The truth is, reverend father Anelu’s outburst has very little or nothing to do with Igbo songs. Even from the amateur video alone, it was clear the good Priest spoke from a place of deep-seated long held animus he’s been harbouring towards the Igbos.
As a former Catechism teacher and alter boy in the Catholic church, I know for a fact that a Parish Priest or even an officiating Priest can effortlessly get the choir to make whatever changes he wants in their choice of songs even without the congregation knowing about it. If he didn’t like a particular song, he could simply pass his instruction through the catechist or the head of the choir and it will be implemented without any noise. A Priest has almost unlimited latitude in a church service he is conducting and knowing the very high level of discipline and organizational structure in the Catholic church, it is almost impossible to believe that the choir would have disobeyed the Priest had he used the proper channel to ask them to add more songs from other tribes. No. Very unlikely.
But clearly, the reverend gentleman appeared to have unfinished business with the Igbos.
I mean, if it was about just Igbo songs, why did he go as far as claiming he was almost stopped from celebrating mass in English in one Igbo town (Awo Omama) and that if he were to try celebrating mass in Yoruba language in Igbo town like Ekwuluobia, that the Igbo people there would stone him? And then we went on about how the church should not be a place where some people would seek to dominate others and how Igbos dominated the Benin diocese with an Igbo bishop.
These are not the kind of thing you say if your only problem is with the songs. No. Something else is biting you about the people in whose language the songs were being sang.
An unbiased mind would interpret the coded message the good Father was passing to non-Igbos in the church thus;
“look, these Igbo people want to dominate you by singing their Igbo song in your place even when they would not allow other people do the same in their own place, do not allow them”
This is a clear case of incitement targeted at a particular ethnic group from the most unlikely place, the holy alter of the Catholic church.
Thank God for the timely intervention of the Catholic archbishop of Lagos, His Grace, Alfred Martins.
As much as we try to pretend about it, fact remains, IGBOPHOBIA is real. Living in denial won’t cut it.
And for those who think Ndigbo are over-reacting, I will advice them to wait till they go through series of pogroms, nearly forced into extinction in a genocide, striped of all they had and made to watch in abject penury while other people were buying national assets in the name of indigenization and perpetually condemned to numberless police checkpoints as the only Federal Presence in their region, when they go through all of the above, then we can revisit the conversation about how best to react in a situation like the one under review.
