Four days after he returned to Nigeria from a four-month vacation/medical trip, Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State has finally briefed newsmen on issues relating to the trip, the utterances and motives of his detractors, and matters relating to governance of the state during his absence. During the briefing, Chime came across as angry, cynical and misadvised. For someone who claimed having cancer and treating it made him a changed man, it was hard to see that change, at least that disciplined appreciation of life’s vanities that evokes soberness, satisfaction with life’s gentle mercies, and indifference to provocations. His words were copiously quoted by reporters, and those words unfortunately for him tell more stories than the governor dared hope.
It is of course a relief that Chime returned home in one piece. Though he may have his doubts, the truth is that most Nigerians, not excepting the good people of Enugu, actually wish him well, believing they stand to gain nothing from his incapacitation. But sceptical and abrasive as ever, the governor dwelled more on the provocations authored by his opponents than on the lessons he and his aides should learn from the controversies and misrepresentations surrounding his over four months trip to London to treat nose cancer. This column does not wish to worsen his pains, but it is unlikely Chime has learnt or will learn anything from the health controversy.
By giving reporters a very lengthy explanation of his London health trip, almost a blow-by-blow account, he misses the point. What the public, or at least the Enugu electorate, desired was that while he was away, and as his vacation changed from purely one of leisure to that of medical attention, he should have carried along those who voted him into office. But here is his own explanation for not carrying anyone along: “I wrote a letter to the speaker in accordance with the constitution, informing him of my decision to proceed on leave and, of course, sought his co-operation to work very well with the deputy governor who will act as governor in my absence … I didn’t know it would be the business of people to know what my activities would be during my vacation. A lot of you here, I am sure, you all go on vacation, you don’t tell us what you do. So, if I decide to utilize the period of my vacation to take care of myself, I don’t see why it should concern anybody. I don’t see why we should owe anybody any apology.”
It is unbelievable that an elected governor could argue it was not the business of anyone to know what he did with his vacation, especially when that vacation turned into a health scare. It is even more incredulous that the governor compared his vacation as an elected official with the vacation of someone else not elected. Perhaps the governor is overrated after all. He should not only be able to tell the difference, if he really cared about his people, and if he was as altruistic as he seemed to feign, he should also have known they deserved more than an explanation and some humility from him.
But what is even more worrisome about the press conference is his dismissive characterisation of the Nigerian print media as proponents of charming falsehood. Hear him again: “Throughout the period of treatment I was an outpatient. All the publications about the governor being in one hospital or the other were all false. I was never admitted in any hospital; all my treatment I took as an outpatient … So, when I started reading in the papers how I died in India, to us, it was a source of entertainment. Anytime we felt like being entertained, we open the website and we will be reading and laughing.” So, here was a governor who rather than give information out, waited until his condition was misrepresented. And then to top what seemed to him morbid recreation, he and other unnamed officials saw the misrepresentations as entertainment. There must surely be a limit to coarseness; there must be a limit to cynicism and macabre delight in falsehood, especially when a governor is dealing with the press of his own country.
Mr. Chime was kind enough to excuse his aides from the shoddy information management that undermined his peace. They didn’t know the truth because he didn’t tell them the whole story. And he didn’t come clean with them at the time because, to him, it was nobody’s business. Shock! Shock! Shock! More astonishingly, when it came to question time, Chime was even more acerbic, more abusive, and was railing and denouncing. It made us ask whether the change he said was triggered by cancer treatment had made him less sanguine about life and more resentful of his polarised publics. If there was any misrepresentation of his condition, if anyone sought to misapply the constitution, if anyone told any lie against him, if anyone spread rumours about his health, the fault was entirely his.
This column wishes him permanent recovery and a cancer-free life. But the truth is that he has neither acted with the dispassion and maturity expected of a governor nor acquitted himself as one imbued with the kind of judgement we would be glad to offer an eye.