By Josephat Omeke Esq.

Right from the biblical times, bold and outspoken priests and prophets of God such as Elijah, Nathan, John the Baptist, and Isaiah worked with such powerful kings as David, Ahab, Hezekiah among others have never been in short supply. The biblical priests and prophets were not afraid to say their minds despite the totalitarian atmosphere which then enveloped their climes and for which many like John the Baptist put their lives on the line and in fact paid the supreme doing so.

What  Rev. Father Dennis Attah of the Nsukka Catholic diocese wrote in his letter to His Excellency Rt Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi is therefore not new as worse invectives and diatribes by his spiritual forebears against notable kings existed hundreds of years ago.

What is however new and different from the  Nsukka Catholic priest’s approach was his chosen mode of communication which in the main portrayed him more as reveling in mundane publicity than delivering a solemn message.

Another new thing was the priest’s penchant for hypothesis and misinformation as opposed to the biblical prophets who were sure of their facts being prophets themselves and did not depend on hearsay.

The choice of an open letter by someone who claims to advise his brother while also using the social networks accessed by the whole world gives the irresistible impression that there is more than meet the eye.

It’s on record that when the prophet Nathan came to speak to David on his affair with Beersheba, he did so privately and achieved his purpose as David heard him. David also heard him because the man of God’s message and information were divinely true and not based on what he heard.

There was no biblical record that prophet Nathan stood on a mountain top to broadcast his concerns about David to entire Israel.

Similarly, when Elijah had something unpleasant to tell King Ahab the Bible recorded that he personally approached him to tell him about his mistreatment of Naboth. There was no biblical record that he went to the largest market in Israel to broadcast his concerns about King Ahab. So did  John the Baptist to King Herod, prophet  Isaiah to king Hezekiah, and so on.

Rev. Father Attah’s choice of an open letter in the social media to give his so-called advice is therefore a strange contraption which neither has any biblical underpinning nor graced with social or cultural etiquette. This is more so when as a senior priest of the Nsukka Catholic diocese he could have exploited the closeness of the diocesan Bishop with the Governor to get his message across to the Governor by packaging it and delivering it to him in writing or speaking to him face to face in one of the Governor’s many parleys with the Bishop and the diocesan priests. Ugwuanyi in his disarming humility would have welcomed such advice and possibly put it to practice.

Nowhere in the open letter did the priest say or claimed to have explored let alone exhausted all available communication channels as a true brother would do before settling for an open letter through social media. Rev. Father Attah thus has a lot of explaining to do to convince those who doubt his genuine intentions and who are tempted to believe that his decision to resort to social media is tainted with concealed self-interest, politics, and possible partisanship.

Ordinarily, a priest of God need not bother convincing anyone that he is not a politician or in politics as the priest tried to do, since that has never been an enviable vocation for a priest. He only did so because he knew he was threading an uncharted territory.

However, when a priest starts discussing certain politics related conspiracy theories not discernible to even practicing politicians such as a Governor’s ambition to become vice president and for which he shares a lot of money to achieve, without providing a scintilla of proof, it becomes even more difficult not to believe that he is either neck-deep in politics or associate with those who do to be able to access such kind of information.

When a priest of God starts making a grave criminal allegation in social media to the effect that a Governor collects kickbacks from contractors to execute poor jobs without a scintilla of proof other than that he heard, or that someone told him, there is indeed cause for concern and which his employer should take seriously.

Does Rev. Father Attah not know the criminal nature of his allegation against Governor Ugwuanyi and which is sufficient to put him in the duck to prove his allegation or ground a suit in defamation?  Has he provided any proof other than what he heard? This is really unfortunate.

I’m thus inclined to believe that he is too educated and exposed not to know that he has no immunity from prosecution and that he may be required to show proof of his allegation. Fortunately for him, Governor Ugwuanyi unlike those before him is too peaceful to toe that line. Nevertheless, I’m also tempted to believe that the whole thing is not spontaneous but well planned out.

As written in the gospel according to father Attah alone, there was no hunger in Nsukka land,  Enugu, and indeed Nigeria since her 60 years of independence until Ugwuanyi came on board in 2015. Food was the cheapest commodity money can buy in Enugu state while everyone was feeding fat until Ugwanyi came in 2015.

Youth unemployment which gripped Nigeria since 1984 and which it has not been able to tackle ever since has suddenly become an Enugu phenomenon and which Ugwuanyi ought to have fixed in five years.

All previous Governors of Enugu state-provided massive jobs for the youths, and building industries that absorbed thousands of graduates and school leavers in their areas except Governor Ugwuanyi. Father Attah ended up not naming a single industry built by any of Ugwuanyi’s predecessors since 1999.

