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MISSIONARY ON NIGERIA
Disunity Was Evident
From Birth Of Nation’
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(This is the third of a
four-part series analyzing the
Nigeria/Biafra situation by
the Irish-born missionary
priest who helped initiate the
night relief flights to Biafra.)
BY FATHER DERMOT
DORAN, C.S. SP.
(NC NEWS SERVICE)
The political pundits and
diplomats were dumbfounded
and confused when, on Jan.
15, 1966, the first military
coup took place in Nigeria.
The Federal prime
minister together with the
prime ministers of the
Northern and Western
Regions was assassinated as
were a number of leading
politicians. The coup took
place early in the morning. It
was swift and bloody. The
country awoke to find the
regional governments as well
as the Federal government
overthrown and the Nigerian
army in control.
Naturally, there was
consternation in the foreign
embassies and consulates. The
diplomats however were
humiliated by the fact that
they had no prior
information or warning that
such a move was afoot. They
had been taken by surprise
and were unprepared for such
a sudden and drastic change.
In reality however, the
only surprise was the fact
that the coup took so long to
happen. Those familiar with
the real Nigeria-the Nigeria
of people--and not the Nigeria
of gigantic economic
development plans, were not
at all surprised.
To the more perceptive, it
was clear from the very start
that the sophisticated
constitutional mechanism
grandiosely granted by
Britain in I960, and supposed
to keep the three great tribal
regions (North, West and
East) in harmony, contained
elements of instability and
imbalance. One region, the
North, was bigger and
therefore commanded more
seats in the Federal House
than the other regions put
together.
This led to friction from
the very moment of
independence. The first
showdown was averted by the
East acceeding to the North
in the matter of a head of
state. A northerner who had
opposed the whole concept
of independence was elected
in preference to the very
“Fathers of Nigerian
Independence,” Nnamdi
Azikwe, an Ibo from the
East, and Chief Awolowo, a
Yoruba from the West. The
dynamic proponent of
nationalism and
anti-colonialism, Azikwe,
finally contented himself, in
the name of national unity,
with the rather ceremonial
office of governor-general-
Sir Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa then became prime
minister of Nigeria while
Chief Awolowo found
himself relegated to the
almost impotent role of
leader of the opposition.
Thus the North began to rule
Nigeria through its control of
the federal government and
its agencies. No further talk
of secession was heard from
the North until 1966.
However, the Yorubas of
Western Nigeria were not
happy at being left out at the
Federal center. The ruling
Action Group party in the
Western Region government
split into two factions and
caused a memorable riot in
parliament which resulted in
a state of emergency being
declared and the government
dissolved.
Later Chief Awolowo,
Chief Anthony Enaharo, and
Joseph Tarka were tried for
treason against the state.
Awolowo and Enaharo were
both convicted and sentenced
to long years in prison. This
marked the end of effective
constitutional opposition.
The split in the Western ranks
enabled the North to install a
puppet government in that
region.
The next upheaval began
in the Middle Belt, an area
under northern control
though, unlike the North,
predominantly non-Moslem.
The IV2 million inhabitants,
mainly Tiv people agitated
for more participation in
their own affairs. They were
ruthlessly suppressed. The
little publicized “Tiv Riots”
of 1964 resulted in the
Nigerian army being used for
the first time in its history to
suppress its own people.
Thousands were killed while
thousands more were
imprisoned.
Also, that same year, the
workers of Nigeria saw their
exploitation and privations in
political terms and joined
ranks to cause two general
strikes in defiance of the
federal government.
Then came the census
controversy which wrecked
' the already shaky working
alliance of the East and North
at the center. It actually threw
the two popular parties of the
East and West into each
others arms and united them
against the North.
Crisis followed crisis, but
somehow or another Nigeria
carried on. The myth of unity
was perpetrated by the
economic support of foreign
powers and business
concerns. The most notable
being Britain and the United
States.
At the time of its
independence, Nigeria’s entire
trade was in the hands of
eight foreign companies, the
majority of them British.
