Rev. Fr. John Okwoeze Odey, the man whose published books and articles are displayed in this Website, was born in Ngbo, Ohaukwu Local Government Area, Ebonyi State. He had his primary school education in Sacred Heart School, Otinyi Ngbo, and passed out in 1964. He had his secondary education in St. Augustine’s Minor Seminary, Ezzangbo from 1972 to 1976. In August 1977, he proceeded to St. Augustine’s Major Seminary, Jos, for his philosophical and theological studies. He graduated in May 1984 and was ordained a priest on July 7, 1984.
Three years later, in June 1990, he was sent to Rome where he read Moral Theology and got his Master and Doctorate Degrees within an unprecedented short period of time. His doctoral dissertation was written on Martin Luther King Junior, the legendary Black American Civil Rights Crusader. In the course of writing his dissertation, he discovered that Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu saint and the apostle of nonviolent resistance, who singlehandedly liberated India from British imperialism with the healing power of truth, love, redemptive suffering and nonviolent resistance, greatly influenced Martin Luther King. For this reason, while he awaited the approval and defence of his dissertation, he studied, wrote and published a book on Mahatma Gandhi with the title, Mahatma Gandhi: A Profile in Love, Peace and Nonviolence.
In addition to Martin Luther King Junior and Mahatma Gandhi, the other people whose battle against injustice greatly influence Fr. Odey include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was killed at the age of 39 years by Adolf Hitler because he challenged the atrocities that Hitler committed against the Jews. Archbishop Oscar Romero who was shot dead at the age of 63 years while celebrating mass for telling the leaders of his country, El Salvador, to stop oppressing and killing innocent and helpless people.
Others include Helder Camara, the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife in Brazil, who had it rough in his country and narrowly escaped martyrdom for identifying with the oppressed and denouncing the oppressive government in his country. South African Steve Biko who was killed at the age of 31 years for his struggle against the apartheid regime. Nelson Mandela of the same South Africa who was incarcerated for 27 years for his struggle for the freedom of his people.
At home, Fr. Odey’s models include Dele Giwa, the Editor-in-Chief of the Newswatch magazine and one of Nigeria’s most brilliant and most courageous journalists, who was killed by a sophisticated letter bomb at the age of 39 years for defending the right of the oppressed. Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa who was killed at the age of 54 years for his environmental activism and defence of the minority rights of Ogoni people whose land had been devastated by the British and Dutch oil interests.
Chief Gani Fawehinmi who was incarcerated many times in different prisons for fighting for oppressed Nigerians until he contacted the lung cancer during his long-term confinement in Gashua prison and died at the age of 71 years. Colonal Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, the Trumpet of Justice and the Hero of Nigerian Democracy who believed that the military totally lost its credibility in Nigeria by the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election and so voluntarily resigned from military commission because he did not see the rationale for remaining in a discredited military.
The list is endless. But these few vanguards of justice constitute a graphic illustration of the people whose lives influenced Fr. Odey to become an unrelenting social gadfly. If you read his books, you will discover that these names and many others make up a catalogue of his revered models. He has written a book on almost all of them. And just as the struggle for justice was never a bed of roses for these great men, so also it has not been for Fr. Odey.
Nevertheless, prompted by the redemptive death of Jesus Christ who was nailed to the cross for bringing peace to the world and for preaching justice; John the Baptist whose head was cut off by King Herod because John denounced the alarming injustice Herod committed against his own brother; impelled by the daring courage of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi who set their people free from the ravages of American racism and British imperialism respectively, and the doggedness of all the advocates of justice mentioned here, Fr. John Odey has become a thorn in the flesh of men and women who, in the name of leadership, have reduced their fellow Nigerians to subhuman conditions.
Fr. John Odey’s life is ruled by his conviction that it is a crime for people who are in the position to speak for the oppressed and traumatized Nigerians whose voices cannot be heard to keep silent in the face of injustice. Due to his undiluted and practical application of the gospel message to the Nigerian condition, he has become a household name.
Consequently, different people call him different names. Such names include: a rebel on the pulpit, the nemesis of bad politicians, a consummate scholar, an accomplished and prolific writer, John the Baptist and Prophet Amos of our time, the voice of the voiceless, the conscience of our nation, a pragmatic administrator, an accountable and transparent manager, a selfless priest, an audacious social justice crusader and an ardent lover of humanity.