When criticism is borne out of love and objectivity it is always discernible in that it acknowledges both areas of successes and weakness but when borne out of malice or ill will  everything else is condemned and rubbished.

Father Attah is aware that due to protracted poor power supply in the country, successive federal governments let alone any state has built no industry in the past three decades while those that attempted to do,  closed shop shortly afterward laying off workers. Only a negligible number of private operators are managing to remain in the manufacturing sector hence the frightening unemployment in the country.

It’s probably for this reason that former president Umaru Yar Adua declared a state of emergency in the power sector since industrialization is a big joke without power and steel. Many years after his emergency declaration, the power sector is still epileptic while mounting youth unemployment has reached a frightening crescendo and which ignited the recent protests throughout the federation.

Father Attah wants Governor Ugwuanyi as a state Governor to fix the power necessary for industrialization ( and which by the way is a federal responsibility under the constitution)in order to create jobs for Enugu or Nsukka people in isolation.

Father Attah credited Sullivan Chime with doing so much for the Udi people and attracted Road Safety Academy for Udi while Chimaroke got Law School for his own people.

It didn’t matter to the priest that all the institutions he mentioned were federal institutions and that none of the Governors would have been able to attract any if PDP was not in control of the center during their time, a luxury Ugwuanyi in opposition government doesn’t have. The much he has been able to attract such as the refurbished international airport happened to owe to his own inherent diplomatic skills and none confrontational approach.

It didn’t also matter at all to the priest if Ugwuanyi has in the past five years received far less in oil revenue to throw about as all the monthly statutory allocations he has so far collected is nothing comparable to a year’s excess crude receipts shared on a quarterly basis by his predecessors.

The social media adviser initially did not agree that Ugwuanyi has anything tangible to show for his five years of stewardship but later credited him with building roads which according to him did not matter to a hungry man. Much later he began to attack the roads as being poor in quality something he didn’t earlier believe existed.

Then he talked about Nrashi the same language Ugwuanyi’s detractors have unreasonably dramatized without showing evidence that Nrashi in the Nsukka dialect means anything else other than licking one’s fingers after having eaten. The same person he accuses of spreading hunger in the land he also accuses of giving people means to eat to lick their fingers.

It’s understandable that Nsukka people’s expectations on Governor Ugwuanyi is huge and sometimes over-bloated but the reasonable and informed ones are fully aware of the challenges he faces as a  recession Governor something Nigeria had last in 1983 and which is unlikely to abate anytime soon as oil price now sells at 32 dollars per barrel.

They are aware that the Governor despite the leanness of resources has invested heavily in the social sector like no Governor before him and for which the National Bureau of Statistics has rated him very high. Even if the Attahs of this world deny all Ugwuanyi’s achievements for reasons best known to them, it is on record that the Governor has in the past five years employed more teachers than all the governments before him put together. He did so knowing full well that education and health are the most critical sectors of any economy and which must be fixed as a matter of priority.

It’s also on record that Ugwuanyi has employed more medical and health workers in the past five years than all the previous governments combined. In the same vein, It’s on record that Ugwuanyi has employed more judges and built much more judicial infrastructure in five years than all the governments before him. The statistics are there for everyone to see.

No one is forgetting his unprecedented investment in security and law and order. To curb herdsmen menace in the state he for the very first time established the forest guard, a dignified road traffic authority, and funded the neighborhood watch like no other Governor before him. Enugu is not just safe. Somebody works for it.

Harmonious industrial relations are not left out.

Little wonder that apart from permanently banishing strikes in the state’s workforce due to regular payment of salaries, that of the education and health sectors are simply marvelous as Enugu state school children born in the past five years do not know what teachers strike is all about. That matters to those who care as education is key. Thanks to so many institutions that have recognized Ugwuanyi’s giant strides in these sectors. Enugu people are aware that despite the oil boom which characterized administrations before Ugwuanyi workers and teachers strikes were a regular phenomenon in the state.

To the social media adviser, It doesn’t matter if our schools produce fools by continuing to use PTA teachers and our hospitals understaffed provided his expectations in his home local government Uzo Uwani are met. Even then the senator resp renting Nsukka who is from the same area recently said that no Governor has done for Uzo Uwani more than Ugwuanyi has.

Rev father Attah cannot, therefore, hide under the cloak of the priesthood to play politics and spread disinformation as his public outburst is totally insincere, ill-conceived, and highly deceptive. Having thrown his hat into the ring in the most audacious and malevolent manner by leveling serious allegations he provided no single proof other than that he heard and that someone said, the cleric has by his own actions lifted his priestly veil  and made himself as vulnerable as everyone else

He should therefore be ready to receive attacks which men in God’s vineyard especially Catholic priests in this part of the country are ordinarily insulated from. A priest has no business in disinformation and false allegations as they are ill winds that blows him no good.

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