January 14, 2026 was a day the Catholic world, Nnewi Catholics
and the Nnewi community as a whole had
looked forward to: the dedication of a
Cathedral, at the spot where Catholicism
started in Nnewi. Nnewi, the centre of motor parts business in Nigeria and the
industrial base of the East was to host
the highest congregation of Bishops in Nigeria and the Okwuani Cathedral would
be FULLY dedicated to God. Preparations were top notch, involving protocol, security,
‘item7’ and efforts to ensure that the ‘Catholicness’
of the event was untainted. The event
lived up to its billing. Men and women of timbre and calibre attended,
including Peter Obi who however he tries, would always cause protocol
nightmares and distract activities due
to his crowd-pulling capabilities.
The
host Bishop, the attendees from the Catholic world across Nigeria and the
planners were already celebrating the successful dedication when the whole world experienced the AKACHAAM
moment. One Louis Okoye, also
known as Ebube- Anedo, who was fully dressed in a knightly regalia, removed
his shoes, shook the dust off those shoes and with barefoot (so that the soil would bear him
witness) declared that he had ‘kachaaed’;
that he was leaving Christianity and Catholicism. His reason was
that late Ifeanyi Ubah( with whom he had spats while he
was alive) who ‘built the Church’ was not recognized by the Bishop. The man
showed a good knowledge of the Bible because Christ directed his disciples to
shake the dusts off their sandals wherever they were not welcomed, as an
evidence against the town ( Mt,10:14; Acts,13:51). However, I do not think that this scenario
fitted into that Biblical directive. I don’t know if Ifeanyi Uba(IU) or his
family commissioned him to do this ‘aluta’ on their behalf but the man’s
antics drew global attention because he claimed to be a knight, a defender of
the faith. And when a defender of the faith publicly denounces the faith (apostasy)
with such level of theatrics, one wonders if he were actually of the faith and
if he understood what Catholic knighthood was all about. The akachaam moment was also an
indictment on the knighthood recruitment process but that is not the issue in
contention here!
I
declare that IU was not an acquaintance of mine in any way and that I never had a one-on-one
interaction with him. But unlike Dave Umahi, I will not say that I never met
him before. I met him in public twice at an Ndigboamaka function where I was a
guest speaker and he was a guest of honour( At Colonades Hotel, Ikoye Lagos)
and when I represented the Idu
Cabinet when he presented an
ample quantum of security equipment to
Igbo-Ukwu. I had also met him online when I x-rayed
the gubernatorial candidates in Anambra
State and declared Anambra 2013: No to Uba, No to
Ubah.( Andy Uba and Ifeanyi Uba were amongst the contestants). This is
a summary of my ‘relationship’ with the
late senator.
IU had a bulldozer physique and he usually
bulldozed his way around and that was why and how he asked the then Bishop of Nnewi to bulldoze the existing Cathedral so that
another, built in the image and likeness of IU would be built. ( Such old
structures overseas are kept as historical monuments and even in Nigeria as in
the case of Holy Cross, Lagos)! However, for whatever reason, he could not fulfill his pledge to build the Cathedral
and the current Bishop asked him
to hands-off the project, and then
invited the entire faithful of Nnewi ( and even beyond) to get involved in the project. As this was happening, an expenditure of
about N224 incurred with the authorization of
I U, the former benefactor was , and is still, outstanding.
As
things stand, the failed knight and his supporters have contend with two BHALs( Big, Hairy and Audacious Lies).
One, that IU singlehandedly built the Cathedral. I believe
that he contributed to the Cathedral project but it is not the
Cathedral built by IU. His relationship with the Cathedral was a
dramatic one and the issue of whether he
built or did not build the Cathedral was already in the market square before
his demise . One pro-Ubah friend of mine
said that he completed the Cathedral but
that others painted and furnished it. This evidences that he did not ‘build’
the cathedral because a building goes beyond its physical structure!
Eventually, the Bishop, who initially
kept quiet so as to avoid ridiculing the dead or his family, publicly gave a glimpse of the extent of involvement of IU in the Cathedral.
He said that IU did not put any money
into the cathedral from 2011 (10 years before he came on board) to the date of dedication; that he turned the
Cathedral into a junkyard and workshop for his political branding materials;
that the church spent about N1.5m to
remove the junks that IU littered all
over the compound and that his favourite
pastime was to be taking pictures with
the cathedral building in the background ( surely for campaign purposes). Of
course, he restated the debts which he owed the church because of he did not
pay the accumulated bills(N224m) which
he authorized the church to incur.
