months after assuming office, President Buhari hosted the priest in Aso Villa and eulogised his courage and faithfulness in ministry. The priest beamed. But an evidently distressed and alarmed Catholic Church thereafter transferred him to Emene, a suburb of Enugu, having stayed more than a decade at Christ the King Parish, GRA, Enugu. His new place of posting, Our Lady Parish, is much smaller. Fr. Ejike immediately concluded that his transfer was punitive because he spoke the truth to power and denied former president Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, support. He added very colourfully and even poetically that given the smallness of the Emene parish, it was apparent he was destined to suffer, without a place to lay his head or place the assets of the Adoration Ministry which he founded and nurtured to host thousands of Catholic faithful regularly.
Since he repudiated Dr Jonathan in January 2015 by calling on the electorate to reject the then president and instead embrace Gen Buhari, Fr. Mbaka has sustained his love, admiration and support for President Buhari, a support that has intensified and become amplified since the presidential election of 2015. Indeed, the priest argues passionately that President Buhari is the answer to the people’s and Catholic Church’s prayers concerning the election of a leader who would fight corruption. It was not surprising that this kind of unalloyed support would elicit equal adulation from the president who last July congratulated the priest on his 21 years in ministry and 10 years of the Adoration Ministry.
However, increasingly, many Christians are becoming a little wary of both Fr. Mbaka’s fulsome praise of President Buhari and his fulminations against the president’s enemies and everyone who shows any reservations about his style. In fact, the Catholic Church appears greatly saddened by what they see as Fr. Mbaka’s politicisation of religion. His transfer to Our Lady Parish, they suggested last February through their spokesman, Rev. Fr. Ralph Madu, was routine, overdue and definitely not punitive. Priests, the spokesman continues, are meant to serve anywhere without grumbling and with humility, while posting of church functionaries has always remained the exclusive preserve of the bishop. Fr. Mbaka, he adds, had indeed overstayed at Christ the King Parish. His new posting, the spokesman concludes, should even give him time for his Adoration Ministry which is a private, not church, ministry.
Neither Fr. Mbaka nor his supporters, who are in their thousands, nor yet his financiers, one of whom announced a N100m donation to the Adoration Ministry a few days ago,
