OPINION

Church goofs for barring members from Igbo cultural activities
By Odimegwu Onwumere

The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Diocese of Ohaji/Egbema in Imo State, was reported in the Saturday Sun of August 10 2013, pg5, as having said that its members should no longer participate in wake-keeping and (Igbo) cultural activities. Since I read that crass position of the Capitalistic church, what came to my mind was, of who do these churches in Nigeria preach their message.


They have made everything that once worked for our people to be christened devil and demons, which the modern day people, who do not make research to understand who the real demons of this world are, have swallowed hook, line and sinker. Hence, Europe continues to extort African mind, after colonialism. But we shall understand who the real demons and Satan of this world are, as we burgeon on, in this treatise.

Such would not have been happening among us if we had not been mis-educated. Europe and America mis-educated our people with the introduction of their destructive individualistic way of life, non-separatist agenda. Africans anywhere in the world, it is natural that we have a rethink. As if their mis-education of us wasn't enough, they tag us "BLACK people" while themselves, "WHITE people". Hope we know what these represent? BLACK in the jaundiced mindset of these peoples against us is a product of impurity/unholiness; while WHITE represents purity/holiness. What do we call “Black Sunday”, “Black Monday”, and other Black days? Their example of us is by painting their imaginary Satan BLACK, which invariably they made to represent Africans, while they painted their imaginary Angel WHITE. But do we not in earnest know who the real Devils of this world are? We must vindicate ourselves from the Europe's and America's subjugative mental and spiritual slavery against us. It's not normal to live with anomalies. They introduced democracy with an undertone definition. What Prof. Tam David-West would describe as “serial lies”.

The principle of democracy can't be restored all over the world. Reason being that its proponents were the merchants and craftsmen of the Feudal era, who became industrialists and moneymen through enslaving of the majority who worked for them, called Serfs. The few who dominated became the bourgeoisies. It's imperative to say that democracy is the reformed Feudalists' enterprise. These people hid under a neutral name as democracy to further their act of Feudalism, which was a manual way of enslaving people to Capitalism, which is the technological way of enslaving people. Why is the greatest wealth of the world in the hands of few countries? In Feudalism majority of the people worked the lands owned by few people. As a result, democracy isn’t the government of the people, for the people and by the people; but a government of the reformed Communalists, for Feudalists, by Capitalists.

The above is exactly what the church represents; the agenda of reformed Feudalists. It was because of this kind of thoughtless sanction to the bamboozled members of the churches in Nigeria that a John Henrik Clarke once cried above his voice and said: They laughed at your clothes; and made you change your clothes, they laughed at your names; and made you change your names; but most importantly, they laughed at your God, and made you change your God. Clarke was referring to the colonialists who made us to hate our ancestors for the praise of theirs. Africans who know their onus and how we were colonised into accepting anything European without questioning, are angry and want the misled Africans to have decolonised hearts.

Okay. Let’s us go bible to understand that barring our people from attending Igbo festivals is even a crime against nature, which the Jesus they have always done everything to water down our throats also did not support, because he was a powerful traditionalist and culturalist without blemish. I’m writing about the Jesus as recorded in the bible, not the questionable prototype historical Jesus that is regarded as Tutankhamun, which the church and its agents will not tell its congregants of, where it’s pursuing lucre and call it religion.The church’s cynical mindset against our cultures and traditions have replayed the stories of "Osiris" and "Horus" down through history and attached to a host or "redeemers" like Tutankhamun, Chrishna of Hindostan, Budha Sakia of India, Odin of the Scaudinavians, Zoroaster and Mithra of Persia, Baal and Taut, "the only Begotten of God," of Phenicia, Indra of Thibet, Bali of Afghanistan. Jao of Nepaul, Wittoba of the Bilingones, Thammuz of Syria, Atys of Phrygia, Xaniolxis of Thrace, Zoar of the Bonzes, Adad of Assyria, Thor, son of Odin, of the Gauls, Cadmus of Greece, Quexalcote of Mexico, the Divine Teacher of Plato, Adonis, son of the virgin Io of Greece, Quirinus of Rome, Prometheus of Caucasus, Mohamud, or Mahomet, of Arabia, and finally Jesus of Nazareth...”

To show us that the Jesus was a supporter of peoples tradition and cultures. John 2:1-11 records that on the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” “Woman,[a] why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.[b] Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now. 11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

If it were in Nigeria or any part of Africa in the modern times that this Jesus even encouraged drinking of wine, he would have been barred from festivals and cultural activities. This could be the reason an elderly friend of mine, S. Davis, a scholar from Kittery Point, Maine, who is humble to the rim has said: The educational system and curriculum left in place by our former colonial masters has put the ZAP on our minds and made our people indoctrinated ignoramuses robbing us of the knowledge of self and kind. The assault of religious imperialism that has resulted in cultural genocide and amnesia making us wish to be something that we are not, worshipping somebody else's ancestors from a BOOK that our ancestors never knew and making us forget our own. Well, THAT DAY HAS COME TO AN END.

