UCHE EZECHUKWU on MONDAY (in The Union) Who Will Call Father Mbaka to Order? This progression for most ‘men and women’ of God hardly varies. They start off as humble and pious, attracting following and fortunes with their charisma. Then, they graduate into becoming self-appointed mouthpieces and spokespeople of God, loosely described as prophets. Next, they start playing God, and becoming extremely proud and presumptuous, hearing, obeying and respecting no other voices but their own. They start enjoying it when their followers start to worship and reverence them, in place of God. When that happens, God being ‘jealous’, withdraws His spirit, leaving a vain, spiritually-hollow vessel behind. This last, fatal stage is unfortunately, where Reverend Father Camilius Ejike Mbaka of the Enugu Adoration Ministries of the Catholic Church seems to have currently found himself. The young, boyish-looking priest suddenly sprang onto the public consciousness in the later days of the 1990s with his fiery messages of hope and social justice immediately became the toast of the down-trodden and the pious, first in the Enugu area and later all across the South Eastern part of the country. Before long, his brand of spirituality which involved attracting the faithful to the life of adoration and prayer seemed to have worked perfectly, as was manifested by the throngs that came to Enugu from all corners of the country to Enugu, for his famous Wednesday all-night adoration sessions. Many devotees spoke of miraculous outcomes and answered prayers which invited more followers; especially as the tendency of Nigerians to blame either God or the Devil for their most practical predicaments became more and more entrenched. As Father Mbaka became the new lord of the manor in Enugu State, daring the government of the day at every bend, confrontation with the Chimaroke Nnamani government became inevitable, and the regular theme of Mbaka’s homily – night after night – became the abuse and incitement of citizens against the Government House, against which he urged his mammoth followers to invoke the ‘Holy Ghost fire’ every night and day. He also alleged attempts by the government on his life – allegations that were only believed by his gullible and fanatical adherents, but hardly by the law enforcement agencies or the more cerebral members of the public. The cautious efforts of the Catholic Church hierarchy to curtail what were being quietly seen as the young priest’s excesses yielded only feeble results as influential Catholic individuals and groups continued to invite and host Mbaka to their parishes and homes far outside his Enugu Diocese. In most of those places he went to preach and ‘perform’, Father Mbaka raised enough dusts which oftentimes pitied groups against others, leading to a lot of eyebrows being raised amongst the leaders of the Church. There was even an instruction that before he would be invited to any parish outside the Enugu Diocese, a special permission had to be obtained from the bishop. Such was the influence – or the nuisance factor – of the priest whose Achilles Heel seemed to be his inability to put his mouth in check. Systematically and steadily, Father Mbaka’s ministry grew both in size and stature, while his fame also grew across the nation, especially through his music which his band turned out frequently. He ventured into businesses, especially into the bottled and sachet water business which sold like hot akara, especially as the gullible consumers had been made to believe that Aquarafa, which is said to mean ‘healing water’, has miraculous qualities. So, economic prosperity and huge fanatical following must have combined to make Father Mbaka feel invincible and more powerful than the Catholic Church that had ordained him a priest. It was no wonder then that he became very reckless both in his utterances, actions and demeanour. Some people even believed that he had started thinking that the Catholic hierarchy was no longer competent to regulate his activities or utterances. In recent years, Mbaka started assuming the right of speaking on issues of the Church even outside his areas of authority or competence. For instance, in August 2014, he ruffled feathers when he castigated Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, who he alleged had issued a dud cheque of N50 million to the Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri for the rehabilitation of the Maria Assumpta Cathedral at the state capital. The Catholic hierarchy at the Imo State capital was so miffed by such inordinate interference that the Archdiocesan Vicar-General, Father Patrick Ibole had to issue a public dressing-down of Father Mbaka, pointing out that, “Father Mbaka does not have the facts and should not talk about what he does not know”. It was obvious that if Ibole had been as unrestrained as the Enugu priest, he would have said many more unprintable things about him. Nevertheless, Father Mbaka continued on his path of a falcon that no longer cared to heed the falconer. He soon ambled into another controversy, uninvited. There