By AMINU JAHUN 

In Africa, Latin America, the post-Soviet Republics, etc, illiberal democrats exploit political reforms, constitutional reviews, referenda and the courts  constricting  democratic spaces with the backlash of tenure elongation and removal. Cameroun’s Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982, succumbed to external pressure to accommodate multiparty politics in the 1990s,  but  illiberally used a constitutional review in 2008 as a Trojan horse to abolish tenure limit in Cameroun.

In 2005, a referendum on multiparty democracy in Uganda, was transformed into a platform by President Yoweri Museveni to despotically  abolish tenure limits, making him a stationery president. Political reforms in Armenia became a Trojan horse for the tenure elongation of President Serzh Sarsyan. The reforms moved Armenian democracy from a semi presidential system to a parliamentary one, which reproduced him in power. As his constitutional tenure ended in 2018, and  the new parliamentary constitution took effect, the Armenian parliament elected him Prime minister elongating his tenure.

The 2024 constitutional reforms in Togo, described as power grab by the Togolese opposition, replaced presidential rule with parliamentary system with limitless terms, enabling incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe, who has been in power since 2005 to remain  in power up to 2031, after which he could become the president of the Council of ministers. Despite the  Bolivians’ rejection  of the  removal of term limits in a 2016 referendum, Bolivia’s highest court struck down tenure limits in 2017, freeing President Evo Morales to run for fourth term in 2019.

If legislative subservience to executive designs, and lack of internal party democracy are legacies of the Fourth Republic, regular constitutional reviews and political reforms are recurring decimals in Nigeria’s democracy. There had never been a National Assembly, since 1999, which hasn’t undertaken comprehensive constitutional amendments, transforming them into a legislative ritual. President Olusegun Obasanjo attempted using the 2005 national political reforms as an avenue for tenure elongation, deploying henchmen such as Prof Jerry Gana, Ambassador Greg Mbadiwe, the late Col Ahmadu Ali and the late Tony Anenih, among others, who vigorously lobbied delegates to the conference to push the proposed six year single term tenure, and the extension of his tenure to 2009. Realising the threat posed to Nigeria’s democracy by the tenure elongation, the National Assembly rejected the moves.

In 2014, another political conference proposed a new governance model, conflating elements of presidential and parliamentary systems in Nigeria. The modified presidential system’s six-year single tenure, could have been the platform for President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure elongation, after he might have ended his final tenure under the 1999 Constitution.

Despite Nigeria’s giant stride in constitutional reviews ( 16 as at March 2023, compared with the United States’ 27 since 1789),  legislative means of correcting constitutional defects, and aligning the Constitution with unfolding governance needs, is repulsive to those pushing an agenda for a new constitution. They magnify the defects in the Constitution, making it look sufficiently deficient, facilitating the need for a political reforms/ conference or constitutional amendments. Therefore, Afenifere, the Patriots and similar political groups, have rejected the 1999 Constitution as a grundnorm due to its military imprimatur, glossing  over the fact that since the democratic battle wasn’t fought with bayonets and guns, the departing military authority would have an inerasible imprimatur on the transition instruments to the Fourth Republic; as there was a colonial stamp( a British Order in Council) on the independence constitution.

Since they condemn the military  for the 1999 Constitution, they should  condemn them for keeping Nigeria one; building economic and social infrastructure; expanding educational frontiers; building a federal capital; satisfactorily handling the national question; giving the nation a high diplomatic profile, reintroducing democracy on a platter of gold, etc.

There is a possibility that PBAT could channel the Afenifere political agenda anchored on restructuring, regionalism, and fiscal federalism into another political reforms conference, or resuscitate the 2014 Conference report for the purpose. 

The lead story in the Punch of November 14, 2024 that a draft bill from Afenifere would be forwarded to President Bola Tinubu, PBAT, soon could be the takeoff of the design  to produce a new governance model, incorporating the agenda,  most likely in the final tenure of PBAT, so that if a new constitution is produced, he would be unencumbered by his two terms under the old Constitution to seek for another term under the new model in 2031.

Democratising nations in Africa, Latin America, and the post-Soviet Republics are under the spell of the backlash of illiberal democrats, producing stationery presidents and prime ministers through  political reforms, constitutional reviews, referenda, and judicial accommodation of executive designs, necessitating eternal vigilance to save democracy from illiberal leaders. The dynamics of Africa’s largest democracy with its prebendal democracy makes it vulnerable to illiberals in strategic executive, legislative and judicial offices.  

*Jahun, a commentator on public affairs, wrote from Dutse, Jigawa State, via: @ aminuhabibu58@gmail.com.