The blistering exchange last week between the Presidency and the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria and in particular, Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja John Cardinal Onaiyekan reminded me of the tussle in Manila in the 1980s between the Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin. The outspoken Archbishop once declared himself to be “the Original Sin,” and he regularly fired broadsides at Marcos and his extremely flamboyant wife, Imelda Marcos.
In the wake of the Iranian revolution of 1979, an angry Marcos told newsmen that Sin “is trying to be a Khomeini,” leader of the revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran. Trust pesky reporters; they immediately ran across the street from Marcos’ Malacanang Palace to the Cathedral and told Sin what the president said. The Archbishop laughed heartily and said, “If there is a Khomeini, then there must be a Shah.”
The katakata here started on Tuesday last week when President Tinubu granted audience to a Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria delegation led by their president, Archbishop Matthew Ndagoso. Google search engine describes Catholic Church as “the single largest Christian denomination in Nigeria with an estimated 20 to 30 million adherents, possessing a widespread network of parishes, schools and hospitals.” Not a group to be trifled with, especially with elections coming up soon.
If Foreign Ministry diplomats were to issue the communique after that high-level private meeting, they would nimbly describe it as “frank and businesslike,” diplomatic code for sharp disagreement. We might not have known exactly what transpired, if not because three days later, Cardinal Onaiyekan featured on Arise TV’s Prime Time and gave us a run down. The bishops’ statement, read by their President Ndagoso, complained that Nigerians are hungry but the president said [correctly, I think] that “there has always been hunger” in Nigeria. Only that, it is now his duty to end or at least to ameliorate it.
The bishops complained that the economy is in a parlous state and that it is crushing ordinary families. The President however insisted that the economy is on the rebound due to his Administration’s reform measures, even though the benefits are yet to cascade all the way down. The bishops, who as far as we know are not running for election, expressed concerns about public confidence in INEC to conduct a free and fair election, but the president assured that INEC is neutral. The bishops said there may not be a level playing field in next year’s election, but the president, by now exasperated, said “Whoever wants power should be ready to wrestle for it.”
From all indications, the Presidency didn’t like what the Catholic Bishops said, but in truth, this is not the first time in the world, even outside the Philippines, that Catholic priests took it upon themselves to, as they see it, tell the truth to power, often at great personal and institutional cost. Old timers like me will remember liberation theology which flourished in Latin America in the 1980s. At the time, almost the entire region was under the boot of brutal dictators, some military, some civilian, a few of them clerical. They ranged from Jean Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier in Haiti to Ephrain Rios Montt of Guatemala, El Salvador’s far-right death squad leader Roberto ‘Major Bob’ D’Aubisson, to Nicaragua’s General Anastacio Somoza Debayle, to Panama’s General Omar Torrijos, to Brazil’s Generals Ernesto Geisel and Admiral Joao Figueirido, to Argentina’s Jorge Rafael Videla to Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet and all the way to Paraguay’s absolute dictator for 35 years, General Alfredo Stoessner.
With all opposition voices silenced in Latin America, scores killed and tens of thousands imprisoned or exiled, the priests took it upon themselves to speak out. They paid dearly for it, including high-profile 1980 assassination of Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador Oscar Romero while he celebrated mass, and the brutal harassment of his successor, Arturo Rivera Damas.
Before my friend Temitope Ajayi reaches for his sharp pen to fire salvoes at me, let me quickly state that there is no basis for comparison between President Bola Tinubu and Ferdinand Marcos. I do not know if Cardinal Onaiyekan aims to become the Original Sin of Nigeria, but last week, the Presidency certainly thought of him as one. Presidential media aide Ajayi wrote that “There is something fundamentally inappropriate about Cardinal John Onaiyekan granting a television interview to offer his own account and interpretation of what transpired during the private meeting between the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria and President Bola Tinubu. It is, in my view, an abuse of clerical privilege.”
