Emeka Offor And Anglican Knighthood

By James Ubadike

All roads will on January 3, 2014, lead to the sleepy town of Oraifite in Ekwusigo Local Government Area of Anambra State as Sir Emeka Offor, a leading Nigerian government contractor, weds Adaora Ufondu, a native of Umuezeopi, also in Oraifite. The wedding razzmatazz is billed to be unprecedented in our town’s history. Nigeria’s highest paid musicians like Flavour and P Square are among those to entertain guests. In the last three weeks, several bales of aso ebi, or ceremonial party dress, have been distributed free to thousands of our kinfolk.  All of a sudden, Offor has begun to redeem several pledges of financial assistance made to various communities and associations since 1998! Indeed, the traditional marriage ceremony  which actually started on Saturday, October 12, 2013, will certainly be the talk of town for weeks to come.

But the marriage will be marked by controversy. This will be the third marriage for 58-year-old Offor and the first for Adaora, a 24-year-old who left the law faculty of the University of Nigeria in Enugu abruptly as a student in a controversial circumstance. This means that the bride is six years younger than Ndidi, Offor’s first daughter. But she is old enough to take decisions about her future. Therefore, the reference to Offor by Sunny Igboanueze, president of the Oraifite Improvement Union, as “the Yerima of Igboland” is controversial.  Sani Yerima is the name of the 51-year-old senator from Zamfara State who in 2010 caused a global uproar by marrying a 13-year-old Egyptian.

The real controversy has to do with Offor’ status in the Anglican Communion (Church of Nigeria) which bestowed on him the knighthood of St Christopher in the late 1990s when he hit fortune under the Sani Abacha regime as the first Nigerian to carry out a turn around maintenance (TAM) contract in the Port Harcourt refinery, despite his modest education. Church knighthood is for exemplary Christians who must be monogamists or single. But, as has been stated, Offor is now in his third marriage. His first wife is Nkiru ( neeEmoke), his elegant childhood sweetheart whom he married in 1981 and hails from Otulu in Oru West Local Government Area of Imo State. The second is Joy (nee Enoch Chukwureh) from Orodo in Mbaitoli Local Government Area of Imo State whom he married in 2002. The marriage was contracted in a controversial circumstance. By the time it began, Joy was still married to Christopher Obioha from Arondizuogu in Ideato Local Government Area of Imo State who is a younger brother of Chief Ralph Obioha, a leading NADECO chieftain, chartered accountant and chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Finance from 1979 to 1983. Joy has three girls for Christopher, owner of Safari Garden Hotel in Enugu GRA, and two girls for Offor. She is beautiful.

How does the Anglican Church  reconcile the knighthood it bestowed on Offor with his polygamy? The primate of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, Most Rev Dr Nicholas Okoh, may not be aware that Offor is both a knight and an Anglican, but not the bishop of Nnewi Diocese in Anambra State, Rev Dr. G.I.N. Okpala, who has a deep personal relationship with Offor.  Needless to say, it was this very diocese which knighted Offor. So, what has Bishop Okpala done to resolve this riddle which has become a subject of dispiriting controversy in the diocese?

There is a widespread belief that an anomaly of this magnitude would not be condoned in, say, the Catholic Church once the diocesan authorities become aware of it. This may well be true. After all, when Colonel Peter Obasa, a knight of the Catholic Church, was in 1984 found guilty of gross abuse of office by the special military tribunal when he was the director general of the National Youth Service Scheme (NYSC), the then Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Okojie, announced that the church was considering banning every public officer found guilty of corruption from receiving the holy communion.

The point one is making here is that there is a great need for greater discipline in the Anglican Communion. A good sense of justice demands that church rules be applied to all, irrespective of the class or status of people affected. This is why the symbol of justice is a blind-folded maiden. Offor has been donating generously to the Anglican community in Nnewi Diocese, but this is no reason why the impression should be given that he is exempted from church rules. There is nowhere in the world where the Anglican Communion operates like George Orwell’s Animal Farm where some animals are more equal than others.

If the leadership of the Anglican Diocese of Nnewi does not take the question of discipline as seriously as it should, the church will be trampled upon more ignominiously earlier than it now imagines. Rumour is already  rife in our kindred that Offor is about to wed the new wife in the rival Catholic Church. It will be a big embarrassment to all Anglicans if he does so. Is it thinkable that a Catholic knight would wed in the Anglican Church or any other for that matter? The Catholic Church can afford to bless the marriage between Offor and his young wife, as demanded by Alexander Okey Ufondu, Adaora’s father, because  in the eyes of the church Offor has never been in a valid marriage since none of the previous marriages took place in the Catholic Church.

The insistence by Chief Ufondu, alias Casca, that his daughter wed in the Catholic Church may be the first step  to Offor’s conversion to the church. But this is neither here nor there, for he is a full-grown adult. What really matters is that both the Anglican Diocese of Nnewi and the  Anglican knighthood need to be salvaged. Primate Okoh has to come to our own Macedonia  and help us.

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