Fixed foreign investment was
in the region of $500 million.
U.S. investment jumped from
a mere $45 million to $200
million by 1964. With the oil
boom in Nigeria during the
period, five major U.S.
companies moved in and
joined Shell-BP in tapping
what later proved to be one
of the greatest oil strikes in
Africa. Companies such as
Gulf, Mobil, Tennessee,
Amoseas and Phillips invested
more than $200 million.
Friendly governments either
gave outright grants or loaned
PROMINENT among Synod Fathers were Julius Cardinal
Dopfner (left), archbishop of Munich and president of the
German Bishops’ Conference, and John Cardinal Wright, prefect
of the Congregation for the Clergy. (NC Photos)
millions to the Federal
government to help its
six-year development plan.
The U.S. contribution alone
was $300 million.
In the first few years of
independence, over $800
million was invested in
Nigeria by foreign interests.
There was no doubt
whatsoever what Nigeria’s
economy had an impressive
potential. But that depended
on the country remaining a
single entity.
Yet the very Federal
structure militated against
rational nationwide economic
planning. A National
Economic Council officially
presided over a unified
economy but in actual
practice the regions were
economic rivals. This only
further accelerated the
political rivalry.
The elections in the
Western Region in 1965
brought things to a head. In a
final desperate attempt, the
alliance of East and West
sought to win power by
constitutional means. Its
failure amid the bitterness of
a rigged election produced
chaos throughout the Western
Region. The complete
breakdown of law and order
and the attempt once more
by the Northern-dominated
Federal government to use
the army led directly to the
coup of Jan., 1966.
A group of young officers,
disgusted with the activities
of politicians, planned to
remove' the politicians of all
parties and all regions. They
were mainly Ibo officers,
though not all. However, the
coup went according to plan
only in Kaduna, capital of the
North, and Ibadan, capital of
the West. It failed in Lagos,
the Federal capital, though
not before the prime minister
and some other politicians
and army officers were killed.
Within a few hours, the
commanding officer of the
Nigerian army, Maj. - Gen.
Ironsi, had suppressed the
revolt.
However, the civilian
government had enough;
most of the cabinet fled the
capital. Next day, Sunday,
Jan. 17, 1966, the remnants
of the cabinet met under the
chairmanship of Alhaji
Dipcharima, a northerner,
and decided in view of the
seriousness of the situation to
hand over control of the
government to the army.
Ironsi accepted and was
formally invested with
authority as head of the new
Federal military government.
He immediately suspended all
regional governments and
appointed military governors
to each region making them
directly responsible to the
Federal military government.
One of these was Lt. Col.
Chukumeka Ojukwu, an
officer who had taken no part
in the coup. The new military
regime was deliriously
welcomed all over the
country, even in the North.
But it was short lived.
Four months later hundreds
of Ibo people living in the
North were massacred in
pogroms in Kano, Kaduna
and Zaria. These pogroms
were both organized and
spontaneous. They were
stage-managed by disgruntled
civil servants, ex-politicians,
local government officials and
businessmen whom the
change of regime had
deprived of lucrative
contracts. “Let there be
secession!”, said the placards
of demonstrating civil
servants in Kanduna, seat of
the northern government.
Thousands of Ibo’s and
others of Eastern origin were
either killed or maimed while
hundreds of thousands fled
south. Lt. Col. Katsina, the
military governor of Northern
Nigeria called a meeting of all
the Moslem Emirs in Kaduna.
The Emirs insisted on
immediate secession and
presented an ultimatum to
(Continued on Page 6)
POPE AT SYNOD — As though to affirm his support for the principle of the collegiality of Pope
and Bishops,as Vatican Council II intended it, Pope Paul VI has attended the Extraordinary Synod
of Bishops almost every day. He listened carefully to the discussions, and on Wednesday, Oct. 15,
he told a general audience in St. Peter’s basilica that he did not want to seem “to interfere in the
discussions.” Here the smiling Pontiff hears an announcement by Bishop Ladislaw Rubin,
permanent secretary of the Synod. (NC Photos)
‘INSTILLING NEW LIFE’
Canada Bishop Sums Up
Opening Week Of Synod
BY JAMES C. O’NEILL
VATICAN CITY (NC) -
The second Synod of Bishops
meeting here is trying to
“pump new blood in that
Mystical Body which is the
Church.”
