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CARDINAL LEHMANN’S OPENING SCROLL AND THREAT OF BLOOD IN THE EYES OF THE ARCHBISHOP.

BY FR. BEN OGU

Hurrah, the truth is vindicated and Mbaise is justified at last! Prior to the announcement of Peter Okpaleke as the bishop-elect of Ahiara diocese on December 7, 2012, the nauseating ordour of thievery and manipulation was oozing all over. There was a palpitating jittery of unusual anxiety for obvious suspicion that the name was arbitrarily worked out of manipulation and force. The reason was evidently glaring and the suspicion legitimate. When the suspicion would have lead to nipping the name in the bud before the scorpion egg was hatched, the spiritually naive, the emptily pious and the piously myopic in the diocesan echelon played their natural myopia and mischief which even gave suspicion of their connivance. They thought it unusual and unimaginable to fling a priest from far away Awka diocese and different province of Onitsha into the Episcopal enquiry list of Ahiara to make him bishop over more than six hundred able priests with more than fifty qualified for the bishopric. The name sounded very strange and the manner it was announced esoteric. The announcement was like a thunder bolt, causing a dizzy imagination. It is not because the strange name is not from Mbaise but because no genuine, just, legitimate and righteous process and procedure could have produced such an unknown and never-ever-heard or seen-before-name and person in the whole of the diocese and province. One of the factors that disqualify a person in the secrete enquiry for the appointment of a bishop is the ‘no answer’ to the question ‘do you know this person and what do you known about him? Since after the white missionaries, one is unlikely to be made a bishop of a province he does not belong and those who have never seen, heard of, known or worked with him before. Like a name from the “spirit world”, Peter Okpaleke received a ‘no answer’ from whosoever could have seen the name prior to announcement. Every other response to the enquiry of his identity must have been accordingly negative and disqualifying. Yet he was brutally, strangely and unusually announced, through the internet, to instantly spread the name to preempt any opposition. But the consequence of Sneaking in by manipulation and imposition as in the case of Ahiara, is predictable and recommended by Jesus, “anyone who does not enter the sheepfold through the gate, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a bandit….They will never follow a stranger, but will run away from him because they do not recognize the voice of strangers” (Jn. 10:1-5). 

The announcement of the name immediately flashed a worrying and ironic retrospective question and excursion into the death bed and departure words of late Bishop Chikwe of Ahiara who said before he gave up, “Ahiara is in good hands”. The actual import of his optimism is that he had done the needful, by submitting the officially and traditionally required names in Rome and was sure of who would ably succeed him. This in no way could have been Peter Opkaleke, a priest of another diocese and province he never ever saw,  knew, imagined and who never ever visited the province or diocese for once in his life. Of course, no bishop ever includes the name of a priest of another diocese or province who is not a member of the diocesan priestly family by ordination or incardination in his succession list. This was also the thrust of the diocesan prayer for the new bishop before the announcement. The prayer was exclusively for Ahiara presbyterium (Ahiara incardinated priests). The prayer was never exclusively for the son of the soil of Mbaise but certainly exclusively for members of the priestly family of Ahiara diocese, whether he is an indigene of Mbaise or not, so long as he is working with them irrespective of ethnic or geographical origin. This is unequivocally scripturally spelt out in the tradition of the selection of bishops, “Out of the men who have been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was living with us, from the time when John was baptizing until the day when he was taken up from us – one must be appointed to serve with us as a witness to his resurrection” (Acts. 1:21-22). Archbishop Obinna knows this. The only extraordinary condition that could warrant a strange bed fellow like Peter Okpaleke into the picture of the succession search is lack of numerical manpower or qualified candidature of members of the presbyterium or stealing. This extraordinary condition is absolutely unthinkable in the case of Ahiara, except the third. Yet, Rev. Fr. Peter Okpaleke surprisingly surged out in the list like a burglar in the night making Archbishop Obinna to say, in 2013, “I was also surprised”.