The second lie was that IU was NOT acknowledged by the Bishop.
The truth is that IU was acknowledged
and appreciated orally and in writing by
the Bishop and the Church. He as the only person mentioned as a contributor to the church project. Other
Diocesan officials like Fr Aghulor,
Chairman of the Dedication Publicity Committee
had detailed how he was acknowledged, including the special prayers for benefactors, in which IU was a key figure. Unfortunately the failed knight and his
supporters, boxed themselves into a muddy corner by arguing that the acknowledgement or appreciation was
not good enough or adequate. Words like
good, enough, appropriate and
adequate are neither objective nor
scientific. They are subjective and
depend on the person and the circumstances. When the butcher of Zamfara( who
stole physical cash government coffers,
without any attempt at laundering) amputated Jangede for cattle theft or used
scarce foreign exchange to import an under-aged
girl-wife from Egypt, he believed
that those were the best and most appropriate
things to do. While half a wrap of swallow or a spoon of rice is always enough for the son of man, some people ‘demolish’
four of such wraps or one full bowl and still ask for more. Consequently,
anybody who bases his thesis on ‘good’, ‘adequate’, ‘enough’ has already shot
himself in the foot!
It
is also obvious that the agenda being
pursued by the akachaam exponent is
both suspect and inchoate. The locus upon which he has based and continues to base his crusade against the Bishop and
even the Church is also shaky . He is not a son, brother, cousin, staff or
agent of IU. Indeed, the things he was
alleged to have said about IU makes him the least qualified to lead the ‘Ifeanyi
Ubah Vanguard’. Sure, people
need not wait until it touches them directly before protesting but the public interest concern being pursued should be obvious . He has called for a regime
change in Nnewi Catholic diocese; he has ventured into the field of
criminality when he declared that
Reverend Fr Nwagbara ( from NNewi) and Fr Obi( from Okija) died under suspicious circumstances because
their names had been forwarded to the
Vatican many times as
favourites to the Bishop-hood of Nnewi. May be
he was the private secretary to the Bishop
or our Ambassador to the Vatican to have known those whose names were
circulating in the Vatican! He also dragged the whole Catholic and Anglican Bishops in Anambra State into the
fray by alleging that that IU gave ALL of them fresh Ford-Ranger @ N38m each. I don’t know what this has got to do with the
issues at stake; maybe they are all guilty of gross ingratitude! He had
declared that he would pick
& choose the Priests that
would lay their hands on his head. And
just recently, he declared that he would ONLY become a Christians if all the
churches would become one and focus on
true worship instead of money. And he might as well become the Chairman of ACMO(
ALL Churches Men Organisation). He is
speaking as if he doesn’t know the ecumenical efforts of the Catholic Church
over the years. He can also use his newly acquired online capability to start the One-Church
movement.
Beyond
displaying his shallow knowledge of Catholicism ( some say he left Christianity
about 5 years ago), he has successfully
created the Akachaam
industry’ of which he is the chief beneficiary. You see his face ‘everywhere
you go’ online these days as he is busy canvassing his positions on diverse issues and he is receiving visitors as an emergent
celebrity. He was particularly exhilarated that Fr Angelo Unegbu led a
group of men & woman of God from all
over the globe to visit him. I think he
has even created the Akachaam TV. He
also boasted that he has created wealth for some online warriors who have leveraged the akachaam moment to
increase their social media presence, visibility and traffic. He has given some singers,( some of them content
creators) both old and young , a new
lease of life as they form emergency akachaam
orchestra singing melodious akachaam
songs with all seriousness. He
has enriched the Igbo-lexicon as ‘chaam’ is now added to several
words to indicate ‘ I no do again’. So, we
now have ‘Anuchaam;( I no marry
again); Abachaam( I no enter bus here again), Emechaam( I no do again) Ebichaam(
I no live here again) Enyechaam(
I no give again), aguchaam( I no study again), elichaam( I no eat again)
and the one that concerns me ‘edechaam’,(
I no write again) and ekwuchaam( I no speak again). And
just the other day, the Chairman of MainMarket Traders Association acted
Achichaam ( I no de lead again) and
Aluchaam,( I no de work again )while some traders initially
intoned Azuchaam! (I no trade again)
There have been several
reactions to the akachaam episode. His comrades
in knighthood have disrobed him,
citing the rules which he had violated by his antics. The Anglican Community of
Nnewi asked him to have a rethink. Fr Mbaka asked him to repent and apologise
for which he called Fr Mbaka some
unprintable names. One sircardinal said
that he was no longer a Catholic as he
had become a core traditionalist with an
okwu-alusi
in his house’ and was once sacked by Ifeanyi uba because of his
antics. Had Said IU was killed by an
evil spirit and should be his corpse deposited in the alusi. He had once
described the Late Senator as the worst thing that happened to humanity.
