The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese and Convener of the National Peace Committee (NPC), Most Rev. Matthew Kukah, has insisted that there’s no Christian genocide in Nigeria, explaining that number of people killed doesn’t amount to genocide.

Bishop Kukah stated this while presenting a paper at the 46th Supreme Convention of the Knights of St. Mulumba (KSM) in Kaduna.

His comments follow criticism that trailed reports quoting him as advising the international community against designating Nigeria as a “country of particular concern.”

The bishop explained that such labels could heighten tensions, fuel suspicion, and give room for criminal groups to exploit the situation, which would disrupt interfaith dialogue and cooperation with government.

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Addressing figures circulated about alleged Christian killings in Nigeria, Kukah said he aligns with the Vatican Secretary of State, the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, and all Catholic bishops in the country.

He said, “They are saying that 1,200 churches are burnt in Nigeria every year, and I ask myself, in which Nigeria? Interestingly, nobody approached the Catholic Church to get accurate data. We do not know where these figures came from. All those talking about persecution, has anyone ever called to ask, ‘Bishop Kukah, what is the situation?’ The data being circulated cleverly avoids the Catholic Church because they know Catholics do not indulge in hearsay.”

On the use of the term genocide, he noted, “Genocide is not based on the number of people killed. You can kill 10 million people and it still won’t amount to genocide. The critical determinant is intent, whether the aim is to eliminate a group of people. So, you don’t determine genocide by numbers; you determine it by intention. We need to be more clinical in the issues we discuss.”

Kukah also challenged claims that Christians in Nigeria are being targeted. He said, “If you are a Christian in Nigeria and you say you are persecuted, my question is: how? At least 80% of educated Nigerians are Christians, and up to 85% of the Nigerian economy is controlled by Christians. With such figures, how can anyone say Christians are being persecuted?”

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He linked many of the challenges faced by Christians to a lack of unity, stating, “The main problem is that Christians succumb to bullies. The day we decide to stand together, believing that an injury to one is an injury to all, these things will stop.”

He further warned against loosely labeling victims as martyrs. “Because someone is killed in a church, does that automatically make them a martyr? Whether you are killed while stealing someone’s yam or attacked by bandits, does that qualify as martyrdom? I am worried because we must think more deeply.”

Clarifying his earlier remarks, he added, “People say there is genocide in Nigeria. What I presented at the Vatican was a 1,270-page study on genocide in Nigeria and elsewhere. My argument is that it is not accurate to claim there is genocide or martyrdom in Nigeria.”

By Tony Erha

“Agha tot’ ikolo, t’ amen mie ede”; A Benin idiom holds sway that; “When the earthworm dominates a discussion, the rainfall would be all day long”. For the Museum of West Africa Art (MOWAA), whose skewed establishment had resurfaced about 2018, dominated global discourse and has reached a peak. Day in, day out, there is intense global indignation, bothering on an alleged swindling of the museum’s artefacts and huge accrued monies, which were under the care of the immediate-past governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, alongside some of his political and business associates, which many commentators presented to be a f monumental fraud. As already claimed, it could as well have been called MOWAA-gate!

This article, being the second and last stanza of the first, published two weeks ago, was predicated on the decimating crisis of MOWAA. A condensed recap of the said article was partly anchored on a lavish reportage by swamps of Nigerian and foreign press, which largely implicated the Obaseki’s government, as inept in the due processes of MOWAA’s setup. MOWAA is a charitable entity, which sprang up on global funding and other resources of the state government, whereupon a case of undue diligence was allegedly stressed on Obaseki and his government.

There is a threesome public inquiry, thus raising a gummy accusation of indecency, especially when the ex-governor Obaseki’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had been voted out by the All Progressives Congress (APC), with Senator Monday Okpebholo as the present governor. And the MOWAA-gate is getting messier as Governor Okpebholo and the state’s House of Assembly, the lawmaking arm, had each set up a probe panel. Disturbed that the MOWAA-gate is earning the nation a bad name, the National Assembly, from a far-away Abuja, the nation’s capital, also instituted another probe.

