By Emmanuel Aziken

It looked like a sort of contradiction last Wednesday when Senator Ike Ekweremadu called for the abrogation of the presidential system of government.

Speaking at a town hall meeting with his constituents in Enugu West Senatorial District, Ekweremadu identified the high cost of running the presidential system of government and a seeming disconnect between elected office holders and their constituents as the major drawbacks of the presidential system.

The seeming contradiction flows from Ekweremadu’s survival and successes in the system he is now criticising. Indeed, among the few politicians who have survived the bumpy theatrics that have been characteristic of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, few would have stories to tell like Ekweremadu.

He was, however, marked for destruction at the onset of the Fourth Republic.

He had just before 1999 pursued a Masters Degree in Constitutional Law in between his service as a local government chairman in Iri Local Government Area of Enugu State and a part-time lecturer at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Along the way came Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani who had just returned from the United States and won the election to be governor of Enugu State. Nnamani had been helped by Chief Jim Nwobodo, the undisputed political godfather of the state. Ekweremadu had played his role in ensuring that his local government, Iri was delivered to Nnamani who in turn positioned him as a commissioner in his forthcoming administration.

However, Ekweremadu’s local political enemies in Iri went around using Nwobodo’s political machine to put pressure on Nnamani to stop Ekweremadu from being a commissioner.

Nnamani’s response was that he would then make him Secretary to the Government, SSG, a proposal that was flatly rejected. “We are asking you not to make him a commissioner, and you want to compound it by making him SSG,” the Nwobodo camp was said to have sharply retorted. It was upon the objections that Nnamani then made Ekweremadu chief of staff, a position that at that time in 1999 was still unknown among the political class. He is reported to have been the first chief of staff appointed by any governor in the country.

He, however, grew the office and his political profile, and was very soon one of the major power brokers in the Nnamani government.

After Nnamani fell out with Nwobodo, he became SSG, and in 2003, became a senator and since 2007, the Deputy President of the Senate.

Having risen through the ranks to sit at the summit of the political system, it is thus surprising that Ekweremadu has continued to wage war against the very system that has empowered him.

His denunciations of the Nigerian federal structure as a feeding bottle federalism in which the Federal Government continues to feed stunted states has been illustrated in the form of an over-aged man still hooked up on feeding bottle for food.

It is not surprising that many of his fellow power brokers have continued to view him with suspicion especially after his appointment as chairman of the Senate Committee on Constitution Review since 2007.

Senator Rabiu Kwankwanso as governor of Kano State was one of the most fervent critics of Ekweremadu flaying him for allegedly trying to use his position to upset the Nigerian system as it is.

It was no surprise that after Ekweremadu emerged as Deputy President of the Senate in 2007, that representatives of the feudal class in the Umaru Yar’Adua government working in cahoots with elements in the Dimeji Bankole House frustrated the work of the Joint National Assembly Committee on Constitution Review with the view of sabotaging any effort to reform the constitution.

Part of their ploys was to use the issue of the superiority of senators and House members at the Minna retreat in 2007, a development that till today has made the two houses to work separately but at greater cost.

Despite the celebrated successes of the National Assembly in passing some amendments earlier this year, the outcome remains modicum compared to the objective.

The two houses of the National Assembly failed to push through the proposal by the Ekwereamdu Committee for devolution of powers, a significant shift that would have lessened the dependency of the states on the centre. That proposal in itself, is still a far cry from Ekweremadu’s prescription for the abrogation of the presidential system and a replacement of it with the parliamentary system.

So it is not surprising that in the year to come that Ekweremadu as Deputy President of the Senate will hold on to Nigeria’s feeding bottle in Abuja, streaming condensed milk to stunted states that refuse to grow because of a skewed system