 |
| Ifeanyi Ubah in white native attire at the start of the Cathedral construction |
By Tony Eluemunor.
The dedication or inauguration of Our Lady of Assumption Cathedral, Nnewi, Anambra State on Wednesday January 14, 2026 was supposed to celebrate its completion after 12 years of construction.
Instead, a nasty controversy ensued as a man got so disappointed that the Bishop of Nnewi Dioceses didn’t credit the late Senator Ifeanyi Patrick Ubah adequately for his role in building that expansive cathedral that he openly announced his exit from the Catholic church. "Ifeanyi ndoo" (sorry, Ifeanyi), he intoned. Then he added, "Akacharam" (I'm done with the Church).
That was it; like flies to carcass, the social media zoomed in. A feast was on. The hapless average Nigerian did not know what to believe. Did the Bishop remember Ubah at that church service? Yes, he did, tersely. He appreciated the other members of the Church, “including Ifeanyi Ubah, who also contributed” to turning the Church dream into reality. Was that enough recognition? That answer will always blow in the wind.
The event’s brochure also mentioned Ubah in greater detail. Actually, the Priest who served as Master of Ceremony mentioned about 10 persons and their contributions; the Altar, Grotto, Ciborium, air tickets for the Bishops, etc. Even when he said one of them elected to remain anonymous, he still mentioned the man’s town. Perhaps that was where Ubah’s name and contributions could have been elaborated on.
Yet, we could still make an excuse for that Priest; he actually acknowledged those who were present and not those who had died. So, we could magnanimously ascribe the oversight to the Igbo saying that “Onwu di Njo” (death is an unmitigated tragedy) because the passage of time wipes clean the memory of the dead from the minds of the living – leaving only a few person’s names to be remembered. We call such people heroes.
If heroism is the yardstick, Ifeanyi Ubah was a hero. Yet, the major problem is with our Nigerianness; we don’t keep records. That is why we will never know what exactly or to what level Ifeanyi Ubah built up that Cathedral before others stepped in to help.
How big is that Cathedral? What are its outstanding features? Unfortunately, no report about that Church mentioned that the central sitting area of that expansive Church has no pillars. Big and ugly pillars abound in big churches, obstructing worshippers’ views. Ubah didn’t want those pillars in his Nnewi Cathedral.
He wanted a building with a soul-stirring design. That was why he didn’t bother with continuing with the contractor, who was handling the project when he opted to build that Cathedral for God and for Nnewi. How to support that expansive roof without numerous pillars was the challenge he wanted Architects and Structural Engineers to solve. And if something turned out wrong, Ubah would tear it down and begin afresh. And time ticked away as he would build, tear down and rebuild without counting the cost.
In 2013 or 2015, Ubah took Mr. Afam Ilounoh, a lawyer, and I to the Cathedral site. He told us he sincerely wanted to build a Church for God, who had lavished blessings upon him and he wanted to take the burden of monetary contributions off the people of his beloved Nnewi town and the other towns that comprise the Nnewi Diocese.
A cathedral is the seat of the local bishop and is the center of Christian worship and pastoral administration for a district or diocese. Katedra is Greek for seat, the Bishop’s Throne and Ubah opted to lift the monetary burden off the peoples' shoulders.
It took all of 12 years to complete the Cathedral. In comparison, Pastor David Ibiyeomie’s Salvation Ministries constructed its Hand of God Cathedral in 15 years - 2010 to 2025.
Unfortunately, it is most difficult to compare Cathedrals. Ibiyeomie’s is a 120,000 seat temple designed like the palm of a hand with five fingers, and it sits a larger number of people than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Yet, that does not mean that it could hold a candle to the pride of the Catholic Church, the Basilica of St. Peter, Rome. Its construction started 18 April 1506 and ended on 18 November 1626 – over a hundred years later. While Ibiyeomie’s has five buildings, St. Peter's stands alone, massive and glorious. Length: 220 metres (720 ft). Capacity: 60,000 standing; and 20,000 seated.
It is the largest church in the world by interior measure. Its dome alone, one of the biggest in the world, dominates Rome’s skyline.
Some social media commentators couldn’t imagine such altruism, that is not an ego trip, for a businessman and politician to singlehandedly attempt to build a Cathedral for his people. But Ubah exhibited such altruism before - for the benefit of all Nigerians.
As General Muhammadu Buhari’s savoured his victory at the 2015 presidential polls, oil marketers in the country began to grumble over alleged unpaid subsidy claims. On Saturday, May 16, 2015, the association of oil marketers issued a directive to its members, ordering the suspension of loading activities in all depots from Monday, May 18, 2015.
As the May 29 handover date drew closer the situation began to bite harder. Nigerians began to spend nights and long hours at petrol stations. Some radio stations shut down, telecommunications companies had announced an impending shutdown while homes, offices, and key facilities nationwide were experiencing blackouts. In some parts of the country, petrol was selling at an all-time high of N1,000 per litre. As many left their homes to be sleeping in fuel stations, they faced the possibility of robbery attacks and other attendant risks.
