rest in peace”. Similarly, some priests in Edo state have rebelled against the appointment of a non-local as a bishop in the Archdiocese; they have been joined by some members in the laity, traditional leaders, some pressure groups and a few prominent people from the state. The agitation in Benin is the most vociferous and persistent in recent times and some supporters have used some of the earlier precedents as justification for their actions. They have gone as far as going to the courts to enforce their demand on the Church, an interesting effort at Caesaropapism by the laity. Among their demands are: the appointment of a Bini priest as bishop and the removal of the current bishop, Augustine Obiora Akubueze; the conduct of Mass in Bini language on Sundays at prime time in all parishes; distribution of Bibles and Missals written in the Bini language; the reinstatement of earlier dissenters, among others.The orthodox denominations seem to be more affected by such ethnicist agitation than the newer denominations, probably because of their strong hierarchical organisation and wide spread around the world. While the Anglican Communion has long given in to such demands in many parts of the country, the Catholic Church has long resisted these moves. This is not surprising as the Catholic Church throughout history aimed to be the Universal Church of God including people of all races and ethnicities while the Anglican Communion is a product of British nationalism and rebellion against the Catholic faith.There are many reasons supporters of such actions have given, most of them political and virtually none religious. Feminist want a female pope because they see the Church’s doctrine on priesthood as discriminatory, and they want a symbolic acknowledgement of the female population in the Catholic faith. Campaigners for a Black pope say that religion and religious observance is declining in Europe and increasing in Africa and much of the developing and underdeveloped world and the Church needs to reflect this. The dissenting priests in Mbaise contend that the town is the “Ireland of Nigeria” producing so many priests; so, they say, it makes no sense to have an “outsider” as the bishop of their Archdiocese. The parochial ideologues in Benin argue that the use of the Bini language and the enrolment of more Bini priests would help evangelisation in the state.
For balance, we also need to talk about members of the mentioned demographics who do not agree with these people. On the appointment of female priests, some point out the effect that wanton reformation has had on the Anglican Communion; you approve female priests, then you must approve openly gay priests and change the church rule on celibacy. For the agitation for a Black pope, the fact is that the Church has a larger share from Latin and Spanish-speaking countries than Africa and a Latin American pope would be more reflective of the Church’s makeup than an African pope; also many African priests openly flout Church rules on celibacy and some get married openly. To the protesting priests of Mbaise, some other priests and laymen have argued against the anti-Catholic nature of the priests condemning them as being myopic about the universality of the Church; some priests under the same Archdiocese are embarrassed and complained that their brother priests were “dragging the issue to a grotesque level”, and the Catholic Archbishop of Owerri Ecclesiastical Province, Dr. Anthony Obinna, has spoken up against the protesters. To the Bini nationalists in Edo state, the issue of the insufficiency Bini priests in the Church has been ignored; not many attendees or priests speak the language as Edo state is multiethnic, which informs the insistence of the agitators that priests learn the language, which is not practical or sustainable as the Church posts priests to parishes where there is a shortfall from other parishes, usually outside the state or even outside the country. Senator Rowland Owie and Rev. Palmer Ikponmwosa, a local priest, have spoken up against the dissidents in Benin, the former challenging anyone of the protesters to a public debate. The insistence on one local language to be used in parishes under the Archdiocese – which include Dioceses in Warri, Kogi, Ondo, Auchi, Bomadi, and Uromi – mirrors the expansionist aspirations of some members of one minority ethnic group having ambitions and egos many times their proportion in size.

The question many seem not to be asking is why the great interest in the leadership of big and widespread Episcopal churches around the world, and particularly in Nigeria. Why would feminist, who think the Christian religion is oppressive to women, be interested in the papacy instead of being content with witchcraft which a lot of earlier feminists went into because they felt both male and female deities are treated as equal in the Wicca religion; why would a non-Catholic government official travel all the way to Rome to try to lobby the papacy to install a local as bishop; why would traditional leaders, who also adhere to traditional religion, insist on the appointment of a bishop from their domain? One word summarises the reason for all this – Money. It is the same reason feminists complain about the composition of boards of directors of big companies, but not about the genders of plumbers, carpenters and ‘danfo’ drivers. The same reason the protesters in Benin complain about the Archbishop when a local priest is sent to a rural area but not when the same priest is sent to an urban parish.

