The September 2004 session of the Catholic bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) came out as an intellectual force which is decidedly competitive with other alternative voices in the Nigerian firmament, including that of the Nigerian Labour Congress. If the Bishops praised some tendencies in societal affairs, they also condemned others; in either case flexing equally powerful mental and moral muscles. Their forthrightness provokes comment.
As a point of departure, there is a bit of a paradox in the catholic clerics saying: “we condemn all fetish practices”. This ignores the church’s matter of belief, i.e. the assertion that their circular brad (or “communion”) offered to “communicants” is the “flesh” or material body of Jesus Christ, is profoundly fetishist. Likewise, the insistence that the wine which a priest who conducts a ceremony of worship (or “mass”), is the physical “blood” of Jesus.
Fighters for political freedom in Kenya who called themselves the “Mau Mau” (thereby associating themselves with Mao Tse Tung’s successful guerilla welfare in China just across from the Indian Ocean) swore their fighters to loyalty death by eating meat into which those taking the oath together has dropped a drip of other’s blood. The association of blood of another combatant ingested into one’s body with unbreakable loyalty in Kenya was not far from the allegory of the blood of Chris shed for the freedom of a believer from the chains of immorality on human conscience and the challenges of upright living.
The other side.. of fetishism in the Catholic Church’s rituals of worship are: the distinguished robes of priests, nuns and “brothers”; the ringing of bells, buming and spraying of smoke from incense during moments of inviting Christ into inhabiting bread and wine as a vital core of the worship drama, as well as vocal incantations and deployments of the hands of the priest for distributing blessings to worshippers. The very appeal of Catholicism (and the Anglican mode of worship) across 11lral and urban Africa could be linked to the shared integration of ritual and fetish practices into moments of worship and contact with the supra - human and supra - natural. The vigorous statement by the Bishops that: “we condemn all fetish practices”, is clearly immodest and one-eyed.
Their corollary condemnation of “the Ogwugwu shrines in Okija and similar shrines in other parts of the country”, clearly needs to benefit from a much more cerebral and elaborate intellectual dialogue with the traditional body of law which underpins the gruesome consequences so far exposed by the Police. The Catholic Church is engaged in intensive and extensive “dialogue” with other faiths, including Islam and Hinduism. The dignity with which this dialogue is handled cannot be denied to Igbo traditional systems of worship and religion - legal practices with a cavalier and condescending levity with roots in European missionary racism. Okija has come in the footsteps of the beatification of a future saint from this same cultural area. It offers a rare opportunity for a deep and rigorous interrogation by both systems of worship and search for justice in human affairs. The church holds a legacy of intellectual brilliance and grandeur which gave Italy and Spain the renaissance. The Bishops throw a most welcome jab at the PDP government, and party, for conducting a politics in which “opposition is subverted and sabotaged”. They probably had the travails of the Nigerian Labour Congress in mind. Considering that the clergy in Africa have denied themselves the heroism and dignity which their brethren in South America gave their peoples through “liberation theology” (often e en when the Pope and the Vatican’s bureaucracy condenmed them), this blow for democracy is a welcome gestures. The Catholic clergy in Nigeria missed a great opportunity to have its priest inside South Africa actively fighting apartheid from inside South Africa and Namibia. And likewise, in Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe where those trained in Catholic schools (Samora Macheal, Augustinho Neto, and Robert Mugabe) fought long was for freedom against European economic and political power.
However, the church has new challenges to rise up to. The destructive wars in Southern Sudan and Uganda are cases in point. The war in No them Uganda has lasted for over 18years, displaced over two million people, abducted over 20,000 children. According to a United Nations official, victims are “living in squalid and cramped camps” in which “malnutrition among displaced children in up to 21 percent”. There have been no hands of Nigerian Catholic Bishop for the victims to kiss and hold on to. The situations in Haiti and Iraq are equally critical. Pope John Paul IV visited both countries. President George Bush used his co p against President Betrand Aristide in Haiti as a practice run and signal for the c up against Sadam Hussein in Iraq. In both countries the destruction of the social, political and economic structures of society became President Bush’s much prized trophies. The Catholic Bishops in Nigeria may have to explain their profound silence over, and distance from these much protracted tragedies. The bulk of people of Haiti are Nigerian in their roots. The bishops also assrted that: “we should begin early to prepare for the 2007 elections.” One immediate meaning of that injunction is probably that Babangida and those ready beating the bushes for an against him are not in the camp of the Bishops. Which raises exciting hopes for novel faces in Nigeria’s politics in 2007. The other immediate meaning is that the Bishop have ignored President Obasanjo’s dictum that the primary focus of public discourse and political action should in 2004 be on tying to achieve good political and economic governance between 2004 and 2007.
Senator Jibril Aminu has with considerable anger, suggested that those focusing on 2007 elections are subjecting Nigerians to mass hypertension by moving them from one election fever to the next. In this regard, the focus by the Bishops on elections 2007 may have diverted them from, as they say, “putting the searchlight” on the over thirty political pm1ies that are now in the opposition. The Catholic Bishops ignore failures by opposition pm1ies to do intensive research on the Nigerian condition; to use their public funds for developing alternative policy visions in prim my school education, technical education; answer the question of whether or not “foreign exchange earnings” should be deposited in banks in other countries for overseen businesses to borrow while the Nigerian business sector wallows in poverty; what initiatives opposition politicians have for eliminating secret cults in educational institutions; the grace in Professor Soludo’ s 25 billion naira law of nature, etc.
The intellectual labour from under the tall cups of the Catholic Bishops should not fade away from public view “in vain”. It deserves a lost of “talk back” and “think with”. After all the caps have their African earthly ancestry in the ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs when the unity of the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom was symbolized by the cap with two peaks, While wearing the caps, however, they must also recall that from under those Ancient Egyptian caps black Africans gave human civilization ,as we know it today Mathematics (Geomehy and Algebra), surgery and pharmacology, architecture, literature and religious foundations of the two major religions Islam and Christianity}which came out of the geographical boundaries of the Nile Valley. For we are entitled to ask for the Emeagwali, the Wole Soyinka, the Chinua Achebe, the Fela Kuti on the altas of the Catholic Church in Nigeria, and Africa.