Ilounoh and I decided to request Ubah to break the strike for the sake of the suffering Nigerians and to save Nigeria from shame as the world was preparing to attend Buhari’s inauguration. We wrote a memo stating reasons why Ubah should reach out to a few oil marketers and convince them to join him in breaking the strike. It was on a Saturday night so we advised Ubah to act on Monday.
Ubah read the memo and asked Barr Ilounoh and I to draft a statement in which he announced that Capital Oil’s tank farm facility with a combined storage capacity of 190 million litres with the capacity to load over 13 million litres of product per day be immediately opened to start loading immediately. The company affirmed that it had storage of over 79 million litres of petrol as at the day of the strike. The company called on other petroleum marketers to follow suit and save the nation from an impending economic and social crisis.
Dr. Ubah stressed the importance of sacrifice, especially as the nation was preparing to have a new government. He said: “This is a period that requires patriotism and service to fatherland. Let’s join hands to help our fellow citizens and save Nigeria. We also call on the striking bodies to call off the strike action. Let us work together for the betterment of our people.”
True to his promise, his company commenced distribution of over 13 million litres per day of petroleum products from its tank farm in Apapa, Lagos, that night. This came to approximately 400 trucks of products per day. Ilounoh and I spent that Saturday night monitoring the effect of Ubah’s patriotic and heroic move. Lagos didn't sleep that night as motorists thronged Ubah’s petrol stations. As the sun rose on Sunday morning, the strike was over as petrol stations came alive.
In some places, Capital Oil reduced the pump price of petrol from N200 to N100 per litre in order to compel other marketers to follow suit. Nnewi and Onitsha in Anambra State as well as some other parts of the country were test cases for this patriotic intervention.
Unfortunately, the Buhari administration never wrote Ubah a thank you note!
Even now, many Nigerians have forgotten that heroic act from Ubah.
Yes, our national memory holds no score with Ifeanyi Ubah’s contributions; petrol tankers ferried 33,000 litres until Ubah arrived and introduced the 60, 000 versions. At his death, his Capital Oil had a jetty capable of berthing 4 shuttle vessels simultaneously, a tank farm with a storage capacity of over 190 million litres, 32 arm loading gantry capable of discharging up to 55 million litres of petroleum products which exceeds the nation's daily consumption need.
Capital Oil had a fleet of over 400 trucks for distribution of petroleum products nationwide.
 |
| Ifeanyi Ubah conceptualized that expansive roof without supporting pillars. |
So, Ifeanyi Ubah wanted the Nnewi Cathedral to be special because Ifeanyi’s things were always superlative. And he was right because a Cathedral is always more than a mere house but a prayer in stones, a poetry or hymn to God cast in marble, a thanksgiving wrought in concrete and twisted steel, soaring spires and summits that rise to the heavens as though directing prayers towards God.
St Peter's is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic shrines. It has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world", and as "the greatest of all churches of Christendom.” The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson described St. Peter's as "an ornament of the earth ... the sublime of the beautiful." Ubah wanted such wondrous edifice at Nnewi...to the glory of God
In this, the Nnewi Cathedral of the Our Lady of Assumption, shares some aspects with the St. Peter’s Basilica. Ubah told me and Mr. Afam Iluonoh that Bishops and certain priests would love to be buried near their Cathedrals, and as Nnewi lacked open spaces for graveyards, there will be underneath the Cathedral, facilities for 140 tombs. I don’t know whether he realized that dream or not.
I mentioned this to tell people that there may be a lot in the Cathedral that the public may not know about - such as underground halls for meetings. Also, we don’t fully understand the economic headwinds that buffeted Ubah when the General Mohammadu Buhari’s administration came into power in 2015.
DSS arrested him for months. I can never forget that because from the DSS detention, a defiant Ifeanyi sent his lawyers to ask Tony Eluemunor to tell his version of the story to the world. So, we will never know how much his business suffered and how much money he lost and how much that contributed to his delay in completing the Cathedral. Hey, I'm still telling his story. I never set eyes on him since 2019...years before he died. Yes, I don’t let friends down.
Now, to the angry man who said he was leaving the church; he could have felt that Ifeanyi Ubah deserved more recognition than he got. He would not have known why Ubah’s wife or family was not invited; whether they were invited but turned down the invitation, after all, Ubah himself survived a nasty assassination attempt once in Anambra state. He could have noted all the politicians that were invited that day and could have heard Governor Soludo thanking Nnewi people, for allowing for the first time, his political party, APGA, to sweep Nnewi polling units.
That was a political statement right inside a Church. That APGA victory happened because Ubah was in the grave during that election.
Unfortunately, we will never know how much Ubah spent bringing up the Cathedral from its new design, foundation, underground level, the architects and structural engineers he imported from Italy, the profound enterprise which banished ghastly pillars from the Church hall and yet keeping the vast roof over almost a ten thousand capacity Church in place, etc, etc and raised it to 80 or 90 percent completion by most accounts before the new Bishop took it over.
Everybody who contributed towards building that cathedral built for God. The controversy was over nothing. May God redirect the steps of the brother Knight back to the Church.
His Lordship, Most Rev. Jonas Benson Okoye, might even go out of his way to look for his prodigal spiritual son, remembering the good shepherd who would go in search of the straying sheep.
And for Ifeanyi Ubah, may his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
0 comments:
Post a Comment