6-YEAR SINGLE TERM: Shaky presidential scale of preference?

By Rotimi Ajayi

When Goodluck  Jonathan, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party,PDP, started campaigning for his election prior to the April general election, he gave Nigerians only one promise; “I will not disappoint you.” Jonathan towed the normally easy way of promising good governance. What constituted his idea of good governance was left in abeyance. So, he promised everything without actually promising anything and many Nigerians got drugged by this “aphrodisiac” and fell in love with Candidate Jonathan. This must have been deliberate on his part.

After his inauguration, President Jonathan was very quick to rub in the no-promise stance while speaking with his ministers and aides at the close of the orientation retreat for them in Abuja.

Apparently evading the pressure his predecessor, Umaru Yar Adua, had over his development agenda, the President told the audience at the ceremony, “I never mentioned any agenda point. We have never promised any number of points. We promised good governance not points. Every sector of the economy is important. We are not running a government of any point agenda.”

Last Tuesday, the President demonstrated his clear disconnect with the feelings and development yearnings of Nigerians when he announced to a  nation bedeviled by terrorist’s violence, conquerable power outages, inexplicable systemic corruption, tardiness in decision-making and malignant ecological problems, the first block of his Transformational Agenda Maze as a proposal to amend the Constitution to allow the president and the 36 governors to contest only a single term of six years as against the present four-year term renewable for another.

The statement released by his Spokesman, Dr Reuben Abati, reads “President Goodluck Jonathan is to send a Constitution amendment Bill to the National Assembly that will provide a single tenure for the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Governors of the 36 states of the Federation.  In the envisaged Bill, the tenure of members of the National and State Assemblies will also be a little more than four years, although lawmakers will still be eligible for re-election as their constituencies may determine.

“President Jonathan’s commitment to a single term for the President and Governors is borne out of a patriotic zeal, after a painstaking study and belief that the constitutionally guaranteed two terms for Presidents and Governors is not helping the focus of Governance and institutionalisation of democracy at this stage of our development.

A longer term for lawmakers would also help to stabilise the polity.

“President Jonathan is concerned about the acrimony which the issue of re-election, every four years, generates at the Federal and state levels.  The nation is still smarting from the unrest, the desperation for power and the overheating of the polity that has attended each general election, the fall-out of all this is the unending inter and intra-party squabbles which have affected the growth of party democracy in the country, and have further undermined the country’s developmental aspirations.

In addition, the cost of conducting party primaries and the general elections have become too high for the economy to accommodate every four years. The proposed amendment bill is necessary to consolidate our democracy and allow elected executives to concentrate on governance and service delivery for their full term, instead of running governments with re-election as their primary focus.”

The President would still need to explain to Nigerians how a single term of six-years by either the president or the governors could positively change the profile of development in the country when corruption is still very pervasive within the civil service which is the machine for policy translation.

Also, did Mr President painstakingly study the phenomenon of power corruption that would possibly make beneficiaries of the amendment, if passed, to again make for another amendment that would delimit the one-term clause in the proposal? The implication is that when this happens and Nigerians get saddled with a bad leader, it would take almost 12 years to rid him or her out of the polity.

Although amendment to the constitution is desirable, Nigerians believe that such amendments at this time should be proposals that would enhance the living standard of the people. After all, given the scenario going on in Edo, Jigawa, Rivers, Lagos and the South-West Zone, a governor or president who is well-prepared for the office does not need half a century to “hit the ground running.”

In the face of lack of power, insecurity, aggravating poverty and other problems, Mr. President’s scale of policy preference needs to be reviewed if he is to succeed with his transformational agenda unless he wants to pass the baton of meaningful development to his successor while settling for political face-lifting.