Profile of Sullivan Iheanacho Chime

The Man
Sullivan Iheanacho Chime, born April 10, 1959, hails from Udi Town in Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State. He attended the College of the Immaculate Conception, CIC, Enugu, from 1971 – 1976, from where he proceeded to the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, to study law.

Graduating, LL.B Hons, 1980, he went straight to the Nigerian Law School, Victoria Island, Lagos and on finishing, B.L Second Class, Upper Division, was called to the Bar, July 10, 1981.

The basic legal teeth he quickly cut at the Legal Aid Council where he did his primary assignment - National Youth Service Corp, NYSC, programme – expectedly led to an active, long, rich and very deep 17-year run of private legal practice, based in Enugu, but traversing the whole of Nigeria and elsewhere in practices steeped in advocacy, legal counseling, legal administration and other roles in the practice of law.

Proceeds of such voluble practice and positive impact on legal colleagues predictably brought about his emergence, June 1992 – July 1994, as the Secretary, Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Enugu Branch.

Dawn
The arrival of Chimaroke Nnamani, as governor of Enugu State, 1999, was like the social valve propelling a new dawn for the then stagnating regional master State. Chime was called in as Special Adviser, Legal Matters, to the Governor. Then, but about time, too, the journey of legal justice reforms and coalescence with social re-righting took off in earnest.

Sedate and serene Chime, assumedly detached, perceived aloof and unperturbed – but actually calculated, smooth, nervy and persistent – roved, cosily, between the roles of legal counseling and a measure of restraint vital for a boss – confident, determined, charging, yet focused - who was quick to make the impacts of democracy dividends immediately and reasonably felt. It was perfect pairing.

Avalanche
On elevation, December 2001, to the post of the Honourable Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Enugu State, Sullivan Iheanacho Chime, took on the broad outline of the Justice system and rather than explode in hasty legal reframing, quickly fitted into his portfolio as reform point man set to broaden people’s perception from both sides of the law.

The Enugu Citizens’ Rights and Mediation Centre, commissioned by a combined throng of 17 European Ambassadors, September 2005, was the signature statement in favour of social factors in consideration of matters in social conflict resolution and people’s appreciation of the dimensions of law in their immediate environment.

Working with the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, DFID, Chime’s Ministry of Justice further broadened the points and personages in dispute resolution when, first, it unfolded the principles of Access to Justice, A2J, renamed Justice Social Reform, JSR. This was anchored on delivering the basic principles and practice of social dispute resolution – codenamed Alternative Conflict Resolution - to factors of native institutions, especially traditional rulers and chieftains of town unions. The immediate and highly cherished results were reduced time lag created by distance and shortage of structured but highly bureaucratic legal institutions in the system.

Pioneering Stakeholder input in tackling nagging points in the State Justice System, Chime achieved the near impossible of weaving a view point of the usually public hollering about laws of the land which they “never a hand a hand in the making” with the usually structured, unchanging, unyielding and highly schooled legal minds, by devolving debates on legal matters to such stakeholders, laymen and pundits alike, who felt they had a thing or two to say about the laws.

It was that same frame of mind and pattern of administration which gave birth to the now famed reviews of the Laws of Enugu State - that is – yet, without the rash explosions spotted in other States where reasoned restraints were not imposed on the evolving democratic law making process at the enthronement of liberal democracy.

As spelt large in the air and boldly carried to town, the glistening, first of its kind and imperially disposed, computerized 18-Court-Room Judicial Complex - which now completed the Enugu Three Arms Zone, at Okpara Square - there is no mincing words on all there would be in a reform-minded Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice who stood the tenure under an administration which sought the best form of justice system for its people.

By thorough, though nerve-torturing inspection of structural pinning, the project of founding location, sweating through construction rigours and dissecting such details to building specifications, before eventual finishing of huge 18 edifices, Chime was further thrown up as the administration’s point men in the drive to relocate the State Court Complex, from the obsolete colonial structures in the old GRA. This was finally achieved as conceived, January 2007.

Roots
Sullivan Iheanacho Chime, father of four – two boys, two girls - was born into the well-heeled family of First Republic Parliamentarian, late Elias Aneke Chime, who served in the then Eastern Nigeria Regional Parliament in Enugu and was also one time Honourable Member Representing the old Udi Division in the Federal House of Representatives in the 1960s.

At one time, too, Chime was Regional Minister in the very proactive and pioneering administration of Dr. Michael Okpara, Premier of then Eastern Region, before he was appointed the Provincial Commissioner for Enugu Province, a position he held till the military overthrow of civil democracy in 1966. Aneke Chime subsequently retired into farming and real estate development, but soon emerged the Igwe (Traditional ruler) of Udi in 1976.

Matriarch of the family, all through and as the Patriarch, Elias Aneke Chime quit, 1983, is Madam Theresa Ekperechi Chime, who is blissfully savouring her retirement.