Seasonal Inflammatory Political Remarks: Fr Ejike Mbaka A Seasonal Political Jobber in the Pulpit -By Odo Christian Obinna

Some years back, while my legs were still undergoing the necessary phases of growing up, in the small town of Nsukka, bustling with history and life, I once believed in the existence of a supernatural entity called God. That entity, however, was not your regular guy above, but Fr. Ejike Mbaka. Fr. Ejike Mbaka Ọgụ, as I delighted in fondly calling him. To understand better, that was not just a name, but my god, my sense, my religion—my all, the very sum of my being and existence.

But the Ejike Mbaka some of us grew up seeing as our god and shrine is not the current hatchet man for some masked, faceless politicians blowing hot and cold every quadrennium—every four-year season of political bazaars—behind the once hallowed pulpit. Armed with spite, vengeance, and manipulation, he goes about carrying out his hatchet job for a particular faceless political entity who won his heavily monetized auction for a given political bazaar season.

Since becoming an entity capable of independent thinking and reasoning, a certain, unmistakably predictable pattern has consistently formed itself around Mr. Mbaka—a political jobber auctioning his heaven endorsement every quadrennium. Unfortunately, his specialty is inflaming an already tense political situation. However, his key targets in the polity are not those political hawks who have brutally held the country to ransom with their machievialian antics, corruption, and grossly colossal leadership disappointments, but those who are marked out as irredeemably stingy, those who are not obviously “cheerful” and “generous” givers according to the standards of his ministry.

No doubt, religious leaders and authorities have always dabbled into politics at all stages of human history, a practice dating as far back as to pre-christ era when priests and prophets were king makers, however, the practice of monetizing the anointed vial we once saw prophet Samuel pour freely, according to the favour and grace of heaven, on the poor, peasant shepherd David, is a strange practice ascribable to only modern crooked merchants of Venus in priestly robe.

In 2015, amidst the bubbles and turpsy-turviness of the gathering general elections, a voice arose from the wilderness, belting out a prophecy—a pulpital prediction, I call it. The pulpital prediction giggled out assurance, a hope of good days and the emergence of the people’s long-sought messiah in one of the front-runners of the general elections, His Excellency Muhammadu Buhari GCFR. This voice, which assured Nigerians with mathematical certainty of the magic wads this messiah held in hand to work the crumbling Nigeria into Eldorado, we must recall, was none other than Mbaka’s.

To sell his candidate and his “prophecy” to his congregation and the larger Nigeria, he embarked on a viciously vile, deceitfully manipulative, and large-scale campaign of mental, psychological, and emotional calumny against the then president, His Excellency Goodluck Jonathan, mudding his name by ascribing a spiritual implication of badluck to it. A run of bad luck that killed any hope of a better Nigeria in the spiritual realm, just as it did to his former bosses and political backers, to see his fortunes metamorphose from mere deputy governor of Bayelsa state and vice president of Nigeria into governor and president, respectively.

While Nigeria under Goodluck’s captaincy, no doubt, was dangerously on a precipice of failed states, Mbaka’s motives for endorsing his bitter rival as the heaven’s candidate were suspect, which later events would show as a disguised investment he thought his ministry would reap bountifully from. After shamelessly seeking a contract from Aso Rock and being roundly rejected, he made a U-turn on his support for Buhari’s government, dribbling whatever “spirit” had previously fed him with his “prophecy.”

After the 2015 general “investment” failed to produce returns, the 2019 political season provided him with yet another ample opportunity to recoup his 2015 “loss” by pitching his pulpital tent with any generous donor. This time, he was all out, with bestial strength and vigor, to recoup all he lost in the last season of political harvest. This bore effortless view in the length he went, the unapologetically shameless manner and the bubbling passion he exerted in calling Mr. Peter Obi, running mate to His Excellency Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the 2019 presidential flagbearer of the PDP, to the pulpit, to donate to his ministry.

Mr. Mbaka took it upon himself, right in the pulpit, to elect himself heaven’s spokesman, spitefully declaring the heaven’s rejection of Obi alongside his running mate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, after failing to guilt-trip him into parting with his money for an unknown project.

Barely three years after and a year to another year of political bazaars, Mr. Mbaka is out again, sending unmistakably signals of his strong leaning, not even for posterity’s sake nor for a remediation of his stray path, towards not breaking free from this age-old, established pattern strung around his neck—a quadrennial political man in the pulpit stirring the polity against those “heaven” is against for not greasing his greedy palms with enough minted papers.

In a video circulating online and dated June 15, 2022, Mr. Mbaka is seen spitefully and maliciously maligning the good reputation of his runaway catch, Mr. Peter Obi, now the Labour Party Presidential Candidate, as a joker and stingy man who would never become a president in Nigeria. It’s the same old pattern repeating itself again and again before our very eyes—maligning the reputation of his fellow politicians and coming out later to sell his “prophecy” of their rejections by heaven in favour of another fellow politician, this time, dubbed “messiah,” his candidate or the highest bidder in his heaven endorsement auction—and begging answers to so many nagging questions, one of which is why a priest will continue to brazenly and with reckless abandon desecrate the holy sacrament, the hallowed pulpit, his calling, rebel against the hierarchy of the church and utterly disregard the sensibilities and diverse political sentiments of his congregation with his mindless political jobbing right in the pulpit.

An average Catholic knows the inviolable place of the holy sacrament in his spiritual and religious life, but a supposed priest of God and the church, by rescinding or playing down on an apology earlier made to Mr. Peter Obi before the consecrated eucharist, Mr. Mbaka has treated the sacred character and mysterious significance of the holy sacrament to a costly meal of disdain and violation. The bitter, sad reality is that Mr. Mbaka has become his own deity, spiralling out of control and eruptively dangerous, a perilous situation requiring no art of divination to appreciate why the Catholic Diocese of Enugu has not been able to contain his excesses. The diocese has become overwhelmed, possibly at its wits’ end on how to wrap a final hand of solution around the string of occasional headaches Mr. Mbaka offers the diocese and the Catholic church at large. They have learnt from experience—one of such experiences being how Mr. Mbaka’s cult following laid siege on the court of the bishop of Enugu Catholic diocese the last time the diocese put the cleric on a court arrest, vandalising property in the process—to tread with utmost caution in whatever they do to unseat this fragile glass of fire dangerously sitting on a keg of gunpowder.

While we leave the diocese to sort out its headache, we should not forget the time we are in again—another season of political jobbing and its swathes of amusements, intrigues, and fascinating manoeuvrings. Perhaps even more promising and thrilling spectacle is our quadrennial ritual of yawning hungrily after Mr. Mbaka’s ceremonial unveiling of his heaven’s candidate—Nigeria’s political messiah, in a more relatable parlance—who wins his political auction of heaven’s endorsement! 

Odo Christian Obinna writes from the University of Ibadan, where he is currently pursuing a degree in law. thegreatcitizen1997@gmail.com