CARDINAL LEHMANN’S SECRET SCROLL

A high ranking personality of the church, reflecting the above truth in 2013, asked the Nigerian bishops a fundamental question “But how did the name of Peter Okpaleke ever enter the secret list of bishopric enquiry of Ahiara diocese?”. The question remains unanswered except by the hackers of the list. The answer was left arguably in the realm of incontrovertible high probability of arbitrary manipulation and force until the recent revelation of the certainty of stealing was made by Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Germany in 2016. Lehmann is a Cardinal of Mainz in Germany and once a participator in the Papal conclave, the selection of Popes and an insider in the Vatican happenings before his retirement. He revealed and asserted that, “names of candidates submitted to the Vatican as potential bishops are being vetoed by “unauthorized people”. He adds more elaborately that, “in recent years, the official list of names has been crossed out and a new list sent from Rome”… “This represents a burdensome, intolerable disrespect for the church in a given country”. The Cardinal’s revelation of manipulation of list vindicated the people of Ahiara diocese that a strange priest was arbitrarily and fraudulently grafted into Ahiara list by, according to Cardinal Lehmann, those who have “knowledge of how things work in Rome”. Therefore Ahiara Mbaise did not arbitrarily and only speculatively award the certificate of the treachery and infraction to the proficiency and influence of Okpaleke’s brother Cardinal and his intimate friends who all have “knowledge of how things work in Rome”. Through this privilege, they have also made multiple bishops for their own kinsmen, province and diocese where almost every town have indigenous bishop and like Oliver Twist, still want more and want to be everywhere.

CARDINAL ONAYEKAN’S SELF-SCAPEGOATISM

Perhaps all men of justice want the head of Cardinal John Onaiyekan in his insistence to   consolidate and legitimatize “the stolen goods” which Okpaleke bishopric is. But in fairness we only give him a commensurate blame. We would not know if he was privy to the manipulation. But after castigating Mbaise with vitriolic aspersion, His Eminence flew into Mbaise on Saturday, May 4, 2012 to get firsthand the reason for their grudges. The priests opened to him the scroll of the impunity of injustice and domination in the Igbo Catholic Church. He shuddered with disbelief that Dunukofia, Awka Anambra state alone has a good number of indigenous bishops and occupying two dioceses in Owerri Province with Peter Okpaleke as the third in an inexplicable and strange manner. There was no doubt that His Eminence was overtly sympathetic, sober and said he never knew that was what was on ground. He promised to start a dialogue between the parties, the Archbishop and the provinces to foster peace and understanding before a possible ordination. We did not doubt his sincerity as his countenance showed obvious disapproval of the Awka greed and domination. But Archbishop Obinna and Okpaleke became the stumbling block. Rev. Fr. Peter Okpaleke insisted on the ordination while Archbishop Obinna, insisting that the ambitious priest had already printed and distributed his invitation cards, fixed the ordination date against the Cardinal’s wish.  His Eminence was frustrated and decided not to attend the ordination until pressed by higher powers, he cooperated unwillingly like Jonah. But our great irritation was his later contradiction in his inconsistencies and insistence to install him. This made him the scapegoat of the blunders, mischief and treachery of the Archbishop and the manipulators. Appointed the Administrator of Ahiara in his words, with “a blank cheque” of fact finding and reporting back to Rome, and not to install anybody, Mbaise received him with unmatched enthusiasm, hospitality and openness to the dialogue. But the sooner he consulted with the Nigerian bishops; there was a total deviation from the truth he knew. This marred his good will, as after returning from Rome on promise to report his finding to the Pope, he told the priests, “I did not take your case to Rome”. In his solidarity with the bishops, Mbaise and the truth like Jesus, became the victim of reconciliation and friendship between Pilate and Caesar to crucify the just. Oh, His Eminence, we do not hate you. We loved you when you initially acknowledged the truth and injustice until you sacrificed them for the “cult of solidarity”. You tried to be sincere but swerved and buffeted for and by human power and became both the scapegoat and friend of the spell of His Grace and some bishops who rejected your dialogue.  

