OPINION
– Kenneth Jude
The year is almost fading out. Snaky fuel queues have returned. Travellers are stranded. Food prices have risen. Banks have closed shop for holidays. ATM points have refused to vomit cash. The usual hazy, dry and dusty waves that define this season are around.
As the year winds out, there is need to give honour to people who made a stellar year in their respective fields – touching lives, creating and rewriting history.
During the year, some governors who distinguished themselves were celebrated. Whether in sharing goats to students, sewing Christmas dresses for 10, 000 indigent kids, declaring public holiday to celebrate Buhari’s return to Nigeria from a medical trip and erection of statues, plus the ingenuity of creating a ministry to address issues of happiness and purpose fulfilment, all of them were graded and garlanded with the epaulettes they deserved.
No prize for guessing. Governor Okorocha of Imo State was unanimously declared Governor of the Year after a painstaking assessment by a team of scholarly assessors. His choice was easy at the end of the day. His strides, like pregnancy, cannot be covered with the hand. No governor matched him in innovation this year.
Away from the hardworking governors and fuel scarcity has become part of state policy in Nigeria during festive seasons, there is need to celebrate a firebrand cleric, Rev. Patrick Henry Edet who shook the firm walls of the Catholic Church with holy rage this year.
Ordained a Catholic Priest on December 19, 2003, Fr. Edet, sorry – error there – Patrick Edet, having left his parish St. Lawrence Eman Uruan, of his own volition, built a permanent camp at the Pastoral Centre of the Catholic Church in Uyo. He was apparently fed up with a rustic village and worshipers who were just too old to grasp his gif in the word. Their hue and cry for a preacher whom many said had gone AWOL cut no ice with the “salvation is personal” exponent.
His (Patrick) appeals to the authorities to give him an assistant priest at Eman Uruan so that he could have time for his Grace Family programmes fell on deaf ears. Displaying a Trump-like audacity, he shut down an all-girls’ school given to him by the Diocese to manage. His reason? He also needed a priest to assist him but that, again, never saw the light of the day.
With all the eyebrows raised by older priests who felt he was a lost sheep and a black one at that, the Mbo-born self-professed “God’s errand boy” continued to gather Christians from all denominations to preach the good news in a manner some people termed as Pentecostal. Firing on all cylinders, Patrick Edet carried on his soul-winning mission with prophetic and magisterial fervour spiced with raw guts of a typical Oron man. No slight intended.
In the Catholic Church, there are seasons for various occasions and celebrations. There is Advent, Lent, Easter and Ordinary Time. It has 34 weeks – easily the longest season in the Catholic Calendar. Catholic faithful follow these seasons with religious inclination. They are unchangeable and immovable seasons. It’s like (if not more than) a written constitution. And so, as each season weighs in, Catholics, especially the very ardent ones, observe to the letter, the rite, rituals and rubrics that accompany each season.
One thing that defines the Roman Catholic Church is its universality and uniformity. The Mass in Rome is the same in Ukpenekang, Okokomaiko, Odukpani, Sapele, Kafanchan, Isuikwuato…the list goes on. No parish worth its Catholic identity will say “this is Easter but let’s call it Advent.” No way. Hence, what happens in St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome is replicated across the globe.
Enter Patrick Henry Edet. Not a few priests frowned at the manner he held programme after programme in his Grace Family ministry. Some, they said, clashed with the church’s traditional events. A friend of mine, a fervent Catholic, said he was tired of attending all the programmes. 7 days of glory, 8 days of glory, 4 days of glory, success summit, singles summit and every other summit.
Time was when some parishes were virtually empty on such days that the Church was celebrating a major feast or Novena as many flocked to Grace Family like bees to nectar for one programme or another. His, many opined, was like a parallel organisation running at cross purposes with the church’s calendar.