This medical metaphor
was used by Canadian Bishop
Alexander Carter of Sault
Sainte Marie, Ontario, to
describe the first week’s
activities of the synod. More
than 140 bishops from
around the world including
93 presidents of episcopal
conferences have come here
to discuss the relationships of
the Catholic bishops of the
world and their national
episcopal conferences with
the head of their college of
bishops, the Pope, the Bishop
of Rome.
In a bolder way, the
concentration of so much
leadership of the Catholic
Church in Rome was
described by John Cardinal
Heenan, archbishop of
Westminister, England:
“Both the Pope and the
bishops are honestly seeking
to find ways in which there
may be effective co-existence
between the Holy See and the
Church throughout the
world.”
Another description of the
debate, which centered
during the first week mainly
on the theological basis-or
lack of it for the relationship
between the college of
bishops and the head of that
college, the Pope, was given
by theological professor Msgr.
Gerard Philips of the
University of Louvain, one of
the few non-bishops named as
a synod member:
“The bishops have spoken
with the greatest liberty
without hiding in the least
the difficulties presented in
their relations with the Pope
and still more in their
relations with the Roman
Curia,” the Church’s central
government offices in Rome.
Pope Paul VI opened the
synod with a formal Mass in
the Sistine Chapel on Oct. 11.
In his homily he showed
himself very open to closer
cooperation and better
communication with the
bishops throughout the
world. While maintaining and
enuniciating the traditional
teaching of the primacy of
the Pope as the especially
selected successor to St.
Peter, chosen by Christ to
guide the Church, he also
indicated his desire and
intention to promote the
Second Vatican Council’s
teaching on the intrinsic
unity and responsibility for
the Universal Church of all
the world’s bishops together
with their head. As he put it
simply ‘‘collegiality is
co-responsibility.”
Simply though he put it, it
took almost a full week of
debate and discussion to
determine that although the
principle of collegiality has
been reinvoked by the
Second Vatican Council,
there does not seem to be
enough theological
development to integrate
collegiality with the doctrine
of the primacy of the pope,
his freedom to act
independently of the
collegiality of the bishops.
What emerged after a week
of discussions was that,
although there was much
confusion about just how the
two doctrines worked out on
a theoretical level, no one
disputed the primacy of the
Pope. As Cardinal Heenan
summed up the week’s
discussions, “Nobody wants
to question the primacy of
the Holy Father. This is part
of the deposit of faith. What
the bishops are anxious to
discover is the best means of
insuring that the collegiality
of the bishops becomes a
reality.”
Bishop Carter put the
problem in another way when
he spoke of a surgeon
operating to halt
arterioscelerosis. There is very
great need, he said, to
improve the circulation of
blood through the Mystical
Body of Christ which is the
Church. This means, he said,
that today , with the changes
which have been brought
about both within the Church
and also within the modern
world, there is evidence that
‘‘we live in a dynamic
society” and in the Church it
is no longer possible that
“authority is exercised only
from the top.”
What many of the bishops
are seeking, he went on, is
“greater collegial action and
less personal decision from
the Pope today,” particularly
in very important matters. As
an example, he cited the
Pope’s document on birth
control and said he would
have wished that the pastors
of the Church had been
consulted so as to give it
fuller possibility of a more
pastoral tone. If this had been
done, he said, “it would have
been a more pastoral letter,”
and “some pain and after
effects might have been
avoided.”
