IN France, President Nicholas Sarkozy has taken over the leadership of European affairs through the EU. His command performance role in the NATO bombing of Ghaddaffi’s Libya and his offer of assistance to help Nigeria overcome her security challenges over Boko Haram are all seen in Paris as an attempt to shore up his dwindling poll rating for the presidential battle coming up next year.

Conversely, President Calderon of Mexico has had a successfully uninterupetd battle with Mexico’s hard drug gangs because of Mexico’s six-year tenure which is, however, renewable.

But in Nigeria, because of our level of underdevelopment, nothing stops a newly sworn-in president from setting the foundations of his re-election machinery in motion same day as he is elected president. And from thence all funds meant for the infrastructural development of the state are channeled into his re-election bid. Governance is therefore sidelined and the masses groan without any effective means of changing the status quo as even the worst presidents and governors have always won re-election without the people voting for them.

The most salient reason why the seven–year tenure is unbearable for Nigerian politicians is because in Nigeria another election means the emergency of more millionaires. So, the more elections, the more millionaires emerge. In Nigeria, politics is a full time pre-occupation and coupled with the bitterness and acrimony that follow, apostles of “do-or-die” politics have elevated political violence to hitherto unimagined realms.

Most of those in the oppossion of Jonathan’s seven-year single tenure proposal have mishieviously imputed tenure elongation to the President’s proposal despite the President’s vigorous denial of such a plot on Thursday July 28, 2011.

The opposition argument that the seven-year tenure will encourage corruption, indiscipline and inertia in the incumbents is not only hollow and puerile but also lacks merit. There are statutory provisions in the Constitution to checkmate an erring President, with impeachment as the ultimate. Nigeria will from hence demand for no less than visionary and dedicated leaders who will one after the other unlock the hidden treasures of the nation and avail these to better the lot of those pauperized Nigerians who fall under the classification of Franz Fanon’s The wretched of the Earth.

The advantages of a seven-year single tenure which takes into cognizance the differences in tribes and tongues will have a sobering effect on our polity and allay the fears of Nigeria’s marginalised minorities.

Let us not allow partisan politics to derail our nascent democracy. Let us not allow Jonathan-phobia to derail us from our collective destiny of a glorious dawn. President Goodluck Jonathan is already on the mountain top. By virtue of this rare privilege and position, he has seen what ordinary Nigerians are not privileged to see. He has seen so many changes he can make to rectify the deplorable situation in the country. So many leaders have been to this same mountain top and they have seen this rot. And they have not done anything to change the status quo because they are reaping bountifully from the spoils of this anomie.

No matter what the critics say, I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that President Jonathan has the vision to lead this country aright and change it from a wasted and wasteful generation to a prosperous nation, fit to be called Africa’s flagship in the comity of nations.

But let us give him time and support to carry out his programmes in spite of our political, cultural and provincial differences.

Mr. BEN NANAGHAN, a public affairs commentator, wrote from Lagos.