Clara Chime Faults NHRC To Report

Clara Chime

Clara Chime, the estranged wife of Enugu State’s Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State, has expressed disappointment about the report of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) about its investigation of her complaint, and asked for it to be withdrawn.
“Apart from the fact that the information was largely false, it showed lack of sensitivity in publishing sensitive medical detail,” she said today in a letter to her lawyer, Femi Falana. “This has the effect of tarnishing and damaging my reputation. It is as though the Commission set out to ridicule me.”
On Friday, the commission, led by its executive secretary, Bem Angwe, travelled to the Enugu State Government House to investigate the alleged forcible detention of Mrs. Chime.  Following the visit, the NHRC published an interim report on its website in which it described the issue as a disagreement between the governor and his wife “over the procedure for the treatment of her health challenges, which border on occasional hallucinations and depression.”
In the letter to Mr. Falana, she said, “I made it clear to them that I had a nervous breakdown and found it inexplicable as to how hallucinations featured as part of my symptoms. It is important to make this clear so that the public should be made aware of this and that the Commission should recognise part of her ethos in protecting human dignity.”
Noting suggestions that that the Commission appears biased already because of the profile of the person whose reputation is at stake, she said, “I want to believe that the Commission would approach my case with open mind and in particular recognise me as a victim of crime. I hope that common sense would prevail and that the Commission should now retract the damaging publication and stop stigmatising me.”
In her first response yesterday, Mrs. Chime accused members of the commission of accepting a bribe from Governor Chime to write the misleading report about her illegal detention in Government House, Enugu.