By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka, the spiritual director of the Adoration Catholic Prayer Ministry, Emene, Enugu State, is in the news again.
Yes, you guessed right. For the wrong reason.
The man loves hugging the limelight with relish. He is a religious showboat, who never allows any opportunity to make the point that he is also a political godfather slip by.
And that is the crux of the matter. The man who should be busy taking care of his flock as a good shepherd is wallowing in the political arena, throwing pebbles into already muddied political waters. He is inebriated with the ‘fiery priest’ appellation. He equates himself with the prophets of old like Elijah and Jeremiah but without their charisma, forthrightness and candour.
On Sunday, December 2, Mbaka upped his political game, insulting President Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), predicting doom for both men in the 2019 presidential poll.
Their crime? They refused to play the role he scripted for them at his church function.
Mbaka turned the occasion of the 2018 harvest and bazaar of his church to a forum for dispensing political favours and predictions based on the fatness of his victims’ wallets and their willingness to bequeath a significant chunk to his church.
He predicted political doom for Buhari claiming that after his prayers made him president, he refused to do the needful.
He narrated how his ministry’s prayers saved the president from death in 2015 and said anybody with the president’s ears should warn him that no one cheats God, ominously predicting a possible relapse if he does not show gratitude.
Turning his attention to Atiku, Mbaka said if the PDP presidential candidate does not come personally to the adoration ground to execute a project, he would be disgraced.
But it was his very condescending treatment to Mr. Peter Obi, the PDP vice-presidential candidate, who was physically present at the adoration ground, that irked many.
I will come back to that shortly.
First, let me declare my Christian bona fides. I am a Catholic. After half a century in my earthly peregrination, it is too late for me to seek God outside the Catholic fold. I will die a Catholic.
Like most Catholics, I didn’t become one by choice, I was born into the faith.
My mother, a retired school teacher, who remains a doctrinaire Catholic, raised us to believe that priests are infallible and beyond reproach. Till date, she hardly disagrees, not to talk of criticising a priest. On the few occasions she did, she will first pray for God’s forgiveness for daring to call out an ordained man. She is that fervent.
So, I grew up adoring priests. Though I am not as zealous as my mother and as someone not given to the faith-induced proselytisation that rules the religious world, I still revere priests and overlook their foibles.
But Mbaka’s unprovoked attack on Obi, former Anambra State governor and a Catholic himself was outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour. His language was beyond the pale.
“If Atiku continued on the same trajectory, he and his running mate would end in shame,” Mbaka told his highly embarrassed guest, haranguing him for not doing anything for his church and warning of the consequences of stinginess.
Obi’s crime was that he refused to be inveigled into publicly announcing his donation.
Rather than assuaging him, the politician’s promise that he would get back to the church and let them know how he would help made an enraged Mbaka fly off the handle.
“God hates stinginess. What I am saying is not to please you, but what will save your life. Otherwise, you and Atiku will fail … the way you and Atiku are moving will end in shame,” he ranted.
Mbaka’s behaviour was not only disgraceful but disgusting. Priests of the Catholic Church don’t behave that way.
What saved the day was that Obi, whose younger brother is a priest and elder sister a nun, was dignified all through the harrowing episode. He kept a straight face and even smiled as he refused to succumb to the blackmail of a con artist in cassock.
But many questions concentrate my mind. What did Mbaka think he was doing? Speaking truth to power?
How can a Catholic priest descend so low to extort money publicly from politicians in return for favourable prophesies? Is it true he made Buhari president in 2015?
If yes, why did his prediction this year that Gombe State governor, Ibrahim Dankwambo, would be the next president of Nigeria fail?
For donating N20 million, Mbaka pronounced Senator Hope Uzodinma, the Imo State APC governorship candidate “the next governor by the grace of God.”
Is that what the predictions are about? If Obi had bequeathed a N50 million largesse to Mbaka on Sunday, wouldn’t he have declared him the vice president in-waiting?
Fr. Mbaka thinks he is smart. That is why he would schedule his ministry’s harvest and bazaar, invite politicians and put them on the spot.
But he has no right to do what he did to Obi on Sunday.
He does not enjoy the privilege of ex-cathedra whether on matters of faith and morals or politics.
His pronouncements are slanderous. Yet, decorum and reticence are the hallmarks of Catholic priesthood.
In 2011, when the then Imo State governor, Ikedim Okahim, had issues with some leaders of the Catholic Church, who, in their desperation to scuttle his re-election, accused him, falsely, of flogging a priest, Mbaka, without hearing from the accused, jumped into the fray.
He condemned, abused and cursed Ohakim. To add insult to injury, he released a song that pilloried Ohakim and effectively buried his second term bid in a heap of egregious falsehood.
That was not only mean-spirited and uncharitable, it was unchristian. Though human beings like all of us, by virtue of their calling, Catholic priests are expected to navigate on higher moral waters.
When did the apostolic tradition of self-denial become an anathema? No priest should use the bully pulpit of the altar or even the singular privilege of being a priest to blackmail and insult others for selfish reasons.
Coercing people to make generous donations in exchange for conjured prophesies is fraud.
God can never be burlesqued. Mbaka is behaving like the nza bird in Igbo folklore that overfed itself and challenged its personal god (Chi) to a duel. He is beginning to take himself too serious. He has become arrogant, proud and cocky. He must watch it.
He claims to be Nigeria’s ultimate political kingmaker and politicians who throng his adoration centre feed his elephantine ego.
He believes he can get away with blue murder. Fr. Mbaka believes he is above the law knowing full well as the German philosopher and economist, Karl Marx, wrote in 1843 that “religion is the opium of the people.”
He is so confident that not even the indignation of the Catholic hierarchy bothers him. He is conceited.
But isn’t it said that pride goes before a fall? Like all blokes who think they are clever, he will sooner than later overreach himself. Superciliousness will be his Achilles heel.