Act 1, Scene 1: October 16, 2019 – tanker fire incident at Ochanja market!

Act 2, Scene 1, 2, & 3: Few days after the fire incident, precisely on November 3, 2019, the maverick controversial General Overseer of Mountain of Holy Ghost Intervention, Prophet Chukwuemeka Ohanaemere, popularly known as ‘Odumeje’ donated 4 million to the victims in a dramatic form, very characteristic of him. The Anglicans also donated a sum of 10million Naira. But before them, on November 19, 2019, the Catholic Archdiocese of Onitsha donated 27million Naira to the victims. The official Facebook page of the archdiocese states that the amount would be distributed to “all the affected individuals without discrimination or favour of any religious denomination because we are all the Children of one God.”       

While all these gestures are good in themselves, one wonders if it wouldn’t have been more aesthetic and Christian to do so ecumenically. Permit me to lead you into an imagination trek: Imagine where the churches had come together, pulled their resources together – notwithstanding who brought more or less, imagine where the leaders of the churches had come together, with hands joined together with the victims of the fire incident and prayed together without the theatricals of denominational dolling out of cash sessions; imagine where the burial ceremony at St. Joseph Awka-Ekiti of the mother and child Deborah and Victor Obi – victims of the fire – was done ecumenically. Perhaps, I’m being ‘unrealistic’ and ‘utopic’ but history shows that ecumenical consciousness, solidarity and actions always peak at the time of common calamities. This was true both for the Second World War (1939-1945) and the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-1970).

Permit me to spare you from further imaginative sketch and to point out what I consider paradoxical in the archbishop’s statement vis-à-vis the absence of ecumenical solidarity. Quite appreciatively, the archbishop recognized the non-boundary identity of all the victims. In fact, his statement stretches this common identity beyond the Christian community to admit a multi-faith belongingness: ‘we are all the children of one God.’ But then, the question of why such an opportunity – of tragedy, of destruction of lives and property, of calamity and of additional economic crunch – could not trigger an ecumenical consciousness and solidarity among our church leaders is still a puzzle. 

Granted that we no longer have a situation of ‘civil war’ in Nigeria, are the socio-political crises in Nigeria today not enough to provoke true ecumenical collaboration among Christians? By true ecumenism, I mean an engagement that is devoid of the ‘politics of prominence’ in which the ‘ecumenism of profile’ becomes dominant. It should be an ecumenical engagement in which the flourishing of everyone, the ‘all the children of the one God’ becomes the sole objective. I know that it is easy to accuse me of deviating from the central aim of ecumenism, namely the visible unity of the churches. Yet, my attention to an aspect of ecumenism, namely social ecumenism, which focuses on promoting social justice, peace and mutual co-existence and friendship is not entirely outside the scope of ecumenism. Rather I would consider social ecumenism as the entry-point to a more robust ecumenism as far as Nigeria, at the level of its development today, is concerned. What this means is that the economic, political, social and cultural concerns, sorrows, travails of our people should become the points of common engagement by the churches. Of course, in such setting a certain level of spiritual ecumenism is bound to happen. It is also the case that ecumenical friendship across board would begin to emerge, leading to some sustainability in the entire process. But dialogue on doctrinal issues, may not be given extensive attention since they do not really address the burning issues in our society today. In other words, our approach to ecumenism must be strategically adapted to our specific context, history and situations.