is an existing stalemate in the Church over the refusal of some influential members of the clergy and laity of the Ahiara (Mbaise) Diocese over the new bishop, Rev. Dr. Peter Ebere Okpaleke who was named as the new bishop of the diocese. The entire hierarchy of the Catholic clergy, including the Catholic Conference of Nigerian Bishops, are standing behind Bishop Okpaleke while the Mbaise faithful have stubbornly stuck to their guns. In the midst of this stalemate, Father Mbaka, who, like every priest of the Catholic Church, had taken the Oath of Obedience to the Church, started making pronouncements on the issue, declaring that, “the right thing should be done”, and seeming to identify with the stand of the Mbaise naysayers. That act caused not a few raised eyebrows in the church across the country. Not to be outdone, Mbaka went ahead to ruffle even more feathers last year when he re-opened the case of former Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State, whose political fate Father Mbaka had helped to seal in 2010 when he made a widely disseminated song claiming that the governor had flogged a Catholic priest, Rev. Father Eustace Okorie, for allegedly obstructing his convoy. The rest is history as all the spirited efforts of Ohakim and his political partners came to nought as the allegation made him to lose the election to Rochas Okorocha in 2011. Four years later, and after Ikedi Ohakim had gone on a “thanksgiving” visit to Mbaka’s adoration ground, the priest started singing a new tune. He claimed that Ohakim had not flogged Father Eustace as the Catholic hierarchy had made the world to believe and as he had personally amplified through his popular music. In Mbaka’s words, “It would be wrong for Ohakim to go to his grave with this false accusation. I don’t care whether he is running for election or not, but it is not good to punish an innocent man…” The way it was, Ohakim was not going to his grave but was preparing for the PDP primaries for a gubernatorial comeback and had wished to oil his way back through Mbaka’s Adoration ground. The impression building up now is that Father Mbaka has been transformed 360 degrees into a political supermarket where politicians now purchase support at a handsome price. The grumbling is now that the Enugu Adoration Ground is no longer for Catholics, but for any other person, including Muslims and Buddhists, once they can pay the right price, in cash or kind. If that were not the case, how would one explain that just last November, Deputy Senate President, Chief Ike Ekweremadu took the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan to Mbaka’s adoration ground, where the ‘man of God’ went haywire with his ‘prophesy’ over how God had told him that Jonathan would win the February re-election and that Buhari would bite the dust in his quest. And just last Wednesday, the same Father Mbaka, quoting the same perfect, unchanging and consistent God of the Christians, said unprintable things about the president, saying that God had revealed to him that Jonathan would lose the same election. In the process, he revealed how fake he had become by a series of non-factual points he presented, proving to anybody who has even an iota of understanding or revelation of God’s ways that what he said are not from God. Incidentally, the contest between the parties, or who will win the presidential election is not the key element for me and most other worried Nigerians while discussing this issue. For me and most other Christians, especially we Catholics, what is more worrisome is how easily people who have been favoured with certain uncommon charisma can easily throw them away and sell their souls to the Devil, the tendency which the likes of Father Mbaka are drifting towards. Does God, who is the author of truth, speak from the two sides of the mouth, as Mbaka now does? Is God talkative or does he ever speak in vain? Mbaka, has in recent times reeled out statements which he claimed to have got from the Holy Spirit, but which turned out false. Is our God a man that he can lie? Father Mbaka should watch it before the power and glory of God totally depart from him as they have from people who took the name of God in vain. Most of us are not men of God, in a manner of speaking, but we do not lack the sense of discernment, as we now lament that the acts of the types of Mbaka are bringing a lot of indiscipline and disrepute to the Body of Christ. Father Mbaka should not overstretch his luck when he fails to honour God by lying against Him nor respect the feelings of his flock by under-estimating their capacity to get angry with him. For starters, Mbaka has the right to leave the Catholic Church and start his own if he feels he has become too big to bow to the dictates of the codes of behaviour of the Catholic Church. Before then, the bishop of Enugu should call him to order, for he is becoming too much of an embarrassment to most of us Catholics.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 07:31:45 +0000
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