Point One

Controversial Catholic cleric and Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministry, Enugu Nigeria (AMEN), Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, seems unable to stay out of the boiler room in his priestly calling, no thanks to an unruly tongue. It is one season, one trouble for him with the Catholic Church, and those troubles often derive from his unique penchant for vocally pitching into partisan frays where an overseer’s reserve and dispassion would have made better judgment. Mbaka is one man who fights battles on many fronts – outside of his calling with partisan interests, and within his calling with the Catholic establishment. Call him a political priest and you’re the deal. Against the run of stiff disposition and shyness from murky politics that characterises the clergy, he swims in the murk and openly pitches camp with, or against political actors as negates conventional priestly neutrality. By all accounts, he falls into a class of his own. Not for the first time, Mbaka’s Adoration parish is pr...

 A siege by gunmen on St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo town, penultimate Sunday, left scores of worshippers dead and many others severely injured. Owo is the headquarters of Owo council area of Ondo State and native town of Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu. The church itself is vantagely located in the environs of the palace of the town’s monarch, the Olowo of Owo. It was the softest conceivable target for a most heartless band of terrorists. The occasion was Pentecost Sunday – a solemn event for Christians in commemorating the inauguration of the Early Church – when many adherents endeavour to partake of congregational worship with whole households. At St. Francis, the mass had just ended. The choir was singing the closing hymns, waiting for the priest and other officiating ministers to process out of the church, when the first gunshot rang out. Seconds later, there was another gunshot, and soon it became a rattle of random shots. By then, wardens at the entrance were...

 A dawn stampede penultimate Saturday at an outreach programme organised by a new generation church, King’s Assembly in Port Harcourt, resulted in on-site death of no fewer than 31 would-be congregants. The church is based at the Government Reservation Area of the Rivers State capital, but it arranged to stage the event tagged ‘Shop for Free’ at the Port Harcourt Polo Club – a bigger facility – to accommodate the anticipated sizeable crowd. Its objective for the event was to gift items, including foodstuff, to help the underprivileged. As it turned out, the volume of intending beneficiaries anticipated by the church was grossly underestimated and their zeal for the freebies at stake tragically underrated. For an event that was to kick off at about 9a.m. on Saturday, intending beneficiaries began massing at the Polo Club’s gate from Friday night and into the early hours of Saturday according to reports. Rivers State police command said the people who had gathered struggled to gain e...