Some priests who couldn’t bear it all took to dressing him (Edet) down and parishioners who identified with him during their Sunday sermons. Trust gossip and its ability to fly with the speed of light even without wings. Whatever these priests said on Sunday in their respective parishes formed the bedrock of Patrick Edet’s sermon, teaching on Tuesday in his ministry. How he got to hear shocked the uninitiated. In fact, some priests, Edet often said, sent spies to his programmes. Their mission, among other things, was to tape-record him, look out for faces (especially those ones who hold positions of honour in church) and generally assess the crowd. Those sent, as expected, greened from ear to ear and ensured they carried out their duties with eagle-eyed precision.
Again, on several occasions, Patrick Edet made allusions to all those shenanigans. He knew. He had dutiful little birds that toured parishes on Sundays to hear of what was said of him. And being a chap who isn’t afraid to pick up battles, he made it a point of duty to fire potshots at his ‘traducers’ whenever he had the opportunity.
Time without number, he was said to be the agenda at priests’ meetings. In each meeting, his name became a recurring decimal, he once said. He was often penciled down to answer to one case or another. A sea of priests, one learnt, disliked him like a bad meat. His saving grace was Bishop Ayah. The Ogoja cleric loved him and often leapt to his defense when the chips were down. He called him “my son”. We are told of how a billboard he once erected announcing a crossover night into a new year ruffled feathers within the Church. When the matter was reportedly presented to Bishop Ayah and several other ‘sins’ of his, it was learnt, some priests had thought it was going to be the final knell for ‘stubborn’ Patrick. It never did. He got a slap on the wrist from the Bishop. Pardon came. Just like Jesus said to the adulterous woman, “go and erect billboard no more,” Bishop Ayah told Patrick his son. Again, a grand plot to nail Edet failed like a pack of badly arranged cards.
Unable to stand the heat of the kitchen any more, the antagonism, resentment, bitterness and all that crap, Patrick Edet, on Wednesday, August 2, sent shockwaves across the world when he went on air and announced with remarkable equanimity, and in a sobering voice laden with an air of authoritative finality, that he is no longer a priest of the Catholic Church.
“From today henceforth, I cease to be a Catholic Priest, in my spirit and in my soul. I forgive those who will criticize me, I live for God. I seek freedom for my soul. As I leave, I leave smiling, I am so happy that I am free.”
Not a few people were transfixed, disoriented. To many, it was like a cruel bolt from the blue. Many prayed it was all a rumour. Others wished it were a dream from which they hoped to wake up from. To be sure of it all, frantic phone calls were made. At the snap of the finger, text messages were scribbled and sent with supersonic speed. At the end of it all, there was one answer to their queries: “yes, he has resigned!”
For those that were heartbroken, he had this to say: “I pray for all those who are heartbroken, those who will condemn me. I don’t even have to say I forgive you, you are right in your thinking; but just that you don’t know everything.”
Some cynics thought the firebrand ‘free’ preacher will find it rough coping with the rigours of running a ministry all alone as General Overseer (GO). They missed the point. They forgot that even as a Catholic priest, he had devoted 90 percent of his time running his ministry while the remaining 10 percent was kept to fulfill his priestly obligations. Needless to say, he was leaving the church with a bagful of experience.
As a way of announcing his arrival on the vast fields of Pentecostal circuit, Edet, having secured Ibom Hall for his programmes, launched out with his first programme with an instructive theme: The Great Awakening. Imposing billboards with the convener shown sitting like a judge ready to deliver a landmark judgment with a subtle smile to boot, dotted strategic locations in Uyo.
Since then, he has not looked back. Programmes have been holding there every other day. Worshippers throng the venue not in bits but in legion. To them, it is a place to be. But where in this part a Church with a pastor who knows his onions lack members? Is it a surprise that churches of different sizes, shapes and doctrines litter our streets?
For his holy temerity, years of defying the authorities, stepping away from the allure and glory of being called ‘Father’ even by one’s biological father, pooh-poohing all rules, pushing down all walls that limited his exploits, Rev. (should he even use the Rev?) Patrick Henry Edet is, without doubt, Pastor of The Year!
Kenneth Jude is a Public Affairs Analyst