Two remarkable things preceded the stolen bishopric and military ordination which took place  on Tuesday,May 21, 2012. In the meandering dance of the Nuncio to signal the mischief, he spoke with subjective sophistry to the anxiously expectant Ahiara priests, “we will give you a Catholic bishop”, a statement suggestive of deliberate conspiracy. We suspected the trick. Then the only “Catholic bishop” who could only hail from Awka, Cardinal Arinze’s diocese, was later announced. The second was that Cardinal Arinze qualified to be the only suitor to enrapture the Catholic bishops in a retreat of baptism of fire of indoctrination and intimidation few days to the controversial ordination. Because the ordination was initially wrought with hesitation, skepticism and discordant voices, the retreat was to browbeat into solidarity, all reluctant and dissenting voices and shore up coerced compliance. During the retreat, an ultimatum was flung on the authority of the Seat of Wisdom Seminary Owerri by mid-night to prepare in no time the ordination of the embattled bishop in the seminary premises as Archbishop Obinna marginally prevailed on his priests by intimidating appeal to tolerate the ordination in the seminary when they could not oblige him the Cathedral so that Okpaleke would not be imposed on them after. Like an armed bandit who in desperation to steal, takes more arms than necessary, Okpaleke he was ordained hurriedly with excessive pile up of armed security comparable to Syrian war campaign. The ordination was done in the mod of the Israelites hurrying out of Egypt and the seminary authority warned the estranged bishop to leave the seminary as soon as the ceremony was over, and he did. Most Priests in the Seminary, who, with the sense of justice refused to attend the ordination, were later queried and threatened with sack and perhaps brutally and arbitrarily sacked by the powers that be. Since then, like the same desperate thief who must secure his loot, they have remained aggressive to install him in Ahiara diocese at all cost.

     

IHITTE AND THE CARICATURE OF A BISHOP

Crime experts have a common trait of intelligent logistic strategizing to grab by force and fraud and then the mechanism to secure and never let go whatever is grabbed, or else, given the tragic result of discovery, it would be a blunder and foolhardiness to have ever stolen only to release. So every criminal is also equipped with the sense of preemption of the gravity and consequences of his action as well as the strategy of defense and protection of loots. They grab by intimidation and aggression and protect by the same aggression because they detest detection and confrontation that would reveal their crime and endanger them. As soon as the nefarious bowel and balloon of fraud of manipulation of the episcopacy of Ahiara diocese was deflated and its irritating trench gushed and was rebuffed, the bishop-elect and his master strategists made simony their idol. With money, they frantically and efficiently formed a network and alliance of a horde of horrifying and horrible personalities of notoriety, dubious and questionable characters with terrorist-oriented attitudes and aligned with them to fight and weaken the diocese to surrender. The Cardinal, who earlier resented the injustice of Awka, later morally fertilized and boosted the internal opposition against Ahiara diocese when he could not browbeat them to cooperate with the imposition. The greatest scandal was his diligent discernment of all the disgruntled, grudging and expelled religious and diocesan priests, who he earlier described as “questionable characters”. Only one of them is nearly sane. The rest are deviants, notorious, and socially and religiously psychotic and are either expelled by their congregations or dioceses or by Ahiara, or have not been given parish for one grievous misconduct or scandal or another. Fallen out of favour with the Church for decades, they became antagonists of the diocese and incidentally easy weapons of the Cardinal against Mbaise. Most of them have been operating from their family homes and out of active pastoral engagement years before the death of bishop Chikwe and the Okpaleke incident. Ironically, these dissident “Sauls” of the sword in the time of Chikwe immediately converged as loyal militants, close allies and confidants of the Cardinal and defenders of “what the Pope and the church did” syndrome in Okpaleke and formed a fierce terrorist camp in St. Roses’s Ihitte Parish to protect what was stolen by “those who know how things work in Rome”. The many unprintable antecedents that put them at odds with the Church and their congregations now compatibly cuddled and padded them together like the Nigerian 2016 “padded budget” as friends in notoriety, infamy and enemies of Mbaise. They are bonded together by the common denominator of evil, bad will, discontentment and extreme capacity for lies. Having no face to save, they work for the worldly bishop with unabashed and undiluted sophisticated lies, crudity and extremism in words and action, with a singular selfish intent, “to win”, so as to be re-branded and rehabilitated by the new bishop. Their employment for violence is compatible to their nature and indicts their pay masters. If a criminal, an outcast and a prodigal son desires to become a king, nothing would be too big or mean to do to be one, even to mortgage his mother to whoever would aid his way to the throne. When the prodigal son lost his right of son-ship in his father’s house, he treasured the rare luxury of the piggery chaff and later, tenancy and slavery status as superior privilege in his father’s house. This has remained the psychology of the “bokoharamic” hoodlums in opposition to the truth and Ahiara diocese for more than five years now. They and their slavish traditional rulers have meanly and naively subjected their native traditional stool to servile domination and obeisance for the tainted and temporary money to mortgage their land eternally to internal slavery and continuously beg and force their foreign bishop to earnestly come and enslave them. Eventually, their notorious personality symbolism, tainted and dented images, their crude and primitive orchestrations over the radio and on the streets, prowling with town criers, motor cades and microphones, make them cracked auction bell calling for cheap attention for acceptance and sale to Ahiara, their stolen “tokumbo goods” and their master a caricature bishop.

