Some sitting Bishops today declined on approach for Bishopric but were strongly persuaded before they accepted, while some were allowed their decision to decline and were replaced by another candidate from the same Diocese. There was no evidence of persuasion, though at the end he has a right to his moral conscience and principle. The Bishops did not contest whether it is honorable, uncanonical, against the doctrine and faith of the church and human freedom, or if it is stupid to decline in good conscience in such an exalted office, either for age, health reason or on principle. Was the priest that declined the last priest in Mbaise either in the Diocese or congregations? If a priest could be imposed from outside the Diocese and province out of anger, why could they not in the same anger impose one indigenous Mbaise priest, even a religious outside the first list? If the few proposed candidates were petitioned out and the rest outside the list could not be considered, what of the priests of Owerri, Orlu, Umuahia, Okigwe and Aba in the same province? The information also implied that at a time, Ahiara had two or more candidates from outside the Diocese contesting simultaneously against one Ahiara priest. It was this intrigue and more that prolonged and protracted the pronouncement of the Bishop-elect of Ahiara and made the prayer for the Bishop for more than two years a resisted or controlled result. This great revelation and vindication now angered and fired the lay faithful who had before now myopically castigated their priests for in-fighting. Everybody saw that instead, a pre-mediated and pre-empted ambition to deliver somebody’s candidate at all cost blocked the view for other Ahiara alternative candidates. At the end of the costly revelations, the Arch Bishop said our resentment was understandable and begged us to submit, while insisting that he had a statutory obligation and mandate to install the Bishop-elect within a given canonical period. They only wished Ahiara Diocese could be compliant with the Pope’s appointment.
The defiance to the appeal is however based on the injustice and inequity established around the concept of the universality of the church and concealed with the secrecy of the selection of the Bishops which makes us believe that the Pope personally nominates and approves the would-be Bishop for dioceses. Onitsha Ecclesiastical province has mastered the shrewdness and pro-activeness of keeping in readiness Bishops to take over vacancies in other provinces, including Owerri. there are two already, with Peter Okpaleke as the third if it worked. While there is none from other provinces in their province, hardly is any priest or religious sister from Owerri province head any religious congregation, men or women in their province, even as a Carmel through the eye of the needle. Meanwhile, not less than two priests of Ahiara Mbaise origin still alive today were rejected and stopped from being the Bishop of some dioceses in Igbo land even before they were pronounced. Perhaps the church was not universal then and today, it is and Mbaise must accept it at all cost. This lop-sided universality can only be rectified by a simultaneous and massive transfer of Bishops in Igbo land in the spirit of equity, justice and true universality in order to demystify the suspicion, superiority signal and colonization which it has turned out to connote in the disguise of universality.
It is true that the Roman pontiff did not personally know or select Msgr. Peter Okpalaeke or does so for any individual for the bishopric. The approval is not only an administrative stamp and procedure and not his choice, nor is it a dogma or article of faith from the Pontiff. He only approved the person selected and given to him, and in the case of Msgr. Okpaleke, there was no attempt for the last resort to avoid arbitrariness. The priests and people of Ahiara therefore refused so that in future the bishopric should not be politicized by the powerful and privileged against the unprivileged and imposed as the action of the Pope to cause the Pope and the Church embarrassment in future.
One is surprised that two months after the eruption of resentment in the Diocese and the province, the Pope might not have yet known what is happening in the church concerning the Bishop he appointed. While the Archbishop and other Bishops of the province have tactfully avoided making official representation to Rome on the issue, reliable indications show that they are bent on installing the Bishop-elect by all available means and at all cost. If it is a statutory duty to install the Bishop-elect by all means, why not embrace the same sense of responsibility to inform the Pontiff that there is a crisis as the candidate was rejected? Whose embarrassment are they avoiding and for what reason?
In a similar situation playing out in the Diocese of Makeni in Sierra Leone in the rejection of the appointment of Fr. Henry Aruna, the Vatican delegate was sent from Rome to the Diocese for dialogue and appeal. In the course of the appeal the Roman delegate said, “as we continue to appeal to the priests and lay faithful of the dioceses to heed to the Pope’s decision, we will not impose; which means the Bishop elect (Fr. Henry Aruna) will be an impeded Bishop and the Diocese (Makeni) becomes a vacant seat”. On what basis and presumption do they believe Ahiara Mbaise do not deserve the respect of the pontifical delegation and dialogue but rather should be imposed? Makeni Diocese that has only 35 priests as against Ahiara Diocese that has over 500 priests, rejected their Bishop elect and were respected by Rome. Why would the Igbo and Mbaise man be a group that should be treated as pariah? The institution behind the insistence in favour of Okpalaeke think it is better insisting and enforcing the installation than reporting the rejection so that Rome and the Pope would not question the appropriateness and circumstances surrounding his selection.
