By Okey Alozie
There is serious war now between the prison officials at Federal correction centre, owerri and worshippers of St Lazarus Chaplaincy.
Both the prison and St Lazarus Catholic Church, share the same boundary without problem since 1999 the Church was established by government to assist inmates spiritually and otherwise.
According to the Priest in-charge of the chaplaincy Rev. Father Jude Onyeakazi, encroachment into the Church and discrimination started when the present controller Mr. Njoku came in.
He explained that the controller does not like Catholic Church and for that reason, he turn things upside down to work against the church. In his words “Our work is to assist the prison inmates spiritually and materially and we have been doing that. “ the present controller here does not like Catholic Church and for that he became religiously biased and decided to work against us. The sewage from the prison was channeled towards the church side coupled with the encroachment. He hinted that the fencing was wrongly sited. He hinted that the large portion of the fence is into the side of the church, and to avoid more trouble, the church went to court to stop the encroachment but the prison officials continued the job”. The priest in-charge Rev. Father Jude Onyeakazi submitted. Speaking further, he revealed that many worshippers have stopped coming to church because of intimidation and harassment of prison officials.
Father Jude Onyeakazi regretted why prison officials should be so hostile on people coming to worship God, adding that sewage coming out from the prison has caused sickness to good number of worshipers.
Moreover, “ The Odour of the sewage coming out of the prison is quite provoking and has seriously affected the church.
It was reported that some of the journalists who came to the church to hear from the priest were attacked by prison officials. All efforts made by the Journalists to see the controller to hear his own side of the story proved abortive as at the time of filing this story as the security men could not allow them go in