Another conmentator had said that as the sheperd left 99 sheep in search of a
lost one, the Bishop should go in search of Akachaam but the Bishop
had responded that what he needed were prayers
because he was( is) not well. Pastor Ephraim Oninye advised him to
continue kachaaing so that God would have time to attend to the
numerous committed supplicants. He
reminded him that Gods yoke is simple and that
nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, while advising him to go and try the various umudibias and ezenwanyis
( if there are still some in Anambra) and see the difference, reminding him that he was not ‘churching’
for God but for his own spiritual wellbeing. Fr Nwebejoy stated
that he did not build the cathedral, that
the value of the building that was bulldozed was more that whatever IU put into
the Church and that many people contributed, probably more that the Late
Senator ( including those who donated the land).
Church building is a collective and communal undertaking but as Akachaam stated, there are many others who built Churches for the Catholic Church. But these persons completed the churches and handed the keys to the Bishop. It is improper for somebody to appropriate the title of ogbuagu ( lion-killer)when there were a dozen hunters in the expedition that killed the lion. Akachaam referred to the attention given to Charly Nwangbafor and PO. Well, IU was not a sitting or former governor and due to act of God, he was missing in action. Probably if he were present , maybe, just maybe, the dynamics of this matter might have been different. What would I have done? I am not Bishop Jonas Benson and I am not likely to be in his shoes. But we must recall that the relationship between IU and the Church had broken down irretrievably long before his death because of the failed project. Akachaam also regretted that a requiem Mass was not said for IU in the cathedral and that his corpse was not wheeled in, even if for one second into the Cathedral. If he were Catholic enough, he would have known that everything done in the catholic church has laid down procedures and that the Bishop will not do whatever he liked because of Ubah. He had also said that if not because the Governor was present, he would have snatched the mic from the Bishop and renamed the place, St Ifeanyi Uba Cathedral. I only wish that he had tried this!
In all this, his major
achievement is the online cobranding with late Ifeanyi Uba, mobilising all anti
Johnas Benson, anti Catholic and pro-Ifeany Uba frces and becoming the face of
IU commemorative ressurgence. He sought attention or attention
shoughtb him accidentally and now he is
basking in the euphoria of that attention.
Akachaam has kachaaed! He has a right
to say and do so; after-all, Christianity is based on a personal relationship with
Christ . If a person in a relationship decides to pull out, there should be no
brouhaha about it. However, given his perceived standing in the Church, I had expected that what would have led to such nkacha should be
something so grievous that any ear that hears or eye that sees it will cringe. To kachaa because of this IU matter looks ‘opprobrious’. He has
exposed his shallow and pitiable understanding of Christianity in general and
Catholicism in particular. Was he churchig for IU? And he has moved from the res
to other matters, seeking regime change,
‘countermoting’ the Church and its officials, throwing uncultured, foul language into the mix. May
be he is trying to live up to his name, Ebube Nnewi( The glory of Nnewi) as he raised the issue of protocol failure when
somebody was addressed as Royal Father of the Day in the presence of the
Igwe of NNewi. But I believe that there are many other ways of glorifying Nnewi. He has also
jumped into Ebube Anambra as he speaks ‘for the good of Anambra’ but I am yet to see the good of Anambra that
he is promoting. He is also trying to raise himself as an authoritative voice on this and that. But walking out of
Christianity does not make him an authority on anything apart from on AKACHAAM.
He has
created the akachaam brand and has added to Catholic dedication
processes because Churches planning dedication now have an extra
prededication prayer-point: that there should be no Akachaam!
Well Edechaam. I wish the young man well as I say Akachaam,Ndo
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