Once again, we appeal to Most Rev Okoh to take a second look at the leadership of the Diocese on the Niger. Things should be done differently here.
Jerome Akajiofor
A major crisis erupted in 2014 between the Anglican Church in Nkwele Ezunaka, Oyi Local Government Area of Anambra State, and its host community over what the community leaders called an attempt by the church to convert the land of a communally owned school into the property of Ebenezer Anglican Church. The community stated that it was unfair for the church to claim ownership of the land based on the fact some of its members had been worshiping there. They claimed that all the school authorities did was merely to allow Anglicans to worship in the premises for a token amount of money, and not the transfer of land ownership.
Rather than take on the community and answer the charges logically by, for example, producing documents proving their ownership of the land, one or two persons in the leadership of the Anglican Diocese of Onitsha pulled a fast one on the government and people of Anambra State. Capitalising on the fact that the Willie Obiano administration had just come into office, they alleged that the state government was working in cahoots with the Catholic Church to persecute Anglicans and deny them their God-given right of worship.
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Fire and brimstone replaced sermons at the pulpits. There was dangerous awakening on an industrial scale, to paraphrase the language of a Nigerian social science scholar and priest. Meanwhile, the church leadership overnight constructed a vicar’s house there and converted the makeshift structure where members were worshiping into a fully built church. The community is still in court. This strategy of land acquisition was to be called the Nkwelle Ezunaka principle. It is now being used again, as we shall see soon.
When the primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), The Most Rev (Dr.) Nicholas Okoh, stepped into the matter, he realised immediately that a very small cabal in our church had gone into overdrive in politicking and land grabbing. Two years later, those of us who care about the integrity of the Anglican Communion in Onitsha in the eyes of reasonable members of society imbued with conscience are calling on The Most Rev Dr Okoh to intervene in the land dispute between our diocese on the one hand, and the state authorities, on the other, over a substantial parcel of land in Onitsha where Crowther Memorial Primary School and Omu Nwagboka Memorial Primary school are located.
As in the case of the Nkwelle Ezunaka land dispute of 2014, our church leaders have not produced any document conferring on our diocese the ownership of the land. It is difficult to believe that the Anglican Church, all the more so the very sophisticated Diocese on the Niger, could have such a huge asset without registration for about a century. As in the Nkwelle Ezunaka controversy, our leaders have been mobilizing church members to rise against the government and the Catholic Church. How and why the Catholic Church was brought into this matter are a mystery.
The only basis for claiming the ownership is the name of one of the two primary schools on the land, which is Crowther Memorial Primary School. Does the fact that a place is named after a religious figure necessarily mean that the place belongs to a given religion or sect? There is a very big part of Awada, Obosi, known as Iba Pope. It was named for Pope John Paul the Second when he visited Anambra State in 1982. It was so named because it was the place John Paul landed in Anambra State in 1982. The entire place known as Iba Pope belongs to the public, and not the Catholic Church.
The claim that the place Bishop Crowther landed when he started his missionary journey in Onitsha over 150 years ago is where both Omu Nwagboka and Crowther primary schools are built is patently false. Crowther landed in a place known as Ani Onitsha, which is by Old Market Road.
Crowther and Omu Nwagboka primary schools have always been public educational institutions, starting as one school which was originally known as Native or Local Authority School. It later became Onitsha Urban Elementary School. Its tuition fees were much lower than those of many schools in Onitsha which were owned by mostly voluntary agencies and were called mission schools. This school which has since been split into two on account of the rapidly growing population never belonged to any church. We repeat that no part of the schools has ever been alienated from the government. And no church has built any structures there, hired any staffer there or paid any person there. They should produce evidence to the contrary if they want to prove that they are not taking their followers for a ride.
If it is true that Dr Nkem Okeke, the hardworking and gentle Anambra State Deputy Governor, innocently permitted religious service to be conducted on Wednesdays at Crowther Primary School and the Diocese on the Niger began overnight to build a church there, it is not defensible. Our religious leaders should not behave like those Christ calls wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7: 15). King James Version of the Bible calls them false prophets because they are in reality ravening wolves.
Sectarian politics is extraordinarily dangerous. Lebanon, the Sudan, Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland were brought to their knees in recent times by religious politics. It is a shame that a handful of persons in the leadership of the Diocese on the Niger should want to play religious politics rather than learn from the Yoruba where the people are mostly Christians and Muslims, and yet live in harmony. In many homes, there are both Christians and Muslims.
An example is Babatunde Fashola, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, who is a Muslim and the wife a knight of the Catholic Church. Fashola personally used to drive the family to the church every Sunday. Another example is Bola Tinubu, National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, who is a Muslim but his wife an associate pastor with the Redeemed Christian Church of God.
Primate Nicholas Okoh is invited to look into the leadership of the Diocese on the Niger. One or two changes are needed urgently.
Catholics and Anglicans have a good relationship in Anambra State, resulting in a state blind to sectarian differences. Thus, we elected Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife our first governor shortly after the state was created in 1991, even though he belongs to Salvation Army, a Christian sect which is not up to one per cent of the state’s population. We were impressed by the fact that he holds a Harvard PhD in Economics and by the fact that Ezeife was a federal permanent secretary. We also elected Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju, a born Anglican who became an evangelical preacher and author. We were encouraged by his qualifications as a former Political Science associate professor trained at Cornell University who went to study Law in a top UK university. Mbadinuju is also a former newspaper editor who later became a Special Assistant to Nigeria’s former Vice President.
Once again, we appeal to Most Rev Okoh to take a second look at the leadership of the Diocese on the Niger. Things should be done differently here.
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Akajiofor, a retired director in the public service, lives in Onitsha, Anambra State