But the church in Nigeria has always wanted our cultures to die, because the Constitution gives it and Mosque, Arabic and Western privileges. The church in our country would tell those it has misled or is misleading that our people were killing twins and people for our Gods, if not Christianity. Hooey! Thank you. But I'm not sure how many lives that Christians killed to institutionalise Christianity and is still killing. World Wars 1 & 2 didn't consume that number. Go and read “THE SECRET TERRORISTS” by Bill Hughes and be shocked who killed Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and some other American leaders who were shot. Go and read this book and be shocked of who still controls the governments and wars of this world, and who perpetuated the war in Vietnam, and who sank the Titanic and who are carrying out the many other unprintable deeds ongoing in the world. What the church in Nigeria continues to do is to rubbish and destroy our cultures and traditions using propaganda to label them witches and wizards; when universities in the West are studying Occultism and Magic and inventing things that would better humanity. The church in our country is busy shouting, “Praise Thy Lord!” Bunkum.

The church in Nigeria would continue to brainwash its adherents of how our forebears sacrificed human beings to the deities in a bid to making them hate our cultures and traditions. But the same church would not tell them of how the God in the Old Testament of the Bible was killing people and destroying property in mass, even sending nations packing. The church will not tell our people that the idea of hating our names, cultures and traditions were Europeans’ impositions on us, as a result of colonialism.

For e.g, Hausa/Fulani people were being educated in their Koranic or Arabic ways. But when the colonialists came, they churlish that system of education and imposed theirs, where the people had to be forced to embrace Western education. This is the same way they made us to feel inferior of our names to embrace theirs. Today, how we marry is being replaced with theirs. A lot of things... I'm not sure that the church in Nigeria knows that the same colonialists, who introduced the paper-God to it, were the people who sold and convinced us into slave trade. They sacrificed us on the seas while on voyages, impregnated our ladies and cajoled us in their houses and humiliated us tremendously in their farms in Europe. (Have you read “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” by Walter Rodney?). These are the people who distorted us. They made their angel to be ‘white’ and their Satan to be ‘black’. Invariably, their God is also ‘white’.

This could be the reason my powerful friend S. Davis continued to say: When you accept the religion of your enemy and oppressor you become your own enemy and oppressor. You defend your enemy and your oppressor quicker than the enemy or oppressor defends himself. You protect your enemy and your oppressor better than the enemy or oppressor protects himself. You love your enemy and your oppressor more fervently than the enemy and oppressor loves himself. You identify with your enemy and oppressor more than the oppressor and enemy identifies with himself. You out-do your enemy and oppressor because you want to be as much like the enemy and oppressor as possible. Your enemy and oppressor hates Africans and African culture, and Africans who love their enemy hate themselves and their own cultures better than their enemy and oppressor does and tries to outdo them in doing it.

He goes further to say: Your enemy has taught you to love him so much that you worship his image as God, Jesus and the angels every Sunday in church, on the walls of your homes, in your heart and in your imagination to the extent you cannot conceive it being anything else. This is how your enemy and oppressor has put the "zap" on your mind and when we become our own enemy and oppressor we put the "zap" on our children's mind from generation to generation and we have done this so much and so long that we think that this is normal, we think this is the way it is supposed to be and should always be. We even think it’s a good thing, the best thing that could have ever happened to Africans. And when your brother comes to you as says, "Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose NONE of his ways." (Pro 3:31), you not only treat him the same way as your oppressor does but you do it much worse and you start looking at your own brother who tells you this like he is your real enemy. The zapping of the African mind is a TERRIBLE thing!

How I wish that the Dogmatist heading the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Diocese of Ohaji/Egbema in Imo State and its like that scatter around Nigeria, have read Bishop Desmond Tutu's "God is not a Christian". How I wish!

I once saw a Catholic Reverend Father reading a book on metaphysics, which the modern day churches 'propagandaically' sold out as occult book. Astonished! I asked the Father why he was with the book. "This is also the WAY of GOD," he told me. I had known the potency of such book. But a dim-witted Nigerian Christian would tell you how SATANIC it is to touch it, let alone reading it, even to practice Yoga. A friend of mine said: Metaphysics is a core course in philosophy which is studied in all catholic major seminaries. In fact, he continued, one cannot get the grasp of some areas of theology without a knowledge and application of metaphysics. Only the 'small mind' is confided to a particular area in the pursuit of knowledge. (Just as the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Diocese of Ohaji/Egbema in Imo State, is confiding our people to believing that our festivals and cultures are evil, whereas clerics read metaphysics in seminaries, because Europeans and Americans write them?). It's indeed, a pity.