WHAT THE POPE SAID SYNDROM

Ahiara priests have consistently told the world that the Pope was innocently misled to religiously approve a stolen office and is therefore neither guilty himself nor is he disobeyed. But covering the truth with diversionary propaganda, the culprits have tried to convince the world that “Ahiara diocese is disobeying the Pope” and insisting on “son of the soil”. Appending their false and insincere piety on the Pope, the army of criminal supporters who conform with the gene of their masters, claim the credibility of their support on the legitimacy of the appointment by the Pope. But Cardinal Carl Lehmann of Germany and Vatican insider has re-echoed that manipulation is indeed the mechanism that produced the likes of bishop Okpaleke. Archbishop Obinna as the inner circle of the intrigue acknowledged and admitted the quackery process of corruption and arbitrariness that gave birth to Okpaleke when he said of the higher powers that be, “ha kpara m bol n’isi (they played the ball over my head), meaning they hoodwinked, outsmarted and outwitted me by force. When the priests insisted that he should nevertheless do the right thing, he said to the priests in 2013, “My hands are tied”. This means that he was psychologically gagged and forbidden to act rightly. Did he not say in his office in 2013 in a secret invitation to warn and dissuade me of continued writing of the Ahiara incident on the public print media, that he was expecting and was sure of a priest of Ahiara presbyterium whom he knew personally, was to be announced as the bishop-elect in a matter of days until suddenly, contrary to his expectation, a strange name he never knew was announced? What happened to the name? All this concretely confirm Cardinal Karl Lehmann’s script of forceful substitution and manipulation. Who is deceiving who? Why do they say that Mbaise people are disobeying the Pope rather than disobeying stealing and corruption? Should they obey corruption? But again, this makes his staunch support for the installation of a looted power in pretext of loyalty to the Pope and the bishops a grand dishonesty, self-demeaning, moral self-annihilation and false indictment of the Papacy for injustice. Under a threat of what nature are his hands tied to become a prisoner of his conscience to prefer rather to destroy the innocent Ahiara diocese and Mbaise people for corroborating his own witness that there was a manipulation? The cartels of supporters of the loot live in the self-appeasing dishonesty and denial of the multiple administrative processes and strata that precede the papal office to the approval of appointments. Could the innocent Pope not approve a name without knowing that it was   and unjustly doctored before coming to him? It is here that Cardinal Karl Lehmann situates his indictment and the mechanism that produced Okpaleke. Archbishop’s hand tying and testimony makes him the most suitable exhibit to prove the truth of the manipulation that fixed bishop Okpaleke and yet, he goes on to propagate its legitimacy.