Cardinal Heenan touched
on another aspect of the
week’s debate. He pointed
out that the African, Asian
and Iron Curtain bishops
were largely much more
intense in their defense of the
primacy of the pope and. of
ROME - Brooklyn-born
Jesuit Father John L. Long
has been named head of the
office of the Vatican’s
Secretariat for Christian
Unity. A specialist in Eastern
Churches, ordained in 1955,
Fr. Long joined the
Secretariat in 1963. (NC
Photos)
his absolute freedom of
action because they feared
for the faith of their people
whose problems are not the
same as those of Europe and
America. The English cardinal
said these bishops distrust a
“sick Europe” and a
“sophisticated Europe” in
which voices may be raised
by national bishops’
conferences to contradict
“the voice of Peter.”
However, the demand for
fuller consultation and
discussion raised by many
bishops’ conferences, he said,
aims precisely at arriving at
fuller discussion and the
avoidance of possible harmful
reactions such as followed the
publication of “Humanae
Vitae.”
At the end of the
theological debate it was
resolved to pass the whole
matter on to the theologians
for more study. Cardinal
Heenan, however, insisted
that it was not up to the
theologians to decide on the
matter but only to submit
reports, and that the matter
should then be passed on to
the national councils of
priests, pastoral councils and
organizations of the laity.
The cardinal also said he
has proposed during meetings
with the Roman Curia that
the time has come that
bishops should be selected
“not only by those to whom
they answer but also by those
they are to rule.” It is time,
he said, that in the selection
of bishops there should be
consultation with their future
priets and laity.
Pope Paul VI attended
every session of the first week
of the synod except
Wednesday, when he had to
give his usual general
audience. Hence, he heard
expressed a number of
divergent views on primacy
and collegiality.
At the end of the first
week of discussions, the
synod turned its attention to
more practical problems. The
second subject for study, in
off-the-record work sessions,
was the relationships of
national episcopal
conferences and the offices of
the Curia.
When discussions are
completed on that difficult
and important subject the
synod Fathers will turn their
attention to the problems of
inter-relations among bishops’
conferences.
Before the synod opened,
the synod’s secretary general,
Bishop Ladislas Rubin,
hazarded the guess that it
would last about two weeks.
Now everyone in Rome
thinks it will not finish much
before the end of the month.
Even so, as Cardinal Heenan
said, “It is not to be expected
that all problems can be
solved in one short synod.
There is, however, a feeling of
optimism that frank
discussion will reveal the
principles upon which
solutions can be based.
PAGE 3 - October 23, 1969
Assembly Brought
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Contestation To I
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| Pope’s Front Doorf
BY PATRICK RILEY
ROME (NC) — Glorying in
its own disorganization,
clamoring for attention but
striving mightily for dignity,
the second Assembly of
European Priests has brought
contestation to the Pope’s
front door.
It brought it there at the
very moment when, inside
that door, a synod of the
world’s bishops was
discussing how to restore
authority in the church.
Yet the Assembly of
European priests maintained
throughout its week-long
(Oct. 10-16) meeting that it
was not attempting to
destroy the Church’s
authority but to bring forth
new ways of exercising that
authority, ways the modem
priest can live with.
The assembly itself was a
curious mixture of peity and
provacativeness. The priests
sent Pope Paul VI a respectful
letter asking for an audience,
and got a regretful and
courteous refusal. They said
they understood.
Before disbanding, they
walked the few blocks from
their meeting hall to St.
Peter’s Basilica, where they
prayed and sang hymns at the
spot where St. Peter is buried.
Yet they voted through a
series of proposals that would
have knocked the curl out of
Martin Luther’s hair, at least
the young Luther. The
college of cardinals, of
course, is to be abolished.
The Curia is to be reduced to
an organ of information and
coordination along the lines
of the UN. Decisions in the
Church are to be taken by the
Synod of Bishops, which
includes non-Christians and
women. The synod elects the
pope, who is given a fixed
term of office. The Pope has
no executive instrument for
making his authority felt. He
becomes, to use a term that
was excised from a draft
before the assembly, a
“chariman.”