”The returned looted Benin artifacts, like other sacred art work of Benin provenance, are not just superficial or ornamental, but infused with the mystical command and supernatural energy of the Benin kingdom of great antique. The key to correctly identify, classify, and position the authentic totems, in time and space, lies in the Royal Benin Palace, under the power of the Oba of Benin”. Sampson Ebome, a lawyer and perceptive cultural activist, uttered, postulating further;

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“In every other society as Japan, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Morocco etc., royalty holds a choice-place in preserving the unique cultural and corporate identity of the society and its governance. It is no co-incidence, therefore, that even in today’s Europe, there are about twelve statutory monarchs in its advanced democracies. Perhaps, the grave error of Godwin Obaseki’s administration was to proceed on the false logic that a concrete divergence existed between the government and the Benin kingdom, the very source and origin of the history, dialects, cultural identity and heritage of all the people of Edo State. To have persisted in this gargantuan ruse, an original artifice of the colonising powers of Europe, was always bound to be destabilising to the spiritual and socio-political equilibrium of the state”

In the state’s legislative’s probe, cans of worms are being revealed on MOWAA and the Reddisson Hotel construction, said to have been Obaseki’s conduit pipes. And there is intense firework by the contending parties. Chief Osaro Idah and some of the Oba’s palace chiefs have dragged MOWAA to the law court, a development which Oyiwola Afolabi SAN, MOWAA’s lawyer said had jeopardised the appearances of Godwin Obaseki, Osarodion Ogie (former Secretary to State Government) and other MOWAA’s executive at the House of Assembly summon.

“Even khiri-khiri keke udemwen idan ere ogbakhian”. “Fierce wrestling is a companion to violent thuds”. And the fight is now more forceful as no man will leave his leg for an opponent to grab. “Emwin na ma ru ese, to si itale emwen”, a Benin parlance for; “That which had been tardily or slyly done is bound to cause disaffection”. And so, the fight ranges whilst the onlookers are left to mock he that is already falling!

“Ovbi ekpen ere otolo ekpen ehae”. “Osayomore Joseph, the late music crooner and a soulmate, had often reminded me about the age-long Benin axiom; “It takes only the Cub – heir, to tickle the forehead of a Leopard. Instructively, HRM, Ewuare II, the revered Oba of Benin, with the Methuselah of wisdom at play, narrated the seizure of the artefactual ownership and benefaction, as he stoically alleged the undue conscription of his heir into the corporate board of Edo Museum of West Africa Art (EMOWAA) by ex-governor Obaseki. His son had also attested to that. The claim was also buttressed that EMOWAA was an inordinate scheme evolved by Obaseki and his associates to wrestle the returned looted artefacts and supplement payment from their foreign sources.

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The Esans of Edo would say; “Ehun no ho obhiaha emoen, avava uwendin, ole odia”. “The sharp fart that disgraces the bride perches in-between her buttocks”. Once upon a time, Governor Okpebholo, on the heels of his final governorship declaration by the Supreme Court, which Obaseki and his protégé, Dr. Asue Ighodalo, the PDP candidate had dragged him through, was swayed by the of Senator Adams Oshiomhole insistence on the probe of Obaseki and his government. But Nyesom Wike, the flammable minister of Abuja, had dissuaded a pliable Okpebholo. But, Obaseki wasn’t mindful that he had escaped the expected probes, until he caused it with his usual foibles.

“Asua gha sua egile, oya danmwen ekpatu; eighi ye ebe gue egbe”. In a Benin folktale, it’s about the adventurous snail that crawls up the tree and soon crash to the ground, failing to cover itself from its hunters. The headstrong former governor, with the braggadocio of a ‘diaspora governor’, has taken the fight from ‘iya’ (valley) to ‘oke’ (mountain top). All we now see is the continuation of a “filaga filogo” (a street brawn with broken bottles and cudgels), now that ‘slappers and bone breakers’ fight wherever they meet in Europe and America. It is a bitter reminder of Obaseki’s heydays of masterminding the ‘Torgbas’ fighters’ gang that fought the APC’s ‘Tokpas’, which had earned him aliases like ‘Emanton’ (Iron Rod) and ‘Isakpana’ (the god of anger).

Whilst Nigerians and humankind watch the ‘filaga filogo’ and shame emanating from the Nigeria’s ‘heartbeat’ state, the very man who was called the ‘Wake and see Governor, may be laying down in the foreign climes the same landlines, that he laid on his home’s pathway that makes him to go into self-exile’.

By Tony Erha

“If it is the correct position that the museum in controversy belongs to private investors and that Edo State has no share in the investment, why will (immediate-past) government of the state demolish an existing state-owned hospital, gift the land and a huge money to the private investors for their private business?” It was a teaser by Matthew Edaghese, a lawyer and rights activist. However, it provides optical viewfinder or a lead to the stalemate that has thrown the spanner into the said progression work of the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA).