 THE BURDEN OF TRUTH AND ULTIMATUM TO DELIVER

An irrefutable history recalls that His Grace was not the original nominee and successor of Bishop Mark Unegbu. But he was like Peter Okpaleke, smartly and crudely favoured by a strange mechanism. He went through the furnace of the test of unacceptability and near rejection in Owerri in 1993. It is not therefore surprising why he is vacillating and surrenders to the pressure to support a stolen and manipulated mandate. But what baffles the priests of Ahiara is that the Archbishop had his own days of crisis. The world knows who was almost at the threshold of being the bishop of Owerri diocese. He is still alive. Perhaps the Archbishop and his group destroyed him and others with petition too. But a Bishop Chikwe did not connive with the bishops to impose a priest of Onitsha province or Awka diocese on them. So was Obinna picked as Bishop of Owerri. Owerri diocese did not all accept him either and in his conflict with them, late Bishop Chikwe of Ahiara hid and protected him in Mbaise against the hostility of his adversaries and latter gave tutelage to his administration until he settled to betray Mbaise. One is convinced that a greater incentive beyond his Mbaise xenophobia animates his present actions against Mbaise and makes him unable to die for the truth but for the lust of office. This also leaves us with many puzzles. When he said that the ball was played over his head by higher powers and that he knew the name of an Mbaise son that was about to be announced before he was shocked with a strange name, one believes he was not part of the corruption. But when he said again in 2014 that he would better resign than not to install bishop Okpaleke, one believes he was part of the intrigue but pretends his involvement, or there is a greater incentive at stake that he treasures more than his priestly integrity and truth. In trying to appease the Ahiara priests he admitted the atrocity against Mbaise but sympathetically told them, “shi abaala abaa” (the feces is already gushed) or the irretrievable mistake is already made. But why should Ahiara diocese be the victim of their malicious mistake? Is it also a mistake to insist with intimidation that the product of mistake must be enforced or is it that the mistake is benefiting and utilitarian?  There seems to be something connecting the substitution of 1993 and 2012 and they want the vicious circle to continue. Could the future offer for delivering Okpaleke be higher than his present position if it does not turn out to be a promise of ‘use and dump’? What did he mean by analyzing in 2013, the fact that he is the oldest Archbishop in the provinces of the South East? Why is he so paranoid and hostile against Mbaise, the people of his own province whose rejection of injustice in the long run ultimately and by extension is a protection of the province and his Owerri See from colonization and domination? When bishop Okpaleke bragged and said, “fa laba nsi, anyi ga na-achi fa” (let them go on eating feces, we must continue to rule them), he and those projecting him were not mistaking or see his mission in Ahiara as spiritual and pastoral mission. His statement did not refer to only Ahiara.  He really meant the entire province whom they see as inferior and born to be ruled Igbo, including the brain-washed imbeciles begging for his enslavement. This makes Archbishop Obinna’s aggressive errand for Okpaleke to obviously lie within the borders of blindfolding delusion, selfish interest and mortgaging promise.    

