Since I published my article titled, “Open letter to Bishop Onah: Just before they mislead our chief evangelist”, I have received endless streams of feedback. Phone calls, text messages and even face-to-face meetings with respected people in Enugu State have happened. But the rejoinder written by revered Prof. Damian Opata appears to be the one that will attract my response.
I appreciate the fact that Opata, a respected adherent of the African traditional religion, found it worthy to rise in defence of the Catholic Bishop of Nsukka Diocese, Bishop Godfrey Igwebuike Onah. Had Opata made his intervention as a thoroughly neutral observer, I would have approached this article differently. But it is well-known that our erudite professor was inspired by his partisan disposition being, as he is, a staunch supporter of Peter Mbah of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and I am aware that he was specifically selected to push his rhetoric because it was thought readers would see his effort as that of a non-Catholic defending a Catholic Bishop.
But I have a lot of problems with Opata’s intervention. First, he struggled to make my original article on this issue look like an attack on the person and office of Bishop Onah. Before I published that article, I read, reviewed and revised it five times. After this, I sent it to a senior media colleague who also went through it, all in my determination to ensure there was no word tending towards disparagement of the respected Bishop.
My words were measured, carefully chosen and strung together in deference to Bishop Onah. More importantly, if there was anyone in a position to protect the person and office of the Bishop of Nsukka Diocese, it cannot be Opata. I am in a better position to do this because I still subscribe to the Catholic faith and would not do anything to impugn the integrity of its leaders, cons and institutions.
And that was even what informed the intervention in the first place.
Opata’s 11-paragraph intervention, I must say, was riddled with repetitions, discussing same points using different words and phrases. As a journalist, editor and writer, I know when reporters employ this type of trick – when they have little to go on. But any editor worth his office sees through this quite easily.
Opata’s brief was most probably to stain my intervention with the grime of intentional insult. He struggled to tar my reliance on “rumour” for my article, but he could not point to one place I said I believed in those rumours.
My article was about what social scientists classify under the broad heading of “mitigators”. I do not know how our respected Prof. approached all the contributions to knowledge that earned him his title, but I know for certain that every scientific research starts with either a hunch or other unconfirmed bits of information. It is only when this is passed through the crucible of truth that they become fact. But I have never seen where science disapproved of people having their hunches and not talking about it.
This election cycle has challenged everything we stand for. And I will cite examples. Before the Independent National Electoral Commission announced what is not Nigeria’s most flawed election in the country’s history, rumours of what was going to happen had pervaded the media and, if I may hype Opata’s favourite word, as used in my article, the rumour mill. Is Opata suggesting that those who got that information should have kept it to themselves rather than alert the public?
Even the headline of the article, which is a very tight summary of what I wrote, should have told Opata that I hold Bishop Onah in such very high intellectual and spiritual regard as not to disparage him and his vocation. I suggested that we needed to intervene before the elements of regression operating in our environment “mislead” our Bishop; I wanted to tip off the Bishop to what could be the plans of those who might want to profit from his friendship by wringing a false narrative. I wanted the Bishop to be aware of what was going on in the fertile “rumour mill” of Enugu politics and be on guard.
The Enugu “WhatsAppsphere” was inundated with all manner of articles and news broadcasts, suggesting that a certain N500 million was being fangled before our dear Bishop. Those peddling the story claimed that those making the offer were trying to soothe the Bishop’s “alleged” justified anger over the shooting at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church Ede Oballa and the vile words used by two prominent PDP chieftains on reverend fathers working under the Bishop. These news items can be found in the hundreds of WhatsApp groups created by interested people in this election.
Is Opata pretending he never saw these? Between those peddling those who saw the rumours and kept quiet, and the person who drew the attention of the subject of the rumours to the negative ramifications of what he saw being circulated, who is a friend? I suspect that perhaps, Opata’s closeness to the PDP may have put him in a position to not raise alarm over the potential damage those rumours portend on the person and office of Bishop Onah, but I, Ikem Okuhu is not wired that way. I owed the Bishop, the duty of informing him of what I saw going on and urging for mitigation measures.
With all due respect, and I sincerely hold Opata in high regard, I found it rather cheap and intellectually dishonest for him to attempt to make imputations of disrespect in an article written to guard against the efforts by politicians to taint the hard-earned reputation of the Bishop.
I am still Catholic for now. I do not know what the dynamics of the future would do to my faith. But I have given a lot to the Church, enough to not disrespect the Bishop. In my parish in Lagos, St. Cyril’s Catholic Church, Okota, I was the MC of the church for 15 straight years, anchoring all church programmes and handling harvest auctions and fundraisers, through which we raised money to move the church from a dilapidating make-shift structure to a building of Cathedral standards.
In my community in Nguru Nsukka, I was a major donor, slowing down only when Rev. Fr. Paul Obayi arrived to take our community land by false pretense. I was there at the Pastoral Visit, during which Bishop Onah advised Fr Paul to refrain from the land disputes.
With this background, I doubt if I will be in a position to diminish the person and office of Bishop Onah in any way. I respect him. I value him as a Bishop of very sound mind. But even then, I have seen and heard the revered Bishop urge the people to pray for their priests because they were first of all humans before they become priests. So, while I pray for them, I also go the extra steps of offering mitigatory advice where I feel a compelling need to so do.
Since the letter was published, I must also tell my dear professor that I have spoken with at least 10 Catholic priests serving in Nsukka, Lagos and a few places outside Nigeria and they did not find my intervention offensive in any way.
It will therefore be great for Opata to remove his partisan bifocals and approach this matter with the intellectual neutrality that advances knowledge. I am not a politician. I do not belong to any political party. But I do not deny that I am supporting Labour Party in this election. I am doing so because of my disgust for the extreme deprivation that PDP has brought upon our people. Enugu State has become the ready example when Nigerians are discussing bad governance inspired by entitled primitive gluttony.
We have regressed from one of the frontline states in Educational performance indicators to one of the lowest across the country. I know Opata may have done with training all his children, but a visit to primary schools in the state should draw tears. I know that he served in a federal institution and would have no problems drawing his pension and gratuity, but he should talk to retired local government employees, teachers and state civil servants to see what they are going through. I am sure he is not impressed with the state of roads in the state. Even if he has built up enough retirement capital to afford the services of expensive medical care, he should know that hospitals in Enugu are totally nonexistent and requires revolutionary revival for the sake of the poor.
That is why I am in this struggle. That is why I will contribute my little measure to ensure anyone who covertly or overtly attempts to mislead our dear Bishop will not succeed.
Okuhu is a specialist brand critic and public relations strategist, serial author, among other competencies. He is the founder/publisher of BRANDish.
This article was first published in https://ikemsjournal.com.ng/
