An Advocate Of Social Justice: A Man Of Peace Or A Dangerous Prophet?

By Rev. Fr. John Odey

NEWSDAILYNIGERIA: The 2023 Elections in Nigeria have come and gone. But their undulation and disquieting effects will be here with us for a long time to cast a very dark shadow on Nigeria as a whole and on our judicial system in particular. We have been swindled as usual, after which the cheated were asked by the master swindlers to go to court and meet those they had paid to smear their integrity, destroy democracy, bring shame to the judiciary, put sticky question mark on legal profession and plunge Nigeria into a unprecedented political turmoil. They have gone to court and the human beings they met in the court as the presiding judges ended up turning justice into wormwood, the judiciary into the enemy of the common man and the legal profession into bullshit. We are back to square one. For this reason, there is the tendency to become downcast, disillusioned, bitter, and to keep quiet and silently join those we cannot beat in order to be allowed to live, or to want to know what happened to all our prayers in the face of the evil that has overwhelmed our nation.

When African Americans under the leadership of Martin Luther King Junior faced a situation more dangerous than what we are currently facing in Nigeria, King encouraged them not to lose hope because, according to him, though the arms of the universe are long, they bend towards justice. Though committed advocate of nonviolent resistance, King never underrated the grim forces of evil, which he maintained is recalcitrant. For that reason he declared: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for rigorous and positive action.”

We may have no alternative than to be calm because the evil men in power are absolutely in charge of every bit of the situation. They have the police, the army, the Department of State Services (DSS), the public media houses, the deadly political thugs, and the INEC chairman. They control the nation’s treasury and so have all the money needed to buy all of the above. Nevertheless, for those who believe strongly as I do, that it is a crime to keep silent in the face of injustice, one thing we must not do is to keep silent in the face of the freezing injustice that has been inflicted on our nation by Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and the five judges who brought their detestable plot to an infernal conclusion in the court on September 6, 2023. No. We cannot keep silent. On my own part, I will keep writing and denouncing the injustice in the land as long as the injustice continues to thrive and as long as I am able. Even if what I and others write mean nothing for our tormentors, generations to come will know there were people who insisted on calling a spade by its name. There is should be no room for apathy.

Three hundred and ninety-nine years before the birth of Christ, Socrates told his countrymen: “Please do not be offended if I tell you the truth. No man on earth who conscientiously opposes either you or any other organized democracy, and flatly prevents a great many wrongs and illegalities from taking place in the state to which he belongs, can possibly escape with his life. The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.”

To avoid trouble, Socrates refused to enter politics. He left politics alone. But while he left politics alone, politics refused to leave him alone. More importantly, being a selfless man who cared for truth, justice, peace and harmony than he cared for his personal comfort, he discovered that politics also refused to leave the generality of his people alone. Those that had political power treated the rest of the people as if they were created by a lesser god. Hence, he could not resist talking about politics because he saw that while one can conveniently keep away from partisan politics, no living human being is apolitical in any sense of the word. Socrates discovered to his discomfiture that even if you are not interested in politics, politics will certainly be interested in you. For this reason, he spared no breathe to ensure that he denounced untruth and injustice in the society. Above all, he made himself a special guard of the younger generation and taught them to avoid the moral stupor that had engulfed the Athenian City. For this and more, Athenian politics became so interested in him that he was accused of being a dangerous prophet who was destroying the minds of the youths. For that they had him sentenced to death. But to the end of time, the name of Socrates the dangerous prophet will remain a symbol of truth and justice.

In 1963, J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the chief investigative agency of the United States government, declared: “We must mark King now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this country.” Five years later, on April 4, 1968, the marked King, Martin Luther King Junior, was assassinated by a white racist called James Earl Ray, for demanding the civil rights of his African-American brothers and sisters.

In 1983, the United States Congress established a national day in honour of the very King that was declared the most dangerous Negro and consequently assassinated for being dangerous. The holiday is observed every year on the third Monday in January. On November 2, 1983, during the ceremony for the signing of the bill establishing the holiday, President Ronald Reagan said that King’s life “symbolized what was right about America, what was noblest and best.” In October 1984, 21 years after King had been marked as the most dangerous Negro, sixteen years after the marked King had been assassinated and one year after he had been elevated to the status of a national hero, Vincent Harding, a very close colleague of King, recalled Edgar Hoover’s statement and wrote an article with the title: Martin Luther King Junior: Dangerous Prophet.

In that article, Harding said: “A dangerous Negro, now a national hero. How shall we work with that? What we have tried to do and are being tempted to do is forget that King was a dangerous Negro, a dangerous black man. He was dangerous in the midst of a society that had chosen to live in a way that was filled with inhumanity to itself and to the rest of humankind. He was dangerous to all the keepers of the status quo and to all the lovers of a pleasant Christianity.” Lovers of pleasant Christianity are those who suppress and exploit their fellow human beings but will at the same time find it convenient to sooth their conscience by reminding their victims of the philosophy of turning the other cheek. It is a sarcastic reference to those who believed that slavery was good for black Africans because it gave them the opportunity to be converted to Christ.

