“Sadly, it is the same people who are trying to whisk the Church into religio-political centrifugalism that are also filling the lay airwaves, that ‘even the Bishop has a price after all’”.
I am no longer a Christian, but I feel obliged, righty or wrongly, to write a rejoinder to Ikem Okuhu’s : “Just before they mislead our Chief Evangelist: An Open Letter to Bishop Godfrey Onah”. We, in Nsukka, have a way of destroying ourselves. We, in Nsukka, play politics with our future. Perhaps, we, in Nsukka, do not know where to draw the boundaries when talking of ourselves, or indeed, of our leaders.
This does not mean that we hate ourselves. No, we even praise ourselves to stupendous levels. We generally value our culture, our sense of respect, and our general sense of altruism. We value our sense of brotherhood and solidarity, even if this is sometimes punctuated by a sense of inferiority among some of our people. We are not immune to self- love, just as we are sometimes not immune to self- hate.
Undoubtedly, Ikem Okuhu has a right to express his opinion. Unfortunately, his expression of a very self-convincing opinion in this instance is based on rumour. And the target of this rumour: Most Reverend Prof. Godfrey Igwebuike Onah. It is a known fact that people can, and many a time manufacture their own rumours to sell their opinions, positive or negative. Admonishing Bishop Onah on the basis of rumours not substantiated is a costly and corrosive gambit. We are advised in Romans, 12:16, not to be wise in our own conceits. We can grow in popularity without destroying or diminishing that of others.
His Excellency, Most Reverend Prof. Godfrey Igwebuike Onah, is not only the Chief Evangelist of the Catholic Diocese of Nsukka. He is also a famed public intellectual, an orator, a theologian of no mean repute, and a global brand, like it or not. This is a young ebullient man whose future has just begun to unfold, and some of our people want to nip him the glory that awaits him in the bud. He is definitely one person Nsukka, nay Igbo, or even Nigerians, especially Catholics are looking onto for God’s grace and promotion to the summit of his profession. Bishop Onah is a gift dream awaiting actualization.
The quotations that I have used to begin this rejoinder are taken from the open letter from Ikem Okuhu. They vividly illustrate how this dream can be killed, even if unintentionally. Using the medium of rumour, Ikem Okuhu has just offered a poisoned open letter to the people of Nsukka. May this poison never have any effect on our Bishop. Mr. Okuhu appears to be endorsing his own rumour (he does not mention the source of the rumour) that Bishop Onah is allegedly being offered a carrot worth N500m for him to ask his priests to vote for Peter Mbah. He is also, I presume, endorsing a complementary rumour that “even the Bishop has a price after all”. This is really scandalous.
Mr. Okuhu rightly acknowledges the fact that Bishop Onah is “one of the most cerebral Bsihops in the Catholic family and, indeed, in the entire Christendom”; yet he wants to deploy rumours to take a partisan shine out of the stature of the Bishop. I imagine that a veteran and accomplished journalist like Ikem Okuhu must have seen publications from Bishop Chukwuma and Fr. Mbaka, urging people to vote one way or the other, during one election or the other, but he has not written an open letter to any of them. The Igbo adage, ike di n’ulo, has not left us.
The trigger of Mr. Okuhu’s open letter is that he “heard from several quarters that” Bishop Onah has “given authority to the Catholic priests under” his “watch … to preach to the flock, messages that will favour the election of Peter Mbah of the Peoples Democratic Party as Governor of Enugu State come Saturday March 11, 2023, for no reason other than he being a Catholic”. If the rumoured allegation is true, it goes to confirm that the Church, like politics, is defined by self-interest.
In a postcolonial Nigeria, a British fabrication designed to be problematic from its conceptualization, Muslims usually campaign for Muslims, and Christians usually campaign for Christians. I do not even mind that we in indigenous religions are dominated and marginalized, but time is coming when we shall become stronger. Ethnics also usually campaign for their own candidates. After all, virtually all Igbo persons, irrespective of party affiliation, both campaigned for and voted for Peter Obi. The phenomenon of “our own” has been the norm in the recent political campaigns, at least, in Igboland. Some priests also were said to have campaigned for Peter Obi and Labour Party during the 25th February elections. And this one is not a rumour.
The Catholic Church, it is held, forbids its clergy from actively campaigning for political candidates. Section 285 of the canon Law prohibits them from active politics. However, we had a Rev. Fr. Moses Adasu as Governor. At the moment, we have another Catholic priest, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, campaigning for the position of Governor of Benue State. Mr. Okuhu has not argued that it is against the Catholic doctrine for priests or bishops to campaign for politicians. His major concern is that the Church is an umbrella for all, and should not descend into creating divisions. He rightly argues the biblical teaching that it is for both Jews and Gentiles.
My take is that Mr. Okuhu’s concerns and fears seem to be right, but unfortunately, they are all based on rumours. He has no single piece of evidence to corroborate these rumours. This is quite unlike the Ikem Okuhu I have read his books. These rumours against one of the most articulate bishops in Africa, or to use Mr. Okuhu’s own words, “one of the most cerebral Bishops in the Catholic family and, indeed, in the entire Christendom”, are very lethal. No person should use unfounded rumours of alleged bribery against Bishop Onah to damage his future. There is a limit to playing politics with the fate and future of people, certainly not with Most Reverend Prof. Godfrey Igwebuike Onah.
