By Kayode Idowu
If he were to suddenly pull off his cassock and take to stomping on the soap box, Catholic priest and Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministry, Enugu Nigeria (AMEN), Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, has enough cult following to make a successful career switch. He went momentarily out of circulation last week and his ‘disappearance’ triggered a mob reaction that dislocated the calm in Enugu where he is based and reverberated across the country. He is only a parish priest in the Catholic church, but he has a big profile on national canvass.
Mbaka fights battles on many fronts. Call him a political priest and you’re bang on point. Against the run of stiff reservedness and shyness from murky politics that characterises the clergy, he swims in the murk and openly pitches camp with political actors as negates conventional priestly neutrality. He usually makes his alignment known through prophetic projections that he has been quite lucky with fulfilment rate. But his fiery political activism tips him much of the time onto collision course with the Catholic establishment of which he is a serving cleric.
Following an alarm over the ‘disappearance’ of Mbaka last week, protest rocked the Enugu State capital as irate youths hit the streets to demand his whereabouts. Reports said he was known to have been summoned a couple of days before by the Catholic Bishop of Enugu Diocese, Most Rev. Callistus Onaga, and had not returned since; and when he didn’t show up for his usual Wednesday morning prayer at his ministry, parishioners stormed the Bishop’s Court asking that he be produced. Waving tree branches and leaves and chanting solidarity songs, the protesters vandalised the bishop’s residence amidst speculations that with his facilitation, Mbaka had been arrested by the Department of State Security (DSS) over his recent criticism of President Muhammadu Buhari.
When Mbaka resurfaced some hours down the line, it was to wild jubilation by his followers who trooped out to celebrate his reappearance. Visual clips showed him in some triumphal parade: riding in an open-top motorcade and acknowledging cheers from the exultant crowd. He was subsequently reported saying his disappearance resulted from his ‘incarceration’ by the diocesan bishop, whom he accused of conniving with other interests to detain him because he earlier spoke fondly about Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Leader Nnamdi Kanu. The priest said he was let go only because his followers protested his unexplained disappearance. Speaking late Wednesday, he alleged that upon showing up for the summons by the diocesan bishop, the Catholic leadership assailed him with a raft of charges and the bishop ordered him into isolation that was to last 30 days – a retreat touted as a window for him to pray and meditate over his activism. He said he requested to be allowed the opportunity to come and address his parishioners after which he would shut down, but they said no. “I also begged them to allow me send another priest to come and celebrate mass for you today, they said no,” he told the parishioners, adding that when the church leadership saw the protest over his disappearance they allowed him to go.
Mbaka claimed the church took on him for blessing Nnamdi Kanu, saying: “Are you the owner of my mouth? You can’t tell me who to bless? If you are not happy that I blessed someone, you have your own mouth, you can curse the person. They didn’t treat me in a pastoral way and I was asking: what am I being punished for? They said it was a meeting, but even before I reached the bishop’s house they had drawn their conclusion.” Alleging that the plot was to keep him in solitude for 30 days and thereafter send him to Rome and shut down Adoration ministry, he recalled another charge against him being his recent criticism of the Buhari government. Alluding to his support for the leader IPOB, which government has declared a terrorist group and proscribed, he said: “I cannot hate my brother because of some people whose hate is in their genes.”
Last week wasn’t the first time Mbaka had a head-on with the Catholic establishment. He openly supported Buhari for the 2015 poll that brought him to power and predicted the defeat of then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan who was seeking re-election, and in early 2016 he was transferred from Christ the King Parish, Enugu GRA where he had been parish priest for many years to Our Lady of Rosary, Emene Enugu – a move he described as a calculated to make him suffer. His supporters alleged at the time that the church leadership was pressured to take the step by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to which Jonathan belonged. Now the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration of President Buhari likewise comes under suspicion of engineering his current travails. In my view, though, chances are high the Catholic establishment isn’t under external influence and is rather self-pressured for the sake of its image to rein in Mbaka’s political activism. Only that such exertion is needless, because the priest has built for himself an image personal and distinct from the church.
Mbaka is by himself loud and controversial. But it was crass expedience by the political elite that gifted him the attention he commands. Because his predictions largely get fulfilled, political actors court his alliance. Early in his romance with the Buhari government when he visited Aso Rock – even being a private citizen – he was personally received in audience jointly by the President and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. And in the aftermath of the 2015 election, the President was reported celebrating him as a rare embodiment of courage and credibility; with presidential spokesman Femi Adesina, in a statement, saying the President rated a sermon Mbaka preached against Jonathan’s candidacy one of the best exhortations he ever heard from the pulpit.
The fiery priest, however, apparently has thresholds and has now turned on Buhari over worsening insecurity in the country, only that government isn’t cheering his courage. In a recent ministration, he berated Buhari’s performance and called on him to resign honorably or the National Assembly should impeach him if he fails to resign. “What is happening in this country is heartbreaking, tears-shedding, nerve-racking and mind-blowing. Can our security agent and leaders account for us how many people have died under one week or month? Students being kidnapped from the university and there is a leadership. It is either they are involved in it or they should stop or what is happening will stop them,” he stated. Against the backdrop of having predicted the advent of Governor Hope Uzodinma of the APC in office and removal of his predecessor Emeka Ihedioha of the PDP by the judiciary, Mbaka had harsh words for the Imo helmsman, saying inter alia, “Buhari, Hope and those who want to fight me, remember there was a time God told me to support you people, now God has told me to withdraw and prophesy against you.”
But the presidency says it’s all sour grapes, that Mbaka is angry because he was turned down when he led some persons to the President to solicit contract as payback for his support. According to presidential spokesman Garba Shehu, President Buhari rebuffed the cleric because he “doesn’t break laid down rules in dealing with contracts or any other government business for that matter.” Mbaka has since acknowledged leading three experts who offered to help with Nigeria’s security challenges to meet with Buhari during his first tenure to no avail, arguing that he acted in national interest and not personal interest.
Whatever the motivation for Mbaka leading contractors to the presidency, it was poor discretion that he sought to cash in on his support for the administration. Not that he is famed for discretion, considering a 2018 video showing the priest lampooning President Buhari allegedly for being stingy and unwilling to make donations to his church which has resurfaced on social media. Still, if the failed contract bid was in Buhari’s first term and he yet supported the President for the 2019 poll, his protestations now can’t be dismissed as sour grapes. There is more.
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