by Niyi Akanniso

A popular Chinese proverb has it that the fish stinks from the head. When the head of a household, an organisation, or a state stinks, everyone eventually partakes in the stench, often beginning with those who are close to the power structure.

I have written repeatedly about our politicians’ lack of transparency. It was the subject of my reflections on the celebration of Nigeria’s 52nd independence anniversary on October 1, 2012 (The PUNCH, October 2, 2012). The focus of my complaints in that column was President Goodluck Jonathan’s concealment of whatever led his wife to take a “rest” in Germany for over a month. When she eventually returned to Nigeria, thanking God for giving her a second chance, it was clear that she had undergone some physical, psychological, or spiritual transformation. Jonathan’s action was more or less a replay of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s concealment of his wife’s treatment abroad except that she, unfortunately, never returned alive. The real issue is that citizens deserve the right to know about the details of their leaders’ treatments since they were attained at public expense.

For selfish reasons, African leaders and politicians in general often hide the information needed to appropriately assess them for public office and about how state funds are expended and for what purposes. This is especially true of Nigerian leaders. That’s why Nigerians remain haunted today by two outstanding cases of concealed information. The former Delta State Governor, James Ibori, concealed information about his criminal past, while the late President Umaru Yar’Adua concealed information about his infirmity. There were enough rumours during their campaigns for office, but the collusion of the judiciary in Ibori’s case and of the political class in Yar’Adua’s case pushed back the truth.

As events unfolded, Ibori went ahead to live up to his criminal past by looting Delta’s treasury, while a cabal took advantage of Yar’Adua’s illness and subsequent death to loot the national treasury. Thanks to a British court, Ibori’s loot was exposed and he was sent to jail. Today, the Federal and Delta State Governments are fighting over ownership of the alleged bribe he offered the former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. In Yar’Adua’s case, we may never know what exactly killed him, when exactly he died, and how battered our treasury was under his administration. With Yar’Adua’s death, Nigeria joins Gabon and Guinea in losing two sitting presidents each, bringing the total number of African leaders who have died in office to 22. What is common to most of them is a lack of transparency about their health, either before they assumed office or while in office.

A popular Chinese proverb has it that the fish stinks from the head. When the head of a household, an organisation, or a state stinks, everyone eventually partakes in the stench, often beginning with those who are close to the power structure. That’s what has happened in many African states as demonstrated by Enugu State, where the concealment of health information by Obasanjo (about his wife), by Yar’Adua (about himself), and by Jonathan (about his wife) is being reproduced. Having concealed information about his health, Governor Sullivan Chime left the country on September 19, 2012, leaving his state in a power vacuum.

True, the details of the deceptions differ, but the storyline is the same. The official line about Yar’Adua’s many absences from duty on account of illness included a spiritual trip for the lesser Hajj, even when it was clear that he went to a German hospital for treatment. In Chime’s case, some administration sources told us he is away “on vacation”, spending his “accumulated leave”, while others confirmed he is receiving treatment in India. In both cases, the excuses did not come until rumours about their illness or possible death began to circulate. Again, as in Yar’Adua’s case, the state legislature has failed to declare the Deputy Governor as the Acting Governor, and a cabal is reportedly preventing him from effectively discharging his duties.

During Chime’s re-election campaign in 2011, former Enugu State Governor, Chimaroke Nnamani, hinted at Chime’s illness when he publicly declared his assistance of N7m for Chime’s heart surgery in the United States in 2005.Enugu voters ignored the information by dismissing it as the outcome of a feud between two friends. The same way Anambra people ignored the shenanigans of Andy Ubah vis-à-vis former Governor Chris Ngige. In the middle of the Ubah-Ngige crisis, Prof. Chinua Achebe rejected a national award, citing the political crisis in his state as one of many reasons. He blamed Obasanjo for the crisis because Obasanjo condoned Ubah’s shenanigans. The question now is: Who does Achebe blame for the goings on in Enugu today, where no citizen has set eyes on the state governor for nearly four months?

I cannot hold forte for Achebe on this matter. But I can offer some suggestions. The major culprits in the ongoing crisis are the people of Enugu State. When will Enugu voters wrestle their state from the politics of manipulation? When will Enugu politics take the path of civilisation? For how long will Enugu remain a political laughing stock?

To be sure, accusing fingers could be pointed at Jonathan, the Peoples Democratic Party, and the Enugu State House of Assembly for failing to intervene. But we already knew during Obasanjo’s days that the Presidency and the PDP leadership often look away as their roof leaks. If you press them too hard for intervention, they will tell you it is the party’s “family affair”. Given Jonathan’s experience as a victim of Yar’Adua’s concealed illness, one would have expected him to intervene in the Enugu political crisis, just as citizens intervened on his behalf. But then, what do you expect him to do about a governor’s concealed illness when he himself concealed his wife’s ailment?

This leaves Enugu citizens with just one choice—to take their political destiny in their hands. They have two major options to pursue, and they could be pursued simultaneously. First, their lawyers could go to court to demand the appearance of their Governor at work. It is the kind of action that the activist lawyer, Femi Falana, and the late Gani Fawehinmi would take, if only to embarrass Chime and his allies and also further publicise the case.

A second, and more serious action, is to pressure the State Executive Council and the Speaker of the House of Assembly into removing Chime from office by invoking Section 189 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, and following the procedures stated therein. In pursuance of this option, the citizens could mount a state-wide protest and industrial action to neutralise the loyalty of the Executive Council members to Chime.

Democracy has always gone awry in Enugu State. But the shenanigans surrounding Chime’s illness are coming too soon after Yar’Adua’s case, and at a time when the world has been following other politicians going in and out of hospital, including former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and the United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Enugu citizens should be ashamed of the infamy their state has acquired in Nigerian politics, and they should take immediate action to stop making their state and Nigeria a laughing stock in international politics. In particular, Enugu elders, who produce more moral-laden proverbs than the Book of Proverbs, should live up to the exhortations of their proverbial utterances.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.