SINGLE TENURE: A PANACEA? #Presidential, Guber Polls May Hold 2017. •As Senate Set To Revisit Single Tenure Proposal# Dep Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has said the National Assembly will revisit the single term clause for president and governors in the ongoing constitution amendment process. He said that the political tension in the country, especially the crises rocking the PDP, were traceable to quest for power among politicians. According to him, if all the stakeholders in the polity came to agreement on the issue of single tenure, it could be agreed that all executive office holders leave in 2017 instead of 2015. He insisted that legislating the power sharing clause into the constitution would help reduce the tension that usually trailed succession of executive office holders. According to Ekweremadu, succession crises revolving around executive positions in recent times had generated untold tension in the polity. “When the matter came up at the level of our committee, we were mindful of the political atmosphere. We also tried to draw inspiration from what happened in other jurisdictions, especially within the Latin America in the 1970s. “They had the kind of circumstances we now find ourselves in, where the transition from one president to another was a major issue and was causing all sorts of crises in their region. “So, they decided to amend their constitution at that time to create single term in many of those countries, in order to stabilise their democracy. And it was for a transition period. Now, most of them are amending their constitution to go back to two terms, after they had stabilised the system. “So, we felt it was something we could recommend to our country. And if you look at what is going on now, all the problems we are having in Nigeria, the New PDP, the APC and all that, they are all issues of succession. And I believe that the matter is something that could be revisited,” he said. While insisting the the Senate committee would revisit the clause before the clause by clause consideration of the amendment bill, Ekweremadu said the recommendation came up against interests among the incumbent executive office holders who moved against it. “I think the mistake we made in our recommendations was when we said that the incumbents would not benefit from it. I think there was some kind of coalition of forces to defeat it,” he stated, adding that “if the players, the stakeholders in the polity are able to come together and believe strongly as I do that it is one way to deal with the situation, it could be a win-win situation for everybody.” According to him, “now, let everybody complete the four-year tenure for which he or she has been elected. Then we can, through the doctrine of necessity, do some kind of a transition of two years. In which case, those who are now the present occupants like the president and the governors will now do, maybe another two years, that will end in 2017. “Some of these people who are fighting the president, I hear that their complaint is that if the president gets a second term when they are gone, he would start chasing them. So, if we all agree that will be a way to solve the problem, after the two years, both the president and these other governors would now exit. So, the fear will not be there and we believe that it will bring down the temperature of politics.”
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 05:35:23 +0000
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