It is obvious that he is under a serious burden and threat not to say a dangerous truth but to deliver the head of Mbaise on a platter of tray pan for the half of Herod’s kingdom. It is believed that those who played the ball over his head to fix bishop Opkaleka are becoming too impatient with his failing ability to settle Okpaleke as the material runs the risk of expiration before consumption. Therefore they seem to have given him a matching ultimatum to act with dispatch at all cost, including the shedding of blood in Mbaise if necessary, to force Opkaleke in, either to save his seat or upgrade his status. The stake is paradoxically too high and attractive but burdensome and could doubtless, cause a man of servile and mean texture a behavioral psychosis that could make him act with undue desperation, hostility and aggression. The victim of such desperation could be anyone believed to be the obstacle and cause of his frustration. Precisely, the victim is first the president of Ahiara Catholic woman Organization and the representatives of the laity council. The woman is erroneously seen as the cog in their wheel, as even the pressure by some powerful Nigerian Jezebels who induced her with appointment to turn against Ahiara priests failed to move her. The members of the laity who remain resolute not to cave in to injustice and sabotage were also expelled off-hand and replaced with Cardinal John and Fr. Ebi’s concocted, arbitrary and guerilla warfare recruitment list. Archbishop Obinna used the new list to constitute an illegal parallel authority in Ahiara diocese to destabilize and weaken the fabrics of the diocese, to incite a fight and to sneak in their bishop. He fights an ordinary woman and everything representing the image of Mbaise with such a venomous and acidic artistry and vindictiveness that defy rationality and just cause. How does the refusal of a woman to turn against the priests of her diocese and instigate the people against them cause such a threatening and irritating presence and a nightmare to His Grace? It is all about the psychological burden of the conviction of what is wrong but for which one is gagged with the trappings of fringe benefits which make him express more power of displaced hostility and aggression against the truth in order to deliver innocent Jesus for death than embrace the courage of audacious truth to condemn notorious Barabbas. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” is the natural reality of conscience because unless in freedom we say the truth and release what we hold unjustly, it distresses our conscience and freedom and hunts us slavishly. His Grace should have avoided exaggerating his resentment and phobic aggression to a woman for displaying courageous fidelity to the truth and justice. By so doing he has shown that he who should teach the virtues of truth and justice now hates a virtuous woman for her virtues and Mbaiseness by not allowing her own hands to be tied by any promise. His Grace, we are convinced that Mbaise does not hate you or Owerri. But what is your motive for this acid resentment and hatred?

    

THE NIGERIAN BISHOPS AND PERSECUTION OF AHIARA DIOCESE

It is an established theory that the office of the priesthood is not a right of anybody and nobody takes it upon himself. But having excessive indigenous bishops in a particular given territory or province when others have none puts the sanctity of this axiom and the process in the dock. For instance our bishops know that Awka alone as a diocese has one Cardinal and have had many indigenous bishops, dead or alive by 2014, namely: Cardinal Francis Arinze in Vatican, Rome, Late Bishop Vincent Ezeonyia formerly of Aba diocese in Owerri province, Bishop Paulinus Ezeokafor in Awka diocese, Bishop Solomon Amatu in Okigwe in Owerri province, Bishop Augustine Akubueze in Benin diocese, Bishop Jonas Okoye in Awka diocese, Bishop Peter Okpalaeke in Awka diocese, etcetera. The Holy Spirit that concentrates the appointment of bishops in Dunukofia clan in Awka diocese alone is not humanly unquestionable and suspicious but suggests that Awka is either the maternal home of the Holy Spirit or they get them through the fraud of the high echelon of power brokers and friends of the hierarchy who, according to Cardinal Lehmann, “who know how things work in Rome”. The only crime for which Ahiara diocese is persecuted is to have questioned the unrighteous process of selection, the justification and junk imposition of a toxic material first rejected by his own people, as if Mbaise is a refuse bin.