Those who admire Fr. Odey as a prophet of social justice come nearest to his fundamental disposition and deepest commitment. While all of us are familiar with the biblical Ten Commandments of God, Fr. Odey has, in his crusade against injustice, dared to add another, making it eleven commandments. This is captured by the title of his two-volume book: The Eleventh Commandment: You Shall Not Keep Silent In The Face Of Injustice. Like John the Baptist, after whose name he took, Fr. John Odey is a man who is not prepared to compromise justice for any price or for any threat.
For him, the zeal to speak out against injustice is like the word of God that was burning like fire in the heart and imprisoned in the bones of Prophet Jeremiah (20:9). In 2009, he wrote his autobiography, My Life and My Commitment, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his priestly ordination. In that book, he made it very clear that the struggle against injustice is the commitment of his life.
Being an extraordinary prolific writer, Fr. Odey has 51 published books to his credit. His passion, dynamism and scholarly deftness as a prophet of social justice are most boldly spelt out in those 51 books, in his piercing Sunday sermons, in the lectures that he has walked the length and breadth of Nigeria on invitation to deliver at seminars, conferences and symposia and in his spellbinding prolific articles that call the attention of Nigeria’s political leaders to the fact that they have turned the good dreams of our forefathers into a nightmare.
In the year 2003, his book, This Madness Called Election 2003, gave our political buccaneers sleepless nights when it was published. Fr. Odey is the first Nigerian who had the guts to describe Nigeria’s electoral brigandage as madness. To crown it all, sixteen years before it happened, he predicted the End-SARS protest of October 2020 in his most prophetic book, The Children of a Wicked Generation: Why they are Angry, Desperate and Vicious. It is pertinent to recall briefly here what he said in that book. He wrote:
“We are all in trouble. Our nation is pitched in an abyss of pervasive and gargantuan moral decay. Who will bail the cat? If my personal view is anything to go by, I am of the opinion that while all of us are guilty of the mess, our young ones are guilty to a lesser degree. When you drive normal people mad, they will become mad. When they become mad, they will behave like mad people. When they start behaving like mad people, they will have no moral scruples and will be bent on destroying everything that has value as mad people do.
“While in action, if the spirit driving them tells them that they should destroy any being that walks on two legs anywhere they see one, they will do it. And once they start doing it, it does not matter whether their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters happen to be the visible beings walking on two legs. It makes no difference. As long as they walk on two legs they are enemies and must be eliminated. When this happens, everybody lives in fear. This is analogous with what is currently happing in Nigeria. We have driven our children mad and the entire society cannot stand under the weight and the intensity of their madness.”
Since 2004 when Fr. Odey raised this alarm, we have been seeing the madness he talked about straddling like colossus on our highways, on the streets of our big and small cities, on the pathways of our remotest villages and in our forests. Our wicked generation has driven the young ones mad and there is no place for us to hide as they go on rampage, maiming, killing and shedding blood with impunity. As pessimistic as that might be, we see ourselves in a situation where we are compelled in this country to agree with Thomas Hobbes that life is short, nasty and brutish. When shall we start listening to the prophets of our own time instead of persecuting or even killing them?
Fr. Odey is aware that whoever insists on speaking the truth and advocating for justice in an unjust society like Nigeria will not have many friends among the ruling class. But he has remained undeterred. The saying that one should not speak the truth if one is not strong enough to stand alone does not apply to him. Fr. Odey always speaks the truth. He has the courage it takes to stand alone. He has some enemies, the enemies of truth. But his friends massively outnumber his enemies. His proclivity to conquer fear and remain an unwavering prophetic voice has made him man of the people.
Any person may choose to like or dislike Fr. Odey’s ways. But he is a man that no serious-minded person and no intelligent and dispassionate observer of the role he has been playing to ensure a better Nigeria will wish to ignore. He cannot be ignored because his social activism against the systems and persons that reduce other people to subhuman conditions touches on the chord of humanity. He cannot be ignored because his voice is the voice of reason and the voice of conscience. He cannot be ignored because his voice consistently raises strident alarm in the human psyche and calls for immediate attention.
Rev. Fr. John Odey’s catalogue of books and prolific articles constitute an encyclopedic overview of the happenings in Nigeria. They are all here for those who desire to know the good, the bad and the ugly that have combined to destroy the Nigeria of today and to eat away the future of our children and generations after them.
By Dr. Gregory Esheya