Rev. Fr. Patrick Kitterick is an Irish priest who spent his life in Abakaliki Diocese. He was my parish priest at the time of my priestly ordination in July 1984. Some months before he was called to his eternal reward, I visited him in his sick bed at the diocesan hospital, Mile Four Hospital, where he was hospitalized. His condition was not too bad at that time, and so, he could spare some moments to chat with me about Nigeria’s challenging social and political situation. He had developed special interest in my books and so we did so almost always each time we met. In the end, he wanted to know my latest book at that time. I told him that the latest was The Dawn Of Democratic Tyranny. He asked for a copy and I gave him one because I had it right there in my car. He was delighted. I guessed the title of the book fascinated him so much that he kept wondering: “John, how do you come about coining the titles of your books?” That title reminded him of another book, which, according to him, has similar captivating title. He promised to give me that book with the assurance that it would make an interesting reading for me.

Fr. Kitterick kept that promise soon after. He gave me the book with the following jolting title: Living Dangerously: A Memoir of Political Change in Malawi. The author, Patrick O’Malley, is an Irish Catholic priest and a member of St. Patrick Missionary Society like Fr. Kitterick. Shortly after his priestly ordination in 1957, Fr. O’Malley was sent on mission to Eastern Nigeria where he worked until March 1968 when the Nigerian civil war forced him to leave Nigeria back to Ireland. When the war lingered on he was sent on another mission to Malawi. There, in Malawi, he lived dangerously by refusing to close his eyes in the face of the injustice that pervaded the country. His prophetic denunciation of that injustice led to his being deported by the Malawian Government on April 18, 1992.

In the book, Fr. O’Malley recalled one among the many incidents that made him almost lose hope as a result of the people’s apathy in the face of dire evil. Towards the end of 1982, the government of President Kamuzu Banda arrested one Orton Chirwa and his wife, Vera Chirwa. They were tried for treason and condemned to death. The couple’s crime was that Orton organized an ineffectual opposition against President Banda’s government while he was in exile in Gambia. The death sentence passed on Orton and Vera Chirwa caused so much uneasiness both in Malawi and internationally that four prominent Malawians who were concerned about the damage it had done to the image of Malawi met and pleaded with President Banda to repeal the sentence. After Banda had ordered them out of his office, the four men were murdered that night by Banda’s close aids.

By then, Fr. O’Malley was teaching Poetry in the University of Malawi. A day after the murder of the four men, he came to the class hoping to find the students in pensive mood as a result of the murder. But to his greatest dismay, he said: “I found my class waiting as usual. There was no sense of excitement; on the contrary, it seemed as if everything was quite normal. I found it hard to believe this: I had expected that the students at least would be outraged. My own anger forced me into rashness.”

On Monday, February 26, 2018, I was in the Niger Foundation Hospital in Enugu for routine medical check-up. As I waited for my turn to see the doctor, a respectable-looking, highly educated, elderly woman who sat near me pleaded with me: “Father, I want to tell you something. I hope you will not be offended.” In response, I told her: “Mama, tell me whatever you want to tell me. I will not be offended.” She then continued: “Father, as I was listening to AIT news the other day, I watched a young priest who boldly castigated the Boko Haram people and the Fulani herdsmen for going about in different parts of the country killing people, sacking communities and burning people’s homes and property. He poured venom on those killers and on the Federal Government and the security agents for looking the other way while the killings go on. I fear for that priest because the people we are dealing with have no respect for the sanctity of human life. And since they are everywhere, they can easily send people to kill him. Father, if I have my way, I will advise you, our priests, not to come out openly and talk about the great damage those people do to the country because they do not spare anybody. Please, I appeal that you, our priests, should be careful while talking about those people.”

When the woman finished speaking I also pleaded with her not to be annoyed with what I would give her as my response. After she had assured me that she would not be offended, I told her that I do not know the priest she was talking about. I do not know the diocese to which he belongs. But what I know, based on what she said about that priest, is that he understands the social implications of the vocation to the priesthood and what that vocation demands from him and from every Catholic priest. I told her that, to the best of my own understanding, that priest is one among those who understand what it means to be a Catholic priest.

I told the woman that there is one American Archbishop called Fulton Sheen who wrote a book called The Priest Is Not His Own. He is a man for others. Like Jesus of Nazareth, a priest is that good shepherd who is ever ready to lay down his life for his sheep when the need arises. Consequently, when his nation is in deep crisis, whether religious, political or moral crisis, he cannot feign ignorance of that. He is a prophet. Hence, when the rich and the powerful team up to destroy the poor and the weak he cannot look the other way. As a prophet, he is the conscience of his people. Hence, he cannot afford to be dumb when there are many and obvious indications that the Federal Government has some hidden agenda to compel every other people, every other tribe and every other religion in the country to bow to the dictates of a particular tribe and a particular religion.

By the time I finished talking the woman’s countenance changed from that of fear for the priest who was the subject of our discussion to that of admiration. Those clamouring for a better Nigeria have not what it takes to stop Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his evil gang from destroying Nigeria. Nevertheless, we have no reason to lose hope. They are not stronger than God. We must sustain that struggle knowing that every evil carries the seeds of its own destruction.