I still remember my grandfather, Oji Ofo (Nze) Ihebuzoaju Onwumere. When our tradition was at its expedient, he made sure that he was as holy in thought, just as he was in deed. I still remember that he trembled and feared Chi'ukwu. Greed, lies and abominable practices were not his. He loved humanity to a fault. He made sure that Ofo na Ogu (Justice and Equity) reigned supreme in his daily activities. But how many of us still apply Ofo na Ogu in our day to day activities upon the numerical churches that are everywhere and their deafening “Praise Thy Lord” even at odd hours? People are so impatient these days. Everyone flares up at little provocation. Endurance has been sent on errand. Truth is bought with money. Ofo na Ogu is replaced with copiously so-called holy writs. I still remember my grandfather, Nze. He hated evil practices and held Ofo na Ogu supreme.

In Igbo mythology, we believe that ndidi amaka (patience or endurance in good). But the church in Nigeria says, no more. In the churches today, many persons who bear Endurance or Patience as name, are being made by their pastors, to change the name, with the view that their unprogressiveness is ENDURING, because of their name. What these persons and their (mis)leaders have failed to comprehend is that, the world is about how much one can bear, and how much one can endure. This is why I like the word Endurance. There can't be an ending without a beginning. I endure, because through Endurance, I'm experienced. And no experience is a waste. If the pastors want people not to Endure anymore, they should also make them to hate Faith, Humility and Fortitude. Whether our name is Endurance or Progress, one thing is that success has not been a charity, even to those whose names are charity. We must endure, both in Jubilation and Tribulation. Our fates are not in our names, but in having patience.

A man whose two eyes is blind, but is with an open mind, is better than one billion men, who can see, but with blind minds. This thing God they personified is just a FORCE. You can experience it as ENERGY, depending on your realm. Others experience it as Light. In Igbo, Chi is ones personal ENERGY. (Onye n'Chi ya). When you attain the highest realm, you experience Chi-ukwu (Biggest Force). In the later, such component as Chinaeke (Force that creates) is fad. This is why it's believed that this CREATING FORCE is with women, not men. It's because this FORCE is ‘within’ that Igbo people believe in Odi n'ala. It translates to THE FORCE IS WITHIN. This FORCE isn't founded by man; seekers attain it, unlike in most beliefs. This FORCE is practical in seeking for it, than a paper issue.

The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Diocese of Ohaji/Egbema in Imo State wants to despise our cultures and traditions. But what these ‘churcheos’ Nigerians have not recognised is that the Europeans and Americans they are following are not save. Not even a dog can go back to her vomit. The West is doing that today. The same West that its people came to our land for the establishment of their god in papers, saw us as Animists, because our lifestyles were modeled towards having piety for every creature on earth, they said no there is Jehovah or Yahweh in Jerusalem. They castigated our working and practical belief-system and instituted theirs.

Alas, the same West is today introducing things that were regarded as abominations in our land and they call them Human Rights. It is surprising how the West has introduced three religions: Christianity, Human Rights and Democracy and, none, is yet with the potency of saving humanity. The potency is in Odi n’ala! Yet, hardly is anybody winking here. But all I know is that the West has been visited by Karma for its atrocities in our land and its centre is ramshackle.

I will be ending this piece here, because of space and time. I’m ending it, because I know that our people hardly read long notes again. But for most of our hoodwinking and hoodwinked elements and the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Diocese of Ohaji/Egbema in Imo State, who perceive Igbo belief-system as demonic, please read this from Naiwu Osahon.

It is observable what Osahon has written: Christians wear medals, crosses, crucifixes, rosaries, and other objects of their religion as pendants; eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus in Holy communion; wrap psalms in pouches, or scapular charms made from pieces of cloth, to carry about on their bodies on in their vehicles as talisman; sprinkle blood of Jesus all over the place or drink it to ward off evil forces; put bibles under pillows, and crosses on their walls, for protection; kneel before priests and 'fetishly' stuffed altars in supplication; retreat regularly for vigils to pray and chant endlessly, clutching rosaries, pendants and other religious symbols, to their ancestors, (saints, Jesus, Yahweh etc); go on pilgrimages to their holy lands to touch and kiss stones, walls or worship rivers and mountains. When African traditional faith followers such as Sango, Yemoja and Amadioha adherents do similar things for their deities, they are described as being fetish. Both are into base witchcraft rituals, the difference is that while one relies on artificial or man-made objects (such as bread, wine and rosaries), the other uses natural elements, pleasing to and recognized by the Gods and we all know who is more potent…