But why this ambitious desperation to install a shepherd against the will of the flock and the biblical principle of shepherd and flock relationship in John 10:7-15? Is it to place the superiority of universality and obedience over justice and equity? The desperation has been proved by the Knight of St. Mulumba with the leadership at Onitsha Anambra state, coercing their Mbaise subordinates to carry out robot propaganda against their people in order to facilitate the imposition under the guise of obedience to the Pope and their Order. The target was for a calumny and stigmatization which would make them blush and blackmailed into surrender. Rather than reporting to the Pope and his representatives, they all prefer to presume the gullibility of the Mbaise people to achieve the imposition or sustain the propaganda, stigmatization and blackmail against them as bad people if they resist. But the churches in Mbaise know that they are not disobeying the Pope but are fighting a battle of injustice and imposition to sanitize the church against future politicization. They are therefore poised for the intended blackmail while standing on the side of Christ who came to liberate the oppressed. They are not primarily fighting against the person of Peter Opkaleke or Anambra their Igbo neighbours either, but against the presumptuousness of obvious injustice, domination of one brother over the rest with impunity at the flimsiest excuse. They still believe in the University of the Roman Catholic Church and avowed obedience when it is not unjust.
Once, I saw a boy putting on a T-shirt with the inscription “why me”. That immediately provoked an intuition in me about the coincidence of the present struggle as it affects the Mbaise and Igbo stigma. Britain made the Nigerian leadership the birthright of the North, invoked on them the superiority complex over the rest and with a pampering partiality induced them into the Nigerian union against their will. This became the dual enabling tools which conditioned their response to the coup and counter coup and motivated the war as a means to retrieve this birthright from the South through Yakubu Gowon. But Ojukwu became an obstacle. Then the propaganda of secession engineered the war, and the stigma that the Igbo fought a war against Nigeria has remained in place to intimidate and oppress them permanently. Since then, the rest of Nigerians have been ruling and sapping the country at the exclusion of the Igbo for over 40 years. The Igbo would certainly become evil if any day they say it is enough and either insists on their turn or to be on their own. Similarly, once the musician had maliciously blackmailed the Mbaise people some years back, many have, like robots enshrined it in their mental category to see them as bad people even before they act. Even Imo state has been ruled from its inception without an Mbaise man being a governor for once. Perhaps the entrenched propaganda would surface if for any time they say the relegation and domination is enough.
One then ruminates in the same line of thought the coincidence which seems to have foisted itself on the Ahiara Mbaise Catholic church, the urgency and imperativeness of halting the Anambra presumptuous, steady and gradual imperialistic hegemony on the rest of Igbo land both in the Nigerian politics and church relationship. While others have always taken it with the sense of innocence and faith, believing naively that everything is happening at the discretion of the papacy, our Anambra neighbours know they are consciously and astutely weaving their net of control of the Igbo church in a consistent and systematic trend. But why, one may ask, should it be Mbaise, with its already burden of imposed jinx, that the sword has to pierce her soul so that this secrete thought and plan of Anambra is laid bare and the challenge of checkmating it has to coincidentally fall on them? The reason is simply the obvious fact that nature takes its course. Certain people are made in a certain way, with a certain trait and for a certain purpose, and that purpose goes with its own cross and cost. Perhaps the Mbaise clan has the clout, the courage, the bravery and Obama audacity to break the jinx of monopoly and bear the cross of stigma for others. Yes, they would certainly be branded Mbaise ndi Ojoo, (Mbaise, the bad people) for daring to open the scroll which no other dared to. That trait has always been there and unknown too many, is the secret of their bad name, not that they do anything worse than any other people. As the Igbo are in Nigeria, so is Mbaise in Imo state in every sense. That was why Dora Akunyili had to say it when the rest kept quiet in dubious sycophancy and hypocrisy. That is why Ojukwu dared the truth and became the leper and rebel even among his brothers until he was acknowledged a saint after death. But God perhaps has bestowed on the Igbo the burden of the courageous elder who would not be there and watch the goat dies in the rope. But the elder must pay the price of his audacity of the sage by the stigma which scares the rest from him while bearing the collective infirmity like Jesus, from whom everybody looks away as he bears the collective brunt of salvation. Part of that price is persecution and stigmatization.
Rev. Fr. Ben Ogu.
08037233611
No comments:
Post a Comment