It still bugles the mind that somebody in his right senses in this part of the world could walk up to the Altar of God, grabbed the microphone from the Alter Christus, Christ himself represented by the Priest, and began to reign abuses on him, simply because of mere pursuit of a transit of power.
We had tried to restrain ourselves from commenting on this, hoping that it could be a slip, or a newspaper’s imagination, but since the story is trending in virtually all the national dailies, we now believe it to be true.
We do not know the type of provocation that could have forced the said politician to boldly move up to the altar to attack the minister of God, but no matter what it was, there are places that are considered sacred beyond which no ordinary person can enter, much more going in there to fight.
Even in our traditional religion, such holy places do exist. For instance, if you are being pursed by a masquerade, and once you step your feet into a shrine, the masquerade will simply turn its back and stop pursuing you. But in our present “enlightened society”, a lot of absurd things do happen almost on a daily basis and we simply wish them away.
The good thing about Christianity is that nobody fights for God. You leave God to fight his own war because He is capable of doing this. Christ himself did not fight back when they were beating him, spat on him and did all sorts of despicable things on him. He merely prayed that God should forgive them for they did not know what they were doing.
In the same vein, we pray that those who descreted the altar of God to attack the Archbishop should realize their folly and make amends. They should realize that it was not just Archbishop Obinna as a person that they had attacked, but Christ himself, who he represents.
In 1973, the Sole Administrator of East Central School Board, Dr. Offish Nwali did not find it funny that a whole building could be set aside for the worship of God, while school children sat under the mango trees to receive their lessons. Accordingly, he ordered that the Blessed Sacrament on the altar of repose be pulled down for school children to take possession of it.
The Church saw this as sacrilege. She did ask the faithful to rise up in arms against the governmental authority. Rather, she called for prayers and atonement for such sacrilege.
It was very unfortunate that Offiah Nwali was to lose his entire family a few years later in a plane crash. Much later, the man equally ended his life in a mysterious circumstance in a fish pond.
Need we remind ourselves of the case of Reverend Hyde Onuaguluchi who overzealously in a television programme, allegedly broke a crucifix? Hyde was one of the most promising and flamboyant politicians in the Third Republic, but try as he did, he could not make any headway in politics as the thing continued to hunt him. That made him to abruptly end his political career.
Therefore, let Rochas Okorocha and his son-in-law, Uche Nwosu, learn from what happened in the past to those who fought the Church.
