Growing concern over sick governors

Still fuming at the prolonged absence of their governor from his office , leaders under the auspices of the Taraba State chapter of the Conference for Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) have threatened to compel the state House of Assembly to declare him incapacitated.

They urged Sunday that the House should invoke Section 189 of the 1999 Constitution as amended should the state government continue to hide from the public the true health situation of Governor Danbaba Suntai.

Similarly, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) Sunday condemned the poor handling of the reported illness of Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State.


Suntai who was on October 25 last year involved in a plane crash which he personally piloted was immediately evacuated to a German hospital where he was said to be fast recuperating

But outraged by the refusal of the state government to make known to the people the health situation of the governor, the leadership of the CNPP who was at the press centre of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Taraba State council Sunday, vowed to invoke Section 189 of the constitution.

Flanked by the leaders of the various registered political parties in the state, the chairman of the CNPP, Hamidu Suleiman, lamented that despite the various visits by top government functionaries to Germany where the governor is hospitalized, none of them deemed it fit to speak to the people of Taraba on the issue.

Suleiman who doubles as the state chairman of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) observed that “a delegation which we were reliably informed comprised the Chief Judge, the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) and the Speaker of the House of Assembly, among others travelled to Germany to see His Excellency.”

Since their arrival, the CNPP noticed, the delegation had been mute over the health of the governor, a situation which the group said had continued to keep the entire people of the state and the nation at large in the “dark.”

“Ever since the delegation arrived in the state, there has never been any official communication from them and this gives credence to the rumours milling around that the governor has brain damage, thereby being totally incapacitated, ” it said.

Similarly, in a statement issued in Lagos yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Ahaji Lai Mohammed, the ACN also criticized the “choreographed visit” to Chime in London by a delegation of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), which was “apparently designed to reinforce the line being peddled by Gov. Chime’s supporters rather than keep the people of the state better informed of the true situation of things".