Look at it this way; if a meeting was private, what civil society people call “Chatham House rules,” then the Presidency was probably right not to expect to hear the transcript of it on television. On the other hand, one can understand the bishops’ worry. They knew very well what their parishioners are thinking; if they did not publicise what they said to the president, the dangers of misunderstanding are real. Not the least because, as one social media wag wrote at the weekend, almost all the people who go to see the President are believed to be seeking contracts, lobbying for appointments, seeking endorsement for their political ambitions, and assuring the president that they are “standing on his mandate,” the anthem of Nigerian political sycophancy.
Not that this is a new problem in Nigeria. During the Abacha era when we were at New Nigerian Newspapers in Kaduna, our managing director Prof Abubakar Rasheed made spirited efforts to gain government assistance for the newspaper. He lobbied several elder statesmen in Kaduna, that it they managed to see Abacha, they should put in a word for New Nigerian. Finally, an elder told him, “Look MD, whoever manages to see the Head of State, has many personal issues of his own. No one will have the time to put in a word for you.” Or, for that matter, for down trodden folks.
Ajayi wrote that “The bishops requested an audience with the president, he graciously granted it, they presented a catalogue of the country’s economic, social and security challenges as they saw them, they were dismissive of the other great things done by the administration, but the president listened patiently and responded.” The matter should have ended there, Ajayi said. How could it? If you have a flock of 30 million parishioners waiting to hear what you told the president, surely you have to find a way to let them know, even before you climb the pulpit on Sunday? Maybe going on a TV program was not the best way, but the bishops could at the minimum have leaked Ndagoso’s speech to the media.
Ajayi said “None of the issues raised by the bishops is beyond scrutiny or rebuttal because their assessment is neither scripture nor an article of faith.” Certainly; the bishops apparently misfired when they demanded for the return of mission schools to their owners, an issue more appropriate for the states than for the Federal Government. As to the economic, social, and security conditions in the country which the bishops painted in unflattering terms, Tinubu argued that his administration has laid the foundations for recovery and that “the country has emerged from a dark tunnel.” As things now stand, probably no bishop or priest will stand on the pulpit and give this assurance to his flock; perceptions here are dead set against the official line.
The Presidency was also irked by the bishops’ contention that with respect to internal security, “the country is bleeding.” Ajayi wrote that “the bishops, like other Nigerians, rely largely on media reports and public information,” while “Commander-in-Chief receives operational briefings, intelligence assessments and battlefield reports unavailable to the general public…. He possesses information unavailable to the generality of the people.” Trouble is, with respect to insecurity and the cost of living, the public might also have information that is not available to the President. Parish priests hear stories of woe directly from IDPs and other distressed citizens, while the information available to the president from officials is carefully nuanced and edited. Of course, the President reads newspapers, watches TV and has some friends and associates, but the rawest of raw information is more available to parish priests than is found in official files.
Ajayi also wrote, “To assume that criticism delivered publicly is the only form of truth-telling is to misunderstand how government works. Presidents are exposed daily to competing advice, conflicting intelligence, uncomfortable assessments, and hard realities. Presidents are constantly confronted with information, much of it unpleasant. The real question is not whether they know the truth but what choices they make in response to it.” I suspect that is true. Problem however is that “lived experience,” to borrow a phrase that Ajayi used earlier, is that information hidden in official files hardly generates the response of political leaders as much as publicly revealed information does. The PFIPC scandal, for example, was known to top government officials since at least last year, but a probe was only ordered when it became public. Even the Orire kidnap saga may not have attracted the sweeping security response had it been mentioned only in secret files.
So, Presidency, you should be grateful to Cardinal Onaiyekan for offering himself to occupy the vacant seat of Original Sin in Nigeria and to continue where Jaime Cardinal Sin left off. Hear not only from friendly visitors such as City Boys and anointed APC governorship candidates from various states. Every now and then, listen to an Original Sin, even if he follows a meeting with a television expose.