So much uneasiness was
felt within the assembly at
the sort of theology
incorporated in the
assembly’s declarations, that
on the final day a preface was
adopted describing the
declarations as ‘‘only
moments of a reflection that
starts from life.”
One of the assembly’s
leaders, Father Michael Raske
of Germany, said:
“The strange opinions you
find here have been fathered
for the most part by the
diffucult conditions many of
these priests find themselves
in. This in many cases is the
fault of the official Church.
The primary of Peter comes
from the New Testament. We
only object to the way
authority is used.”
But the theology of the
declarations was not the only
target of criticism. Many
observers felt uneasy at their
political orientation. The
final declaration on “The
Church in the World and the
Priest in the Church” calls
upon the Church to
“condemn every system and
method that is fascist,
imperialist and racist,” yet it
laments that the Church
“continues to preach
anti-communism.”
There is criticism of
regimes in Spain, Portugual,
Greece, South Africa and
Portuguese Africa, but no
criticism of other regimes
whose respect for human
rights may leave something to
be desired.
The question arises: Is this
declaration simply
inconsistent, or is it only too
consistent with the ideas of
its framers?
Some criticism was
provoked by the assembly’s
decision to use the hall of the
Waldensians, who could be
described as pre-reformation
Protestants. But the assembly
had tried vainly for weeks to
find a hall in Rome before
the Waldensians offered their
hall free of charge. So at least
the price was right.
The assembly’s finances
are shaky. Despite the free
hall, costs of cleaning, renting
chairs, hiring interpreters and
typists, and printing texts
were almost $900 above
available funds, most of
which came from admission
charges levied on journalists.)
There were about 125
priests on the list of
paricipants. They came from
about a dozen European
countries. Some of them
represented groups of priests,
some represented groups
variously described as
Chrisitan or Catholic, and
some represented little more
than the present winter of
discontent.
| Bishops’ Synod j
Moonstruck
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BY JAMES C. O’NEILL
VATICAN CITY (NC) -
The synod of Bishops was
moonstruck (Oct. 16) by the
unusual visit of America’s
three- man team of astronauts
which made man’s first
landing on the moon in the
Apollo 11 flight.
Neil Armstrong told the
warmly applauding 140
prelates gathered in the synod
hall deep in the Vatican that
the earth from space looks
like “a blue and white jewel
shining in the black void.”
Armstrong, and fellow
astronauts Michael Collins
ana Edwin Aldrin, on a
round-the world trip, visited
Pope Paul VI in the Vatican
hall before going down to the
synod hall. In talking to the
synod fathers, they spoke of
their experiences in space and
showed colored slides
illustrating many phases of
their remarkable voyage.
In a brief question period
after the slides William
Cardinal Conway of Armagh,
Ireland, asked if the voyage
through space in anyway
altered their thoughts about
the earth. Armstrong replied:
“Yes, my impression of earth
as an island in the universe is
greatly strengthened .. .as is
my impression of the
importance of man in the
universe.”
Asked about impressions
regarding personal relations
to God and any change
therein, it was again
Armstrong who replied
“Walking through the halls of
the Vatican (they had made a
brief visit to the Sistine
Chapel to see Michaelangelo’s
Last Judgment and other
pieces), we saw the best of
man’s art work and it left me
profoundly impressed. But as
we traveled through planets
and I saw with my own eyes,
I was profoundly moved by
God’s art works.”
The astronauts and their
wives were received by the
Holy Father in his private
library for 20 minutes. The
Pope had come from the
synod meeting he had been
attending. To his guests he
said:
‘‘Man has the natural
tendency to explore the
unknown. To explore the
unknown, to know mystery
but man also has fear of the
unknown. Your courage has
overcome this fear and with
your intrepid adventure man
has taken another step
toward ever greater
knowledge of the universe, as
in your words, Mr.
Armstrong, ‘a big step foi
humanity.’”
The* astronauts presented
the Pope with a reproduction
of the plaque which they left
on the moon, a microfilm
with the messages of world
leaders which they also left,
and a commemorative medal
of the flight.