Enugu has actors. Or is it that events in Enugu create actors and drama? A short take: Jim Nwobodo versus C.C. Onoh (political horse-trading 1980-1983), Col. Anthony Aboki Ochefu versus Gen. Muritala Mohamed (military vengeance 1984), Commodore Omeruah, Col Akonobi versus C.C. Onoh (banal sectional prejudice, 1986, 1987-1990). Chimaroke Nnamani versus Jim Nwobodo (‘godfather and son’ war 1999- 2002) Chimaroke Nnamani versus monument and governance (2000-2007). The press was on hand to give the full account. Flip through the pages of dailies and magazines of those days now in the libraries the picture is clear as then.
The accounts are revealing and are good source for researchers, historians and commentators, today. Now in the same Enugu, the drama is over. No event, no action? Perhaps! The press is on retreat.
All along, those of us who read the dailies as a matter of duty and indeed read the stories coming from Enugu then has grip of the whispers from the inner recess of government house study. Not so today. ‘We don’t like press,’ those in government now tell those who bother to worry. That is sync-mouthing the boss, the governor, who once advertised in a cover advertorial of the National Standard and the Sun newspapers (October 15 and 20, 2007 editions) on his feud with Senator Chimaroke Nnamani. I hardly read those things. Sometimes people just draw my attention to it “have you read this one…” Of course, if I have the time I read and at times they just draw my attention to particular passages. I read, then laugh. In response to a reporter’s question about what was written of his face-off with his facilitator, he said ‘….Well, you may call it the face-off. Even if you call it war, it suggests that two people are at war, if he wants to write nonsense, it is entertaining.’ Government without press, without publicity!
Chime’s aversion for media and publicity cannot click even though he feels elated that the roads he reconstructs or rehabilitates are enough advertisement of a government that is working. “Enugu is working”, his predecessor’s media team drummed. The anthem is not for this governor who has nothing to do with the past. Yesterday is a history, the anchor of today’s enterprise and the armour for daring tomorrow’s challenges.
Perhaps, the strategy worked for the governor; not now to be sure. Lack of credible information breeds unhealthy rumours about a principal. But who cares as “we laugh it off in Enugu”. That a governor escaped from a state for long holidays without alerting the people on whose mandate he enjoys the luxury of a new life is a non-issue. A terse press release from the state Ministry of Information or his Press Secretary is trivialising governance; a state-wide radio and television broadcast is undue privilege and unearned exposure, if not security risk for the governor.
Now, rumour is riotous. Stories, true or false, are wild about the governor’s absence and his earned vacation overseas; that he is well is a private matter, that he is not, is a family’s care. Perhaps, when he surfs the web and comes across impervious stories, he will laugh at his people’s meddlesomeness in his private life, after all he is, momentarily not the governor, his deputy, Sunday, is, even if on acting capacity.
The intriguing thing is that the media he despises and chased out of his way don’t care. And the people don’t seem to bother either. In Enugu, historical monuments built by the colonial and post-independence governments are being destroyed in the name of development or modernisation. Polo Park has given way to fraud called shopping mall. Cricket and hockey pitches are new bourgeoisie housing estate.
The storm! Enugu secretariat; the Eastern Nigeria government secretariat, historical relics, has been pulled down without explanation but only whimper – a modern secretariat to replace the old-fashioned structures –at paean sessions. Good life.
Don’t the people need to know about what the government is doing? Late President Umaru Yar’adua attempted to discourage Nigerians from meddling with his private life as he pinned away in a Saudi hospital. The cabals in his closet held the nation to ransom. It took the might of the vibrant Nigeria media and aroused national legislators to combat the cabal. If it happens in Enugu, where are the media to whip the docile dogs at independence layout to bark and hold the assailant by the groin?
Looking at the festival of his show of disdain for publicity, can he claim really that he has been acting royal or that it is a translation of his face-off with his facilitator? The contempt for the past isn’t regal. Even in worst situations, in the imperial kingdoms, kings and emperors compete in battlefield and in propaganda.
One can give it to his predecessor, Senator Chimaroke Nnamani, for his drive with media. He worked, and told the world so, then and now in our archives. Chime may ‘have no business continuing with his press team because I wasn’t going to continue with his style’. But having a strong media team to write his ‘memoir’, as a governor, is an advantage.
Those who snort and scavenge with the hope that they have better idea of how to run a government without strong media team ought to ask as Christians do about Christ , the Bible and Michael Bruce scribble on the fly-leaf of his Bible. Wrote Frank W. Gunsaulus, ‘The Bible Vs. Infidelity’: Christianity does not ask: ‘What we think of the Bible? It asks: what we think of Christ? For there, the throne is yet, and so majestic is His Glory that the moment we come into His presence we are judged. The Judge of the earth has taken His place in thought, history and hope. He is not on trial, and He asks no question as to what man thinks of the book which has enthroned Him in literature.
Prejudice is a trap. It is a menacing warhead, you can be sure. Nnamani’s love for publicity was real and there were grounds for it. You may hate him, but one holds to comfort that, in democracy, a government that has press as a friend or a foe is the ultimate choice of a decent leader. One question: Where is Governor Sullivan Chime?
• Mr. Onovo is a retired civil servant and lives in Enugu
