By Ochereome Nnanna
HE was not the first to say it. The Director General of the Jonathan/Sambo Presidential Organisation, Ambassador Dalhatu Sarki Tafida, had on September 18, 2010, issued a statement saying that if elected in 2011 the President would spend only one term in office.

The declaration did not make much impact because it came in the wake of similar undertakings by the President’s main opponents for the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), General Ibrahim Babangida and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

These two were tackling Jonathan based on the assumption that the zoning arrangement of the party favoured his stepping down for a Northern candidate. They were furiously wooing the South East, the next door zone of Jonathan’s South-South with the one-term offer and support of the core Igbo zone for president in 2015.

Tafida’s statement was seen as a mere lip service to score cheap points. This was more so because Jonathan kept mum on the issue during his declaration and long after.

Last week Tuesday, however, the President was in Turkey on a state visit. During his meeting with members of the Nigerian community he formally committed himself to one term if elected in April. Finally, it was coming from “the horse’s mouth”. It is now official and quotable.

There are several matters arising. For instance, why did the President choose to make this important pronouncement outside the shores of Nigeria? Why do Nigerian presidents do this? Yar’ Adua did the same, from his sick bed in Saudi. The day Jonathan declared for president, as well as the day he vied with Atiku for the presidential ticket of his party were prime and auspicious moments for such a declaration. As a matter of strategy, he should have factored such an announcement as a propeller of his chances.

One would have thought that now he has proved himself electable with his landslide victory at the presidential primaries he would stay mum on this issue in case of tomorrow when the lure to stay on could push him to lean on his constitutional rights to two terms. Could it be that the President’s camp is still scared that the “North” could close ranks behind one of its numerous candidates in April, even though he received a resounding national approval within his party at the Eagle Square?

Another issue to be looked into is the basis of the offer. Is Jonathan offering one term of office on the general assumption that the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua’s “eight-year” term (which Jonathan is purportedly completing) ends in 2015? I don’t believe in this idea. Jonathan is ending his joint ticket with Yar’ Adua on May 29, 2011. If he gets elected in April 2011 he will be starting his first term in office based on his joint ticket with Vice President Namadi Sambo.

The Constitution did not guarantee the Yar’Adua/Jonathan ticket an eight-year tenure. And so, if the President is going for one term only due to the pressure to quickly complete a bogus stretch he shared with Yar’Adua and hand over to the North (or any other region) he will be dancing to the tune of the conservative class in determining how a leader emerges and how long he stays in power.

Nigeria has gradually progressed from the era of the president coming from only one section of the country – the North – to the post-military culture of rotation of the presidency between the North and South. But since the Yar’Adua incident, whereby power was allowed to devolve to the Vice President after the death of the President as practised in other civilised countries, a new paradigm has gradually eased itself into place.

Twenty years ago in this country, a minority person being picked as vice president seemed unlikely. A minority presidential candidate from the South trouncing Atiku, a strong candidate chosen by Northern leaders was unthinkable.

But it has happened, and not because the North or any other section of the country was humiliated or ground underfoot in the process but because all sections of the country in the ruling party came together to choose Jonathan in spite of his perceived minority “handicaps”. People are now calling it the sign of “a new Nigeria”, in which tribe, section, region or religion will no longer be the deciding factors in choosing leaders.

Is Jonathan making this undertaking based purely on honour and principle? Or is he buckling under sectional pressure? There is nothing wrong in a leader opting to serve only one term and giving way after laying a sound foundation for the nation to move forward.

That was what Nelson Mandela did in South Africa, but his case was different, and the reason obvious. Most system reformers would lay the foundation and build on it using their maximum constitutional terms.

If Jonathan is able to fix our power supply woes, give us a “people’s constitution” as he promised, where power would be devolved to enable the people assume direct control over their affairs in their respective localities, address the inadequacies in our educational, health, security and infrastructural sectors as well as improve the economy with more of our people gainfully employed, Nigerians may not allow him to go after only one term.

He is already doing some of the things that leaders in the past shied away from. In spite of our rich coal resources and power supply woes, past leaders, especially Olusegun Obasanjo, refrained from turning to coal as one of our options for the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) probably because it would mean putting federal investment in a “forbidden” part of Nigeria (Enugu and environs).

It is only if Jonathan fails as a leader that all Nigerians will join hands to send him home in 2015 if he gets elected in 2011.