MY BISHOP IS TALLER!

God blessed him with physical strength and Elegance. He towers head and shoulder above all but one of his colleagues in the college. His intellectual capacity is mesmerizing. An erudite scholar and former Rector of the Catholic Institute of West Africa, he has remained one of the most profound Canonists in the whole of Africa and beyond. Above all, he is a pastor par excellence.

Nonetheless, as enticing as these qualities and achievements may sound, he will not be remembered most by any of them. This is because he has achieved yet another feat; a near impossible one at that. He has become the first to defy the odds and make a pronouncement which Catholic Bishops of the South-East have for more than 50 years been forbidden to. And symbolically, in the style of an intrepid Russian Tzar, he gave the Ukase in May of all months.

The month of May has remained sacred to Biafrans. This is not just because of the devotion to Our Lady on account of the high concentration of Catholic within that territory, but mainly because of the blood of innocent men, women and children that was inhumanly shed just to keep the Fulani Nigeria one.

For decades, the government of Nigeria criminalized the name “Biafra”, and in line with the so-called Church-State relationship, the Church in this part of the world anathemized any form of affinity to the name. For this reason therefore, in the South-Eastern part of Nigeria especially, it became both a legal felony and a mortal sin to mutter a public prayer in memory of the fallen Heroes of the Biafran struggle. No one dared announce a Mass intention in that regard.

So it was, that myopic minded feudal lords and ecclesiastes who who also go by the unofficial title-‘Elite’ believed that somehow, Nigeria will work someday. In line with this unfortunate and deluded assumption, Catholics and Evangelicals began to compose lines to pray Nigeria out of distress. Biafra was therefore seen as an unnecessary distraction.

Premised on this unsound logic, military tanks were, and still being been consistently rolled out to stop any form of gathering in memory of the fallen Heroes of Biafra, which culminates on the 30th of May annually.

This has been the situation since the most nascent inauguration of the Memorial by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB in 2013. And thousands have died as a consequence of the unprofessional and barbaric carnage by the Nigerian Police and Military which have the mandate to crush any gathering under the umbrella of Biafra.

It must be pointed out here that the 30th of May is significant to every Biafran because on that day in 1967, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu proclaimed the Independence and Sovereignty of Biafra. This announcement was visited with a human carnage in modern history, second only to the Jewish Holocaust. No thanks to The United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and others.

As I write this piece, nozzles of armoured personnel carriers in their dozens are already revolving and smoking in different parts of the South-East Nigeria, in anticipation of the next carnage come Heroes Day-30th of May.

It is therefore most remarkable that a courageous Bishop took the bull by the horn. His Excellency Hilary Paul Odili Okeke, the Catholic Bishop of Nnewi, has announced a compulsory Diocese-wide celebration of the Holy Mass in memory of the Biafra fallen Heroes of the past and present.

This is at once both factual and unbelievable. That an Igbo Bishop ‘CAN DESCEND THIS LOW’ was unthinkable a few months ago. But it is not lost to me that it took God-courage for Christ to descend to the near worthless level of Man. It is called kenosis. And we are called to be Christ-like.

What is more, he made the announcement in the Biafran Holy month of May. People who do not properly understand the situation in the South-East will surely downplay this boldness. But ask a reasonable Easterner who has his ear to the ground, and you will get the true picture.

This humble giant of pristine clerical and episcopal dispositions also refused to be cowed by the antics of Chief John Nnia Nwodo, the immediate past President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo. Before his recent ‘cosmetic repentance’, Nwodo had been ‘contracted’ by the despotic Nigerian regime as a ‘respectable Catholic’ with the capacity to cajole the Church Hierarchy in the South-East into demonizing Nnamdi kanu and the IPOB. While kite-flying the proscription of IPOB on behalf of the regime, Nwodo did not get the privilege of addressing the priestly plenary of Nnewi as he did else where.

This is just for the records. As dishonorable as it may sound, the now infamous Operation Python Dance and the subsequent proscription of IPOB have become an unpleasant part of our Church History in the South-East. It is an unfortunate but nonetheless a documented fact that about one month to the Dance in 2017, the Catholic Bishops of the same South-East had issued a joint condemnation and vilification of IPOB and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu for daring to celebrate the memory of the dead and sensitizing the people about an imminent Fulani invasion of the South.

The Hierarchy only referred to IPOB adherents as deluded miscreants. This gave vent to the success of the Python Dance. And no official alarm was ever raised by the Church on the injustice of the Dance.

The 1st , the 2nd and the 3rd Rhythms of the Dance cut down hundreds of vibrant young men and women in their prime. And from a purely legal perspective, the Church Hierarchy in South-East Nigeria will be estopped from denying a personification of an accessory after the fact of the inhuman brutality visited on our people.

The Episcopal denunciation of IPOB was publicly read in churches across board in the South East. This Declaration censured any Catholic affinity to IPOB, and made it a mortal sin. But it is now clear that history has a canny logic that eludes even the academia if proper attention is not paid.

Nevertheless “Nnaora”, as the Bishop of Nnewi is fondly called, has once again initiated a legacy for which the Church in the South-East will be remembered for ages. Whether or not his pronouncement is a joint decision of the Bishops of the region, he nonetheless took the first shot. And this can never be overlooked.

Just like Pope Paul III and the project of the ‘Counter Reformation’, Hilary Okeke has written his name in gold as the game changer within the ecclesiastical sphere in the emancipation of our people. I am proud to have him as my Bishop.

Fr. Smart Nwosu