balance up assignments in the new diocese so as to avoid an unnecessary lopsidedness that might generate tension in the new diocese. In other words, those who occupied such positions were those chosen for political balancing and expediency and not necessarily for competence as the new bishop would have loved.

Because of this handicapping situation the aides Bishop Chikwe began the diocese with were not entirely his own choosing. Rather they were chosen for him by the circumstances he inherited because of the peculiar nature of the diocese. But this did not mean that there were no good choices in the first group of aides with whom the bishop started work in the diocese. Some of them were quite dedicated to their duties. In fact, on a scale of 1 to 10, it could be said that the first group of Bishop Chikwe’s assistants scored up 7 points over 10. Led by the veteran parish priest, Fr Justin Anaele who had travelled far and wide and garnered experiences from far and near, the first batch of Bishop Chikwe’s assistants would turn out to be his best in the nearly twenty three years he shepherded and guided Ahiara Diocese. Things worked with a little more precision and predictability during that period. There was real purpose in the way the diocese was operating.

But this period would also coincide with the time when the so-called powerbrokers of the diocese, to use the language of their critics, were at the peak of their game. Those powerful men of the diocese refused to give the new bishop any breathing space. Rather, they breathed heavily down his neck giving him not much opportunity to operate independently. His Vicar General, the Rt. Rev Msgr. Matthew Onyemma was generally believed to be the leader of this group of powerful people of the diocese who allowed only a little breathing room for the new bishop to operate independently. According to his critics, Fr. Onyemma appeared to continue the mentorship of the new bishop which he had begun more than forty years earlier when he took him by the hand as one of the junior boys from Ezinihitte who were heading to the minor seminary for the first time. It was the older seminarian called Matthew Onyemma who had brought the young Victor Adibe Chikwe to Okpala Junior Seminary where he would begin his training as a future priest and subsequently as a future bishop.

The result of this kind of arrangement in which it appeared as if the bishop was not acting freely on some vital issues of the diocese was restiveness among some priests of the diocese. Some members of the Presbyterium felt that Bishop Chikwe was a captive of what they described as “a cabal” that was running the diocese. The leader of this restive group, Fr Chris Paul Egege embarked on a solo effort “to rescue Bishop Chikwe” from what he termed “captivity” and “bondage” in which he was believed to have been held by the powerful men of the diocese. This would cause a considerable amount of tension in the new diocese at the beginning. However, on the other hand, such actions began to put an enormous pressure on Bishop Chikwe to separate himself a little from the groups that were said to hold him hostage.

And gradually the bishop would begin to respond to the pressure by acting independently without much consultation in certain situations. He tactfully began to act relatively alone and to detach himself from whatever bond people thought he was into that prevented him from acting freely on some issues. The first causality of this felt pressure on the part of the bishop was the assistant secretary and the projected financial administrator of the diocese. Having served as assistant secretary of the diocese for about two years, and having been allegedly frustrated in the discharge of his duties as financial administrator which the first postings in the diocese had listed as a part of his portfolio, the assistant secretary was said to have been a little bit disenchanted with his job and the bishop had to move him on. He was replaced with a newly ordained priest, Fr Peter Chidi Osuagwu.

After a period of about eight years, the bishop felt that it was the right time in the diocese to work with a new secretary and chancellor. Consequently the pioneer secretary-chancellor of the diocese in the person of Fr Justin Anaele was moved. To replace him Bishop Chikwe reached down for a far younger priest. This choice shocked not a few people in the diocese and many complained about it. But Bishop Chikwe stuck to his choice of a young and inexperienced secretary. Everybody wondered what was behind the choice. Yours truly remembers even till today what happened in Milwaukee Wisconsin when Bishop Chikwe came visiting me during my student days in Marquette University.

During our discussions about how to help many more priests of our diocese take advantage of the high quality education in America, I had sold to him that it was a little easier than previously thought to have some of our priests admitted into America universities especially in those colleges and universities sponsored by the Catholic Church. I had told the bishop that all it would take was for his secretary to send an inquiry letter to the universities we would be interested in requesting to have mailed to the diocese a brochure or catalog detailing scholarship opportunities for priests and religious in such universities.

But immediately Bishop Chikwe heard me suggesting that his secretary could write and inquire for admission opportunities from American universities, he snapped: “What; my secretary? I have no secretary with such skill and ability. Anything I cannot do by myself; or any letter I do not write by myself will not be written because I have no secretary who could do that on my behalf.” Bishop Chikwe’s answer shocked me greatly. I said to myself, in a diocese like Ahiara with overflowing number of talented priests and religious, why would a bishop choose as his secretary somebody he had no confidence in and somebody he believed could not write a simple letter on his behalf? That would become a warning to me that something was perhaps holding the bishop down from being successful in choosing talented individuals who could help him do his job effectively.

