It was initially with incredulity, though later with some degree of understanding but not acceptance, that I received a recent news report to the effect that the parish priest of St. Jude’s Catholic Church, Effurun, Delta State, affirmed that the All Progressives Congress, APC, gubernatorial candidate for Delta, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, is a baptised and practicing member of the Catholic Church, therefore a Christian.

I had initially received the statement attributed to the parish priest, Father Mark Ikeke, with total stupefaction because I know that Father Ikeke, himself, like every true Deltan of his status and level of awarenesses, knows full well that Ovie Omo-Agege is a complete pagan and solid practitioner of Traditional African Religion to the core.

I later came to some understanding of why a Catholic priest would feel constrained to issue such a factually untenable statement because this is where the syncretic reality of the religiousness of many Nigerians has brought us.

 

Interestingly, I had often attended mass at St Jude’s, Effurun GRA, especially while Father Oghenejode Abaka was the parish priest and was still putting finishing touches to the church which was then, more or less, still in construction.

General Dominic Oneya was also often a worshipper at the parish at the time.

 

That Ovie Omo-Agege goes to church, and specifically the Catholic Church like other members of his family, is not in any doubt.

Indeed, they claim to be a Catholic family just like mine since his late father, Justice James Omo-Agege, also attended the Catholic Church, and it is really thanks to him that all the Omo-Ageges ended up being baptised into the Catholic Church.

 

In Ovie Omo-Agege’s case, he was apparently baptised as “Augustine”, in honour of St Augustine of Hippo, present day Tunisia, one of the greatest theologians in world history and pillar of the early church, therefore “Augustine” is his baptismal name.

That said, the question remains as to what it takes to be a true Catholic because the essentials of what it takes to be one are exactly the same as what it takes to be a true Christian regardless of one’s denomination.

 

When interrogated from this inescapable and unavoidable standpoint, the Omo-Ageges, from their late father, a former Chief Judge of Delta State, to Ovie, current Deputy Senate President and governorship candidate, are not any kind of true Catholics, therefore are not true Christians by any definition of that religious category.

The Omo-Ageges are actually the ones who brought a particularly fetish and exceedingly diabolical brand of “Igbe”, the worship of “Olokun” the sea goddess, more widely known as “Mammy Water”, to Orogun clan of Urhobo a long time ago.

 

The Omo-Ageges do not merely go to worship Mammy Water the same way the average pagan does by going to a shrine where there’s an Igbe priest waiting to attend to them.

It is rather other pagans who come to the Omo-Ageges to worship Mammy Water because the Omo-Ageges are the owners of their own Igbe and are the ones who officiate as priests and priestesses of the Water goddess at their family owned Water spirit shrine at Orhomuru Orogun that is now more than one hundred years old and still bristling with activity on designated days of worship!

The long established practice of the family owned Igbe of the Omo-Ageges is for the position of chief priest to pass from father to son.

 

That has been the case since their ancestor first brought it to Orogun from what is now the present boundary between Delta and Rivers states in a region dominated by the Ndokwa of Delta and Ndoni/Andoni of Rivers.

Thus, Justice James Omo-Agege inherited it from his own father even as Ovie Omo-Agege, as eldest son, inherited it from him.

 

Everyone that is not an accursed pathological liar in Orogun, in Ughelli town, in Ughelli North and in the rest of Urhoboland knows this fact and, may the judgement of God fall heavily on anyone who dares to deny it.

Funny enough, the Omo-Ageges are by no means the only Urhobos or Deltans from elsewhere in the state, for that matter, who had family owned pagan shrines passed down from generation to generation.

 

Many such families have since abandoned these fetish and dark obscurantist traditions and embraced Christ Jesus as Lord, Redeemer and Saviour.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of such pagan movements simply came to an end when there was no eldest son, daughter or any other offspring willing to takeover from their parents and continue in paganism.

This is actually remarkably commonplace in the religious evolution of Delta, as well as, the rest of Nigeria, and indeed, Africa, in general, and accounts much for the continuing extinction of Mammy Water worship and similar practices across this part of the world.

 

What is therefore truly remarkable is how come a family as generationally educated and supposedly exposed as the Omo-Ageges have for over a century remained devotees of Olokun, bluntly refused to abandon pagan worship and have been dragging numerous people into the fetish worship of Mammy Water while all the while pretending to be genuine Catholic Christians!

 

Father Ikeke was quoted to have asserted that “for the avoidance of doubt, Senator Barr. Ovie Omo-Agege is a baptized, practicing and dedicated member of the Roman Catholic Church” and that “he is a member of and a communicant in St. Jude Catholic Church, GRA, Effurun in Uvwie LGA”.

Of course, on the surface, all of that is true except that as to substance, even Father Ikeke, himself, knows he was lying through his teeth.

A church is what it is and it opens its arms, as it does its doors, to absolutely any and everyone willing to seek the Face of God.

Indeed, a church is by far the easiest place to enter in this world!

It has to be so because it is the House of God and must welcome everyone in the hope of bringing them to repentance and salvation.

 

The theology and Canon Law of Christianity does not preclude anyone from being baptized, not even the child of a notorious pagan, for that child, in his or her own right, is a child of God on its own account, with its own destiny different from that of its parents.