There was a dangerous and suspicious delay in the pronouncement of Ahiara bishop-elect which aggravated curiosity and suspicion. Then came a circular for the priests to come with all the functional arms of all the parishes to see the visiting Nuncio. It was at the meeting that the Nuncio, Archbishop Augustine Kasujja, unknowingly broke the nauseating egg of suspicion and manipulation when he said to the priests, “we will give you a Catholic bishop”, as if we were expecting a Buddhist or Muslim bishop. This was at the height of expectant tension and anxiety for the long awaited pronouncement. It was also the time for the perfection of the manipulation mechanism to fix in the then Rev. Fr, Peter Okpaleke, which was part of the cause of the delay. The traumatizing sophistry of “a Catholic bishop”, upgraded the priests’ suspicion to confirmation that something was ominous. What is the meaning of “a Catholic Bishop”? In the same gathering, as if catechizing the First Holy Communion children, he made another dangerous allusion of those gifted to be bishops as in the gift of the Holy Spirit. After four years, a shocking revelation that the Nuncio has an umbilical fraternity with Cardinal Arinze whose brother, Fr. Opkaleke was selected, now confirm Cardinal Karl Lehmann’s opening of the scroll of monumental fraud and the meaning of “a Catholic bishop”, “those gifted to be bishops” and those “who know how things work in Rome”.

The disobedience of Ahiara diocese against the bishops is no more than standing against and rejecting this evil process of manipulation, injustice and oppression whose product is bishop Okpaleke, first rejected by his own diocese in 2011. Would the bishops insist to take the position of legitimizing evil to crucify Jesus instead of Barabbas the criminal? Would they prefer to collect the blood money of Judas Iscariot against the innocent Jesus? What image and moral baggage does this leave them with? Archbishop Obinna’s fierce persecution and humiliation of the people of Mbaise at all levels leaves no doubt of his condemnation of the innocent Mbaise to retain the friendship of the Caesars (John 19:12) and mortgage his house to get the elusive crown of a tenant Cardinal. But it is dangerous for the bishops to insist on Okpaleke in Mbaise as this would be the legitimization and institutionalization of the structures of corruption.  But let it be clear that Ahiara Mbaise enjoins the fate of John the Baptist whose head must be cut off for confronting and indicting powerful Herod for confiscating his brother’s wife. Let it be clear to both the lovers and haters of Mbaise that Ahiara diocese is suffering the fate of the poor orphan Naboth in the hand of King Ahaz and Jezebel who killed him for refusing to surrender his only land. Let it be known to her adversaries and traducers that Ahiara diocese is only sharing fate with poor Uriah in the hand of King David who, having numerous wives and wealth, still greedily with lust, grabbed Uriah’s beautiful wife, Bathsheba, and to cover his heinous act, created a deadly war front for Uriah and killed him. Like King David, Awka diocese has a Cardinal and many manipulation-mechanized indigenous bishops but would not allow Mbaise to have even one. An internecine bloody war is being ignited in Mbaise with the auspices of the Archbishop by illegally instituting and inaugurated a gang of nefarious hoodlums as internal opposition both to forge documents for Rome, to urgently ignite a physical combat and to bring in the rejected bishop and give Mbaise a bad name. There is blood in his eyes and hands in the baptism of fire in Mbaise he badly wishes it were already ablaze. He and his cohorts have started this campaign of conflict with the expulsion of Ahiara functionaries from national associations and replaced them with hatchet men. We are only alerting the world in the words of Jesus: “They will do these things because they have never known either the Father or me. But I have told you all this, so that when the time for it comes you may remember that I told you” (Jn.10: 3-4).            