There is corruption in the Church and it is important that the Church authorities address it. Corruption in the Catholic Church and the way it was handled contributed to events leading to the Great Schism and was the cause of the Protestant Reformation and eventually, and the breakaway of other smaller denominations from the Church. The people insisting on local priests holding high positions in the Church hierarchy may argue that that would help with evangelisation, but the question that needs to be asked is why and how the ethnic origins of the bishop prevents members of the laity from preaching the gospel to local people.

When the African branch of the Church was undeveloped and relying on the missionaries and funding from Europe, most of the priests were foreigners and that did not hinder evangelisation; what has changed? Well, the Church has grown and is generating a lot of funds from the local communities. The Church is also involved in many developmental projects in such communities. Many members of the Church are interested in getting contracts and patronage from the Church and they feel that having a priest from the community would make that easier. Having a bishop of the local community, they reason, would increase the chances of having local bishops which in turn would help their businesses. This is a battle that Catholic priests have been faced with in the various parishes, but might be reluctant to speak out loud. The Church tends to be secretive about such negative influences within their ranks and this only makes things worse; the issue of paedophile priests that blew open and embarrassed the Church is a case in point of how secrecy can be unproductive. Nigeria is a corrupt society, and the Church has not been spared the onslaught of corruption. The priests themselves are from the society and are thus influenced by the corruption. For as long as corruption is a big factor in Nigerian society, this is something that the Church would have to contend with and fight against. Many of the strict policies the Church adopted was to address corruption in the early Church: the Church’s policy on celibacy was to address the ambition of earlier Church leaders trying to impose  their children as future leaders and converting Church administration into a patrimony; the oath of poverty sworn to by the priests and religious was to counter the effect of greed of the early Church leaders had on the Church that was the result of the temporal powers the Church acquired in the 8th century. It seems the Church would have to adopt new means to challenge the corruption in African society and the effect it is having on the Church.

It would be too drastic to suggest that the Church should no longer be involved in developmental projects. If anything, the Church needs to be more involved in such projects. I commend the Anambra state governor for handing over the missionary schools back to the Church and I urge other state governments to do the same. The Church leadership need to be ever more careful and picky about the characters it chooses to head committees engaged in developmental work. There might be need for the enactment and enforcement of conflict-of-interest policies for members of such committees. The Church also needs to be weary of the influence Nigerian Protestantism is having on the members and the priests. The more recent emphasis on tithes and “sowing a seed” that some parishes are experiencing is a dangerous turn of events. No doubt, the Church members need to be generous and to causes both in the Church and outside. But they must know exactly what causes they are contributing to and the funds should be properly accounted for and the Church financial records audited regularly by independent professionals.

The Nigerian government, both past and present, has not done a good job of inspiring a national feeling among Nigerians of various ethnic persuasions; any effort in that direction has not gone beyond banal platitudes and prevarication or even outright contradiction. It is not the responsibility of the Church to inspire a national feeling among countrymen. While the Church has tried to emphasise the universality of its mandate and the superiority of the Christian identity over nationalist aspirations, it has also been affected by cultural conflict both within the Church and outside which have been divisive – the conflict between the Western and Eastern Churches resulted in the Great Schism. The Church has to confront these divisive tendencies on the Christian faith. The people in support of whatever parochial agitations – whether they are Italians, Igbo or Bini – should be condemned and shown up for what they really are, greedy people fighting for access to Church funds. Members of the faith should speak up against such move even when the agitators are members of the same group. We cannot keep waiting for the Vatican to resist provincialism by appointing leaders from outside the contentious area. We must support people like Rev. Ikponmwosa, Senator Owie and Dr. Obinna who are speaking up against their own people when they go wrong. The danger in letting others speak for us is that they are immediately dismissed as “foreigners” in support of colonisation. The projects carried out by the Church in Benin, which include hospitals and the training of local priests abroad, benefit the locals more than any so-called “foreigners” or “visitors”. If we allow the shouts of a few who paint the training of local priests abroad as a ploy to scheme out the “sons of the soil” and we succumb to their demagoguery, the inevitable would happen – Church attendance would decline in the area, projects would decline and the mission schools would be no better than the
government schools. We must all act now to prevent the same disease that has afflicted the Nigerian government from infecting the Church. We must save Nigeria and the Church from Nigerians.

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