Where, however, such child grows up and instead of abandoning the pagan practices of the parents chooses to embrace them thereby sustaining them even to the extent of enticing others into the worship of idols and false gods, such person is most certainly not any kind of Catholic or other Christian category as Father Ikeke certainly knows more than anyone else.

This is the case with Ovie Omo-Agege, even to the extent of regularly bringing his children who were born and live in America down to Orogun, not merely to know their African home and roots but essentially to gradually and steadily initiate them into the worship of Mammy Water!

 

I believe Father Ikeke felt he had no choice but to defend someone who on the surface could pass himself off as a Christian and parishioner like any other.

But, it is not as if various members of his parish are randomly accused of being rabid pagans and unrepentant practitioners of wickedness, unwholesome devotions, idolatry and godlessness as is the case with Ovie Omo-Agege.

It is because everyone knows that his fake parishioner, Ovie Omo-Agege, is a complete pagan that he is being outed as such and Father Ikeke cannot pretend not to know that, as much as he must square up before God to the doctrinal question of the propriety of giving communion to someone he knows for a fact is a pagan.

 

While I somewhat sympathize with his plight, I am also aware that God is not a respecter of persons and what was actually called for in this case is for Father Ikeke to have spoken truth to power and denounced Omo-Agege for trying to be hot and cold at the same time in direct and unmistakable contradiction to the express dictates of Christ Jesus, Himself, who declared that such persons will be spitted out by God.

Rather than shamefully rush to the defense of a counterfeit Christian, Father Ikeke should have summoned the courage as a priest of The Most High God to set an example for other Christians that there is simply and absolutely no place for mixing paganism with Christianity in the Body of Christ.

I am sorry to have to put it this bluntly but Father Ikeke’s “parishioner”, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, is a disgrace to his parish, an embarrassment to the Catholic Church and a complete disappointment to Christianity.

 

Factually speaking, Omo-Agege is a man that is a total disgrace to Christian values, indeed one who often displays extreme cruelty, aloofness, insensitivity, lack of empathy, pathological greed, lack of human feeling, and a most abhorrent degree of selfcenteredness that is totally unbecoming of a believer and completely contrary to the Culture of Christ.

Most political players in the know in Delta remember him as an adept practitioner of forgery, graft, embezzlement and conversion while he was Executive Assistant and later Secretary to the State Government, SSG, under the administration of the exconvict, James Ibori.

Ask any politician who knew Ovie Omo-Agege in Government House, back then, and they would tell you “Omo-Agege is the biggest thief in the history of Delta State”!

Funny enough, the same reputation has followed him in his senatorial career as an inquiry into his activities as senator and Deputy Senate President would readily reveal.

 

Our Lord Jesus Christ said that “by their fruits you shall know them” and upon this divinely ordained standard, Omo-Agege is not a Christian by any measure both as to his true religious persuasion, as well as, in terms of his totally ungodly way of life.

But, is there really anything wrong with Ovie Omo-Agege being the complete pagan and Chief Priest of Igbe and unrepentant Mammy Water devotee he is?

Well, we have religious freedom in this country and in any case freedom of religion is a fundamental human right of absolutely each and every one of us in this world.

However, people should be forthright enough to own up to their true religion rather than try to pull the wool over the eyes of others pretending to be what they are not.

This is especially important when they present themselves before the electorate as fit and proper persons to be elected to public office, indeed more significantly so when it is no less than the office of Governor of a state that is at stake.

 

It is the right of the electorate to know the kind of person they should be electing as Governor.

If as a state with an overwhelmingly Christian population, they do not mind recruiting a complete pagan and worshipper of marine spirits as a Governor and placing the destiny of their state in the hands of a godless individual, then so be it but no one should be allowed to scam them into thinking he is a Christian like the rest of them when he does not actually believe in Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

To decide to follow Jesus is to follow Him without turning back, for you cannot serve two masters at the same time according to the Holy Bible.

Yet, there is a difference if someone is a Christian and backslides into making charms or consulting native doctors or soothsayers when faced with difficult situations or seemingly intractable problems, as long as they come to genuine repentance and commit to never betraying God, ever again because there is simply no room for religious syncretism in Christianity.

It is a totally different matter altogether where the person is a regular and unrepentant pagan who is merely using Christianity to cover up his true religious affiliation as the Omo-Ageges have been doing for a very long time.

It is even far worse where the person is not just an ordinary pagan but a chief priest of Mammy Water.

 

APC candidate, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege is not a Catholic and is not any other kind of Christian.

He is a well-known Igbe man and on their days of worship, as well as, on their feast days, you will see him fully dressed in marine spirits red and white attire, indeed in complete Mammy Water regalia and unmistakable Igbe vestments, in his village, Orhomuru Orogun, dancing Igbe, and leading other devotees in worship of false gods!

Omo-Agege is a man so committed, dedicated, devoted and addicted to marine spirits that he built his house in his village right beside the river even though he had access to more solid land elsewhere in the community!

He wants to offer sacrifices to Mammy Water and he just opens a small gate in his fence and he is right by the stream, throwing all kinds of things into the river in honour of the water goddess!

That is how much of a complete pagan Omo-Agege really is.

 

The truth is bitter but it must be told and Deltans are entitled to know this and to bear it in mind as they go out to vote on Saturday, 18 March, 2023.

 

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Oghenevwaire Mukoro, an educationist, writes from Warri.