Whatever it was then that was preventing the bishop from making good choices of aides, I could not fathom. It would take so many years for the real import of the replacement of Fr Anaele as his replacement would be known. It appeared to so many people that some interest group and a powerful person who was allegedly working for the bishop’s health in the USA had become instrumental in the choice of the bishop’s replacement for his first secretary of the diocese. What it had amounted to in the eyes of some of us in the diocese was that the bishop having broken free from the alleged “power-brokers” of the diocese had in fact been captured by another force who was forcing some individuals on him as his personal assistants and even those aides he had no confidence in their competence to help him in the work of the diocese.

However, so long as his powerful vicar general was still around, the situation of the diocese with regard to the works of his assistants remained relatively under control. The Rt. Rev Msgr. Matthew Onyemma was such a dominant personality that no person dared put him at the back burner of anything in the diocese. He loomed so large in the diocese that other bishop’s assistants had no other option than to take a cue from him. Unfortunately, in July 2003, Msgr. Onyemma died after a protracted illness. His death would devastate Bishop Chikwe who had leaned on him for so long in running the challenging diocese of Ahiara.

The death of Msgr. Onyemma not only robbed Bishop Chikwe of a great adviser and confidant, it also created another important opening in the office of the bishop which would be very difficult to fill. In spite of little issues here and there, Msgr. Onyemma had been such a very important figure in the diocese backing the bishop up on vital issues and creating the aura of fear and intimidation for any person or group who might want to force the hands of the bishop for anything. But then he died and that barrier of defense for the bishop was lost.

After the death of Msgr. Onyemma, Bishop Chikwe was saddled with the task of choosing a credible replacement for him. Many people who would naturally fit into the position appeared to carry one baggage or the other. As a result the bishop needed to be very careful in selecting his new vicar general. To do this properly he would begin a wide range of consultations. As he made his consultations, a name kept popping up. It was that of the man he had retained as director of vocations since the beginning of the diocese. He had great confidence in this priest whom he held in high respect since their days as junior seminarians in Okpala Seminary. Over the years, this same priest had earned the bishop’s respect for his dedication and piety hence he had to saddle him with the responsibility of directing vocations in the diocese.

But over the years this same priest had lost some credibility with the bishop as he had heard an earful of how he was managing the office of vocations in the diocese. There had been tons of complaints about how lopsided his selections of candidates for priesthood had become over and against some sections of the diocese. The thrust of the majority of the complaints was that the director of vocations and his allies appeared to have perfected a strategy to consistently exclude some aspiring candidates from a section of the diocese in their final list of those proceeding to the senior seminary on behalf of the diocese.

Worse still, the director of vocations appeared to have personalized his office too much. He had constituted himself into a final arbiter of vocations in the diocese. He had made himself the sole judge who decided who would eventually become a catholic priest in Ahiara Diocese. As a result, many of the young priests that came through his office he had transformed into his personal assistants and cronies. Those he recruited for the priesthood and eventually trained in the seminary by the diocese he turned around to treat as his errand boys. He gave them preferential treatments in all matters under his charge in the diocese. Reports on this matter had been mounting over the years that the bishop had to intervene in one particular year by jettisoning the selections the vocations director had made for the spiritual year seminary. The bishop had to go ahead and make the final selections of candidates for the spiritual year himself.

However, seeing no other person in the horizon to fill the role of a vicar general in the diocese, the bishop appeared to have no other option than to appoint his director of vocations in the diocese as his new vicar general. As this appointment was expected by a large segment of the Ahiara Diocesan Presbyterium it was welcomed by many. But with the appointment of the director of vocations as the new vicar general it appeared as if a new cluster or caucus of priests was created around him in which the future of the diocese and who would eventually succeed Bishop Chikwe when he exited the stage became a favorite topic for them. This did not help the credibility of the new vicar general before the bishop who had heard quite a lot about him in the past.

This credibility of his would take a big hit and descend to its lowest ebb in early 2009 when the bishop was convalescing in Germany. From there the bishop delegated the former rector of the diocesan minor seminary to represent him at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria [CBCN] Plenary Session thereby bypassing and leaving his new vicar general at home. The Vicar General on his part took offense. He felt sidetracked and slighted. There and then the caucus around the vicar general got busy with its favorite topic which was the question of who would replace Bishop Chikwe when his time was up. The two active caucuses in the diocese began their favorite speculation on Bishop Chikwe’s sickness. These sectional meetings in which the issue of the bishop’s replacement in Ahiara Diocese was being consistently discussed distressed Bishop Chikwe very much. He regarded it as sabotage and a show of ingratitude on the part of many Mbaise people.