  BLOOD IN ARCHBISHOP’S EYES  

Like a hireling who has spent his blood money and desperate to escape breach of unfulfilled contract, or Judas whose hatred for the betrayed innocent Jesus made the bread of love escalate his behavioral psychosis of guilty conscience, His Grace is inciting blood bath in Mbaise to deliver for his promised crown. He has put a keg of fuel by the fire expecting combustion soonest. Is it a follow up of Cardinal Onayekan’s previous request to his militants to get him by any fair or foul means, the list to show that the diocese earnestly wants Okpaleke and that he needs thirteen percent of priest defectors on his side to work with and to present in Rome?  He got the fabricated and falsified names and signatures which could not give them him the required percentage. On the 10^th of May, 2014, he wrote Rev. Fr. Ralph Madu, who himself is desperate and anxious to be a bishop that, “I am forwarding to you a mail I have just received from Ahiara Diocese, with a document that I request that you send to all or brethren bishops. It is the Communique from a group of the laity, finally coming out to be counted. Of course 117 names may not necessarily constitute the majority of Ahiara laity. But in the present context, I believe their document deserves to be given adequate publicity, given the huge amount of negative material making the rounds from those who are rejecting the authority of the Church”. Embarrassing and scandalizing, isn’t it? The Archbishop has taken further step to constitute an internal illegality that would aggressively do two things: start off internal hostility, aggression, and inferno and to conscript more supporters to sign false documents with the newly inaugurated “Bokoharam” and “herdsmen” characterized officials. Most of the people who constitute their Ihitte camp are proficiently and distinguishingly disgusting criminalized, cast in rugged notoriety and skilful malice. On Saturday, 21^st of May, 2016, he delegated Rev. Fr. Augustine  Echema to St. Rose’s Parish Ihitte, to illegally institute them into a parallel laity council and structures of illegal leadership of Fr. Clement Ebi’s “Ihitte diocese” to counterpoise the opposition to the looted power. The underlying intention is to instigate anarchy and war in Mbaise and to sneak in the bishop within the confusion. By this he assumes responsibility for whatever this riotous group will ferment in Mbaise. What is worrisome is that their natural “herdsmen” texture of barbarism and vandalism is unequalled in their unofficial capacity. But now that they are formerly legitimized and empowered by the Archbishop, one expects their worse in violence. A further dangerous and scandalous step has been demonstrated on Wednesday, May 25^th 2016 in Uromi diocese. In the presence and tacit connivance of bishop Augustine Akubueze of Benin diocese (of Awka indigen), bishops Ukwuoma of Orlu and Donatus Ogun of Uromi, two priests of Ahiara diocese were barred and forced out of the convention of the Nigerian Diocesan priests Association at gun point by two armed soldiers (or two men in military uniform?). But how could elevated clergy men condescend to this level of illegality and abysmal fascism to a people resisting corruption as if they are dealing with criminals? Should men of God go to this extent to gang up and destroy a people for their own power? I think His Grace and our bishops should have a better job dispelling the Islamic intrusion already aggressively overrunning in Owerri and entire Nigeria.  Are they so distracted by their vituperation against Mbaise for standing against evil that they neglect the cataclysm and tsunami of religious wave that will not only undermine their powers but uproot our entire religion? Why is His Grace fretting his power against little Mbaise for resisting official recklessness and oppression which they term disobedience and rebellion? We are watching him, Fr. Ebi and Cardinal Onayekan, supervising the fire they have lit in Mbaise to catch up with fuel and they would take glory in the conflagration. Fr. Clement Ebi was stationed by Cardinal Onayekan as the Saul incarnate and hatchet man to spearhead Mbaise blood conflagration. Are they trying to stereotype and stigmatize Mbaise by constituting a parallel diocesan structure to fertilize the ground for blood conflict as evidence to call Mbaise another bad name? It is clear that a grand plan is on ground by Cardinals Onayekan, Arinze, Archbishops Anthony Obinna and Augustine Kasujja, to invade Mbaise with military force to install bishop Okpaleke manipulated and “stolen goods” in a matter of months and if resisted, blood will flow. Okpaleke insists on dying a “martyr” in Mbaise than give up a loot already grabbed while the bishops maintain “Okpaleke or no other”. By this they make Okpaleke the Jesus they worship or the anti-Christ they support to destroy the church. Are they ready to say, Is the regime that is  fighting corruption ready to aid the installation of corruption by ceding any part of the Nigerian force to legitimize and install corrupt and stolen power? The world is watching.  

FR.BEN OGU writes from Ahiara Diocese in Imo State