The Grand Master
By
The gavel raps, "Brethren, the Provincial Grand Master, Right Worshipful Honourable Alabo Tamuntonye Omubo Graham-Douglas," the warden announces, and a sea of dark suits rise in awe. The grand master himself, decked in a simple dark suit shorn of the regalia of the Masonic Lodge that had made a female photographer a bag of nerves, walks behind another warden to take his seat. That done and the post- installation banquet of Alabo Graham-Douglas as the provincial grand master of the Irish constitution of the Freemasonry was underway.
The ceremonies had actually begun the previous evening at the Golden Gate, Restaurant, Ikoyi with the pre-installation dinner for "brothers" as Masons like to call one another. Non-members were invited except women. The installation at the Masonic Lodge, Ojodu had begun at noon with the procession led by the three grand masters of the three constitutions, MC Ewen for the English Constitution, Brother Adenrele Adejumo who had a skirt on for the Scottish Constitution and Brother Meppi Ivron-Jarrett who was the outgoing master of the Irish Constitution.
There was no way any non-member could tell how the installation was done. But from the organ and hymns it, sounded like a service of any orthodox church. "You cannot be there because you are not a member", explains the octogenarian Ivron-Jarrett. "It is like a church; you don't attend committee meetings you don't belong to", he added with a chuckle. As he explained, he had been a Mason for 45 years. "As a child, I was called 'Bobo-mason' because I used to take my father's things to the Lodge".
According to him there is really no difference between Freemasonry and Christianity except for the jealousy that has tainted the average Christian, especially the Pentecostal Christian. "There is nothing strange. Freemasonry makes you become a better Christian. It teaches you to serve your God and to love your neighbour which the Church teaches. But we practise these things more and that is why there is that jealousy".
As he showed, President George Bush of America with all his self-acclaimed Pentecostal fire took his oath of office in January on the Masonic bible. The bibles are the same as Jarrett argues but in Freemasonry, it is called The Volume of the Sacred (not secret) Laws.
Freemasonry was imported into Nigeria in 1868 with the opening of the Lagos Lodge. All the three British constitutions - the English, Scottish, and Irish - are present here in Nigeria. Its members say it is anchored on three principles, of brotherly love, relief and the truth. These principles every mason must exhibit. Perhaps because of its British roots, Saturday's ceremony had some of the best minds in the country in attendance. Graham-Douglas himself was to share his Masonic experience. "As a child growing up in Port Harcourt, my first observations of the Lodge was in the company of some peer group. About 1950, we were wandering along the bushy path of what is known as Bernard Carr Street and Pott Johnson Street, when we focused our attention on Okirika Masonic Temple".
The same thoughts that assail a non-member when he encounters Freemason worried the young Tonye too "... The house where the dead and living meet... We speculated unimaginable hallucinatory fantasies about the brotherhood that in our subconscious, we became phobic and so, grew up with negative impressions of the Order". Decrying the attitude of born again Christian against members of the Order, Graham-Douglas takes consolation in the fact that Masons have not been "declared as unfit, baseless, faithless and unworthy to be received among men of honour".
Brought up in a family of masons, the words "... endow him with a competence of thy divine wisdom that he may be better enabled to display the beauties of Godliness to the honour of thy Holy name" by the chaplain at his initiation, has guided him through the years as a Mason. In his own way, he has worked to propagate Freemasonry. He founded Irish Masonry in Abonnema, his home town in Rivers State and was at a time, a senior warden in both the Irish and Scottish orders but elected to stay on with the Irish constitution. Saturday's ceremony marked the ascent of Graham-Douglas to the very top of the Masonic Order of the Irish constitutions in Nigeria.
Graham-Douglas took the opportunity to deplore the collapse of morality in the society. "There is something fundamentally wrong with society today, basic principles of morality are defective and our youths no longer enjoy organised motivational upbringing and guidance. Social morality has declined to an unacceptable level." And as he thinks, the nation needs to learn from the Mason's "system of morality veiled in allegory and illustration.