Bringing back Prime Minister won’t help
The 71 members of the House of Representatives said to be behind the bill to alter the constitution and take this country back to the parliamentary system made several claims at their press conference in Abuja last week, many of which are not supported by the evidence. Maybe there is reason to reflect on the […]
The 71 members of the House of Representatives said to be behind the bill to alter the constitution and take this country back to the parliamentary system made several claims at their press conference in Abuja last week, many of which are not supported by the evidence. Maybe there is reason to reflect on the presidential system of government, at least as we have been practicing it in this country, and wonder whether it has lived up to its billing. A promise to re-examine it could be part of any presidential candidate’s campaign promises. A candidate who is certain can also promise to do away with it right away.
Some people could however accuse us of impatience. We began to experiment with the presidential system only 39 years ago, and for 16 of those years the Constitution was suspended while military and interim national governments ruled by decree. So in effect, we have tried the system for only 23 years, compared for example to the Americans who have tried it for 239 years. Within that period they fought a civil war, fought in two World Wars, got entangled in many smaller wars from Mexico to Vietnam, had four of their presidents assassinated and another three were impeached [though only one resigned], and they endured many other upheavals, including the Trump presidency.
Let us begin from its beginning. The first serious suggestion that Nigeria should try the American-style presidential system, as far as I know, was made by General Murtala Mohammed when he inaugurated the Constitution Drafting Committee [CDC] led by Chief F.R.A. Williams in October 1975. Murtala said it was only a suggestion by the Supreme Military Council but in the ensuing one year of CDC discussion, one year of national debate on the draft constitution and one year debate in the Constituent Assembly chaired by Justice Udo Udoma, only the late Dr. Ibrahim Tahir, Talban Bauchi, seriously spoke against it. Tahir actually introduced an amendment in CA to amend the draft and restore the parliamentary system. Needless to say, a majority of members rejected it.
As Murtala and the soldiers saw it, the presidential system will do away with the cut-throat regional and ethnic politics of the First Republic because a candidate will require broad national support, a majority of the votes in addition to a quarter of the votes in two thirds of the states, to become president. Left largely unsaid at the time were other issues such as cost, winner takes all, potential abuse and concentration of power, among others.
At their press conference last week, the 23 MPs pushing for a parliamentary system, who said they stood for 71 colleagues, made many allegations against the presidential system. They said, for example, that the parliamentary system “is more economic friendly, cost effective and largely efficient in the conduct of government business.” To the extent that ministers under a parliamentary system are members of parliament, that makes for some saving because you won’t have a separate crop of ministers. But that is as far as it goes. It may not stop us from having a large cabinet and it may have no effect on their pay and perks. Afterall, when General Obasanjo was handing over in 1979, he clearly expected MPs in the Second Republic to be part-time like their First Republic counterparts and he made no provision for their permanent accommodation in Lagos. Within a week of their inauguration however, they forced President Shehu Shagari to give them the 1004 housing estate.
At their press conference last week, the MPs said “whereas countries under the parliamentary system were prospering, the presidential system has reduced Nigeria to the poverty capital of the world.” This is a serious exaggeration. Neither parliamentary nor presidential system in themselves guarantee whether a country prospers or is impoverished. African nations that operated robust parliamentary systems in the 1960s and 70s did not prosper any more than those countries around the world that operated presidential, monarchical, military, theocratic, despotic or even Apartheid systems.
Certainly, India has made tremendous socio-economic progress in recent decades using the parliamentary system but Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Cambodia did not make as much progress. In fact, Turkey recently opted out of parliamentary system and Recep Tayib Erdogan became an executive president instead. Our pro-parliamentary MPs also said, “Our position in this legislation clearly points to compelling advantages of parliamentary system of government, such as economic growth and development, as well as inherent efficiency in the conduct of government business. Studies have shown that countries under the presidential regimes consistently produce lower output, volatile inflation and greater income inequality relative to those under parliamentary system.”
I will like to see the studies that made this interesting allegation. Consistently lower output? I doubt if this claim applies to France, US, South Korea, Brazil, Russia, South Africa or more recently, China. Some countries that operate parliamentary systems, such as Greece, suffered severe economic problems in recent years but I don’t think it was due to the political system. Japan, which since its defeat in World War Two has developed an elaborate parliamentary system, has undergone economic stagnation for nearly three decades now. Again I don’t think the political system has anything to do with it.
The “efficiency” claim of parliamentary systems is also doubtful. On the face of it, it may look like that because there is no separation between executive and legislature and the prime minister usually commands a majority in parliament, so he easily gets his measures passed. But not always; ask Mrs. Theresa May in her ongoing struggles with Brexit. Parliamentary systems also tend to produce fractious ruling coalitions, as so often happened in Italy and Israel, and they are prone to instability and frequent elections.
The MPs also claimed, “Income inequality under presidential systems is worse when compared with that of parliamentary or hybrid systems of government.” I doubt if there is any empirical data that supports this claim. Income inequality is caused by socio-economic systems and policies, not political systems. Many of us were very poor back in the First Republic despite the parliamentary system then in operation. I don’t think income disparity will disappear just because we do away with the president today and install a prime minister in his place.
According to the MPs, “Due to the excessive powers domiciled in one person under presidential systems, consensus building that is often required for economic decision making is always lacking…The level of instability and volatility of presidential systems makes it difficult to achieve these economic objectives.” The question is, who said there must be democratic consensus before economic policy succeeds? A visionary autocrat such as Suharto, Park Chung hee and Lee Kuan Yew, backed by an efficient bureaucracy, can deliver all the needed economic policy.
In fact, authoritarian and even totalitarian regimes have often delivered faster transformation of economies and societies than democratic ones, whether presidential or parliamentary. Josif Stalin’s transforming the Soviet Union in two decades from a backward agrarian into a powerful industrial economy was not due to consensus building. Nor did Adolf Hitler revive the German economy and launch it into war within six years due to consensus. China, which equaled and probably exceeded their feat in recent decades, did so under the Communist Party, which is not a parliamentary utopia.
The only part of the MPs’ submission that I sympathise with is about “excessive powers domiciled in one man,” which in our case means president, governors and local council chairmen. That, however, has nothing to do with presidential systems but with Nigerian systems. There are all kinds of rules in the books to regulate the exercise of power by chief executives in a presidential system but in Nigeria, these are mostly observed in the breach. The same thing will most certainly happen if we return to parliamentary systems. So, we should locate our problems and seek solutions elsewhere, instead of blaming political systems.