Based in Benin City, the capital of Edo, a mid-southern state of Nigeria, MOWAA, a mega-museum project, that was nutured on the the fetility of looted Benin artefacts, is again mired in protracted disputes in Benin City, its origin. The former administration of Mr. Godwin Obaseki, ex-governor of Edo State (and its backers), that only came into existence about a century after the looting of the artefacts, laid a claim to its ownership, above the palace of Oba Ewuare II, a present-day successor and great grandson of Oba Ovonranmwen, the very Benin king, from whom the artefacts were looted in 1897.

The BBC, New York Times, as well as Artnet, a European media, added-up to the local media, on the historical accounts on the invasion that led to the destruction and looting of Benin and its rich royal palace.

On January 2, 1897, James Phillips, a British official, set out to visit the Oba of Bini (Benin), but was killed as he forced his way in. The killing of Phillips and his retinue was revenged when Britain sent 1,200 soldiers to destroy the city and banished their king, Oba Ovonranmwen. Priceless artefacts were instantly looted by the British as the spoils of war, and they adorn public museums and private art collections in Britain, Europe, America and some other nations.

Of Edo and historical worldviews, there are mysterious and historical accounts of a reincarnation, of the sort, where similar events appear to be played out, by semblances of protagonist institutions and individuals. “Ahenmwen mase ese na zo”, is a Benin idiom, meaning “Obedience is better than sacrifice”. Therefrom, the attendance of the MOWAA event by its foreign visitors, despite the huge street protests by traditional chiefs, civil society organisations and the commoners, few days before, as well as the investigation committees set up by Edo State Government and the state’s House of Assembly, on MOWAA, should have forewarned them v?and organisers of MOWAA, that they will have overstepped their bounds.

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The state’s intervention was to forestall the breakdown of law and order, which they eventually came to encounter in the reckless invasion of the museum’s venue by angry protesters. Perhaps, had a headstrong James Phillips also obeyed the known protocool of the Benin Obas, like the MOWAA visitors, the accidental invasion and looting of artefacts would have been avoided.

Also to many people of Edo and other believers, it is a reincarnated Chief Agho Obaseki and his alleged betrayal of the Benin kingdom, are what resurfaced in Ex-Governor Obaseki (his great grandson) and his mismanagment of the MOWAA’s affairs, and what is also said that a great grandson of Chief Agho Obaseki had come to her come to finish the business of terminating the Benin throne and kingdom.

Artnet quoted NOWAA official source that the protest “appeared to stem from disputes between the previous and current state administrations”, whilst the US Guardian also said;

Phillip Ihenacho, the museum’s director and chairman, told Agence France Presse, adding that he believed they (wild protesters) were “representatives from the palace” of Oba Ewuare II, the nation’s non-sovereign monarch and custodian of Benin culture.

Artnet concluded that MOWAA, which kept mute to its inquiries, wrote on Instagram; “We advise against visiting the MOWAA campus until the situation has been resolved…”

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It is plausible that this accusation of Oba Ewuare II by Ihenacho, one of NOWAA’s masterminds, who bears the same “Phillips” from the colonial Britain that ignited the 1897 massacre and looting of Benin, could have been an untamed imagination, only similar to the killing of James Phillips that was unknown to Oba Ovonranmwen. Definitely, a kingdom nicknamed ‘Ilu n’ Ibinu’ suggestive of “a land of rightful anger”, where men and women are assertive and protective of their rights; hardly take orders from their superiors. And what angers them mostly is ‘manipulation and servant-master’s relationship’.

But Mr. Godwin Obaseki, is serially accused of complicit in the shoddy handling of the museum affairs, which has caused a debacle. As reported by Artnet news, the BBC, the New York Times and several local news outlets, the ex-governor, only came to be involved in the campaign for restitution and return of the looted artefacts only lately, when he became the state governor. Whereas it was initiated since 1938 by the Benin Dialogue Group and others, who sustained it.

About 2019, Obaseki had agreed to the Oba’s idea of establishing a Benin Royal Museum (BRM), to house the returned looted artefacts. The original idea was for the art pieces to be housed in a public display, and not locked away, where the public could feel their impacts. Then, the news was already rife that the looted artefacts were going to be returned in batches.

