By  Ebenezer Babatope

That Nigeria is a politically volatile state is never in doubt.

Nigerians are a politically resilient people who will always speak out their minds on issues without minding whose ox is gored. It has always been said and I affirm it that a dictator can never hold our country to ransom for long.

It is therefore not strange the way Nigerians have been reacting to the single term of six years proposal of  President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. GEJ has come out boldly to appeal to Nigerians to consider a major constitutional change which will involve the removal of the present tenure of governors and president of Nigeria in the main from an eight-year two-term system to a single six-year term.

This bold proposal from the government of  Jonathan has since provoked major national debates where some Nigerians have spoken out against it.

I wish to appeal to all our fellow countrymen and women to kindly uphold the arguments in favour of the one term proposal and consider them a deep measure to solve and preserve our democratic system.

I sincerely advocate this for the following reasons:-

* The presidential system is a very expensive venture. Though the single term of six years tenure is still the presidential system of government which our country adopted starting from the second republic politics, it can however be reasonably said that the six-year one-term advocacy is very much less expensive to administer and operate.

* I remember too well the debates that went throughout the length and breadth of Nigeria in 1977 after the Constituent Assembly, then presided over by the late Justice Udo Udoma, had recommended the presidential system of government to replace the parliamentary system that had been in use in Nigeria during the country’s first republic that collapsed on 15 January 1966.

The Constituent Assembly had met in Lagos to consider the major recommendation of the Constitution Drafting Committee of the 49 WISE MEN headed by the late Chief Rotimi Williams. The Rotimi Williams Committee had recommended the adoption of the presidential system of government.

*Before the Federal Military Government, then headed by General Olusegun Obasanjo, promulgated the military decree that gave legal bite to the presidential system of government, the regime had thrown the debate open to Nigerians.

I remember too well that the late Dr. Ibrahim Tahir, the Bauchi bom university intellectual, myself, the late Professor Abiola Ojo and some Nigerians had rigorously canvassed the parliamentary system of government for Nigeria instead of the presidential system.

The cardinal point raised by the anti-presidential system debaters was the expensiveness of the system. It was argued that a parliamentary system of government that would have made the prime minister, the head of government and all his ministers chosen from inside the parliament and that would equally have enabled Nigerians discuss emerging national political problems daily in parliament was less expensive than the presidential system.

The anti-presidential system proponents lost out in the national debate and Nigerians went for the American style presidential system which is still the prevailing constitutional arrangement for Nigeria.

While it is true that the single term proposal is still within the presidential system of government, it stands to reason that its adoption will save Nigerians from the current expensiveness of the two term system that makes a president and the governors stay in power for eight years (if they are elected for a further term of four years). This is a major aspect Nigerian people should consider in this debate.

Secondly, we cannot close our eyes and ears to the political acrimonies that are ever attendant to the presidential two-term system. It is common knowledge that when a president and the governors emerge in power after general elections, the feud for a second term begins the second day the government is formed.

We are all witnesses to the political rancour, divisions and problems that have always surfaced in the country immediately after elections. The political office holders and their opponents have always commenced contests for power in preparation for a second term of the incumbent public office holders. This matter has been a recurrent feature of Nigeria’s political life since the second republic.

Nearly all the political parties in power in Nigeria during the second republic were victims of the internecine struggles for power within the political parties in preparation for the 1983 elections which clearly signaled the end of the first of the two-term presidential system that Nigeria had adopted in 1978.

I submit that a single presidential term of six years will end the long history of deep political crises and divisions that have virtually dismembered the political parties in Nigeria since 1978. These unending feuds are also ever threatening the attempts to cement a stable democratic system for Nigeria. I equally humbly submit that a single term system will liberate our country from the sad experiences we have always had within the two term system.

Some Nigerians opposed to the single six-year term proposed by the government of Jonathan have argued that the proposal is akin to tenure elongation. They have made it look that the new proposal brought out by government lacks historical antecedents in its formulation. Some have therefore argued that the proposal of a single term presidential system was a deliberate proposition by the GEJ led government to extend its life span.

I say in all humility that this is not correct. I remember the conclusions of the National Political Reform Conference of 2005.

A political sub-committee of the conference presided over by Dr. Joseph Wayas, the former president of second republic Senate, had recommended unanimously a single-six-year system for Nigeria instead of the two tier system then in use in the country.

The recommendation of a single term of six years of the sub-committee was unanimously approved by the main body of the National Political Reform Conference which till today remained a balanced representation of opinion in Nigeria. This is why I am equally submitting to Nigerians that the single term proposal by Jonathan is predicated on the best interests of the people of this country – a measure that has been previously pronounced on by bodies of well meaning Nigerians.

I therefore sincerely appeal to Nigerians not to dismiss with a wave of the hand this single term proposal.

*Babatope is a PDP leader and former minister of transport.