Immediately Bishop Chikwe returned home from Germany after the Easter celebration of 2009 the vicar general confronted him with his complaint about being slighted with his choice of a representative at the Bishops’ conference. The recuperating bishop was shocked that his vicar general had shown little or no compassion at all over what he had been through with his health but was rather concerned with only his own welfare. That incident would open the bishop’s eyes on the numerous reports and complaints he had been getting concerning the activities of his vicar general. It would also inform his decision to replace him as his vicar general in the new assignments for priests that were billed to be published in January of 2011. But the Bishop Chikwe’s death on September 16, 2010 torpedoed that.

The climax of the soured relationship between the bishop and his vicar general would take place about a week or so before Bishop Chikwe’s death. Realizing how sick he had become and his inability to travel out, Bishop Chikwe had called on his vicar general to get ready to travel to the Bishops’ Conference Meeting holding that week in Ado Ekiti and represent him. But the vicar general had allegedly refused to go with a flimsy excuse which was a thinly veiled rehash of the anger he had felt having been sidetracked for the same meeting the year before. The refusal of the vicar general to represent him made the ailing bishop scramble for his replacement. This would inform his rushed appointment of Fr Oliver Onwubiko on the very day the meeting began to hurry down to Ado Ekiti and represent him. The Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria would be in session on that Thursday afternoon when the news of Bishop Chikwe’s death broke.

Apart from the appointment of his vicar general in which he consulted quite widely, it appeared that the appointments of the other aides of his were preceded by little or no consultations at all. Not a few in the diocese believed that the bishop was being remote-controlled to appoint certain individuals from a certain geographical location of the diocese into key and sensitive positions of the diocese. The fingers of many were pointed to a certain individual who purported to be taking care of the bishop’s health in the USA. That individual was widely believed to be manipulating the assignments of priests into vital positions in the diocese. As a result of the intensity of the accusations both then and many years after, yours truly decided to examine the situation more critically.

While the appearance was quite noticeable that the bishop might not have been exercising his personal freedom on some of those appointments of his close assistants, it was also clear that he did not have many other options left. Bishop Chikwe was often afraid of appointing anybody from Ezinihitte to any sensitive position in the diocese. He did that only about twice during his nearly twenty three years as bishop of Ahiara Diocese. He was always afraid of the appearance that he might be favoring his kinsmen from Ezinihitte. On the other hand, not many from the two other clans of Ahiazu and Aboh Mbaise gave him confidence enough to appoint them because many of them were very loyal to the leaderships of their clusters whose obsession had lately become who and when to replace Bishop Chikwe as the bishop of Ahiara Diocese. So the option left for the bishop was to choose from the sections whose priests were not into any clusters and who were not obsessed with efforts to find a replacement for him in the diocese while he was still alive.

Unfortunately the bishop would only get a true picture of many of the people he had appointed as his aides a few months before his death. Certain individuals braved it to open his eyes on the practices and inadequacies of assistants which had cost him so much in the diocese. He was shocked to learn the little he was told. He felt betrayed. Yours truly remembers the last conversation I had had with the bishop while he was convalescing in Germany in August of 2010. He had made me call him up for some discussions. And the issue he appeared to complain about was the activity of some of his aides he had trusted.

I could not contribute much and could not advise him one way or the other. The reason was that when I had tried to do so a few years back I was almost shouted down by his aides with his approval. But now things had gotten so terrible that I figured it was too late for me to give advice one way or the other. The truth is Bishop Chikwe was not well served by many he chose as his aides. He had great confidence in many of them but they ended up disappointing him badly to the extent that on the eve of his death he was greatly saddened by it.

The story of Bishop Chikwe’s aides can be told in summary form thus. Many of them, especially the latter ones, came from a non-aligned geographical zone in Ahiara Diocese. Their appointments might have been influenced by a confidant of the bishop residing in the USA who hailed from the place and was purported to be the guardian of the bishop’s health in America. The bishop whom they served did not have much confidence in their abilities. And many of them performed below par as would become evident on the day the bishop died and thereafter. Many of the aides tricked the bishop and turned their functions into something else. The bishop got to know some of the activities of his aides only a few months before his death. And after his death, many of his aides had a field day taking advantage of whatever they could lay their hands on. This is the story of the aides to the great Bishop Victor Chikwe!

To be continued…