An ecstatic king, His Royal Majesty, Ewuare II, the Oba of Benin, one of the world’s oldest kingdoms, and a descendant of the deposed Oba Ovoranmwen, from whose palace the varied artwork were looted, was magnanimous pouring encomiums on Godwin Obaseki for ‘his fertile thought’. But after agreeing to the Oba on the BRM’s proposal, the Benin palace, the Guilds of Bronzecasters and public stakeholders, were shocked as Mr. Obaseki had, instead, gone ahead to float a parallel Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA), to house the same returned looted artefacts, meant for BRM, without a recourse to the Oba and stakeholders, placing non-Benins on its board.

While Mr. Iheanacho chorused the Obaseki’s defence that EMOWAA was a different museum more generic and envisages a wider global essence than a restricted Benin Royal Museum, both men and their backers submitted that while all the returned looted pieces would be housed in the proposed BRM, other contemporary art of West Africa provenance, would be housed in EMOWAA, which altogether was still (then) relevant to the famed looted Benin artefacts and the kingdom.

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But the real motives of ex-Governor Obaseki became more suspicious when the ‘Edo’ (E) in ‘EMOWAA’ acronym was yanked off to reflect ‘MOWAA’.

Also in the Tribune of July 20, 2020, the Igun Bronze Casters Guild, the authentic maker of all the looted bronze work had staged street protests over the claim by a body from outside Nigeria that a non-existence Igun-Igbesanmwan-Owina Descendants Cultural Movement, were owners of the artefacts, not the Benin palace. The Guild resonated the age-long tradition that they were set up by the Oba palace and that all the art work was owned by the palace.

Now, it has dawned on all, as alleged, that Godwin Obaseki’s motives was to corner to himself and others the homoguous donations that came with the artefacts, with a revelation that at least US $25m of donor’s fund is said to have been committed to MOWAA.

The new museum is “offensive to me,” Oba Ewuare II told the New York Times. He (Obaseki) claimed that international funds for MOWAA were given with the expectation the museum would house the Benin Bronzes, and therefore should have gone to him and his planned institution”

But Nigeria’s minister for Arts, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa, had condemned the said invasion of the MOWAA’s event, while vouched that MOWAA and its artefacts were different entities from the proposed BRM and looted artefacts that are for the Oba. Could it be that the honourable minister wasn’t properly briefed by the position of the Federal Government, as once declared by ex-President Mohammadu Buhari, that all the returned looted artefacts are gazetted and belongs to the Oba, hence a credence to the BRM? But on a sudden visit to Benin, the truths may have dawned on her, with reversal comments before Senator Okpebholo, the state governor.

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To numerous commentators and observers around the globe, Senator Okpebholo is had scired the bull’s eye on his government’s resolve to unveil the circumstances of NOWAA and serve deterence. He also assured that “MOWAA has turned a birthday gift to Oba Ewuare II. He further pledge the revocation of the six hectares land and facilities of the Benin Centre Hospital, ‘a-life-first’ century old edifices that were bulldozed to give way to an entertaining centre and ‘money illusion’. After all, isn’t the “Oba abd government that own the yam and the knife”? As the Edo people would say.

But, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, from his newest foreign abode, amongst other things, asserted that he conducted the MOWAA business to his best of knowledge and for the betterment of Edo people, buttressing the same that the museum stands to guarantee thousands of jobs for Edo people and bring the state properly to global spotlight. He also absolved himself of accusations of pecuniary gains from the museum project. But, his followers, allegedly recruited to defend EMOWAA at all cost, are antagonistic in their approach to the issue.

Godwin Obaseki’s denial that MOWAA has nothing to do with the looted artefacts was, however, flawed by the BBC. In its report, titled “Nigeria Stolen Benin Bronzes In London Museum”, Emma Greg, in September 17, 2022 wrote;

“Come 2026, these treasures will have a lasting home in Benin City’s new Edo Museum of West Africa Art (EMOWAA). This centre, designed by Ghaniain-British architect, Sir David Adjaye, will house the most comprehensive display of Benin Brozes ever assembled…”

“MOWAA is uneatable food and a poisoned chalice, laid before the Benin kingdom and all lovers of the art and recreation. “Ema nai ya ne uke re ore amu y’ ekpekpe”. In Benin language it denotes, “A meal put on a height is not meant for a cripple”. When ‘E’ was removed from ‘EMOWAA’, it became suspicious, because ‘EMOWAA’ in Edo originally means “a home-made food that everyone enjoys”