Tenure limitation for political office holders

Glancing through the gamut of public opinion on what is now ‘The Nigerian Question’, it is rather amusing that even those who should know better have been stammering and fanning embers of bigotry. Recent developments in the country have exposed how statesmanship can bend to pedestrian compromises in the face of true test of nationalism […]

Glancing through the gamut of public opinion on what is now ‘The Nigerian Question’, it is rather amusing that even those who should know better have been stammering and fanning embers of bigotry.

Recent developments in the country have exposed how statesmanship can bend to pedestrian compromises in the face of true test of nationalism and ethnic interest take precedence above national interest and objective logic.

Specifically, I am referring to the recent criticisms that trailed the announcement of the good intention of President Goodluck Jonathan to send a bill to the National Assembly recommending limitation for the president and the state governors. The tenure issue has been in the purview of national debate for decades but because of parochial mindset and our suspicious nature when it comes to political stakes, decisive action has been elusive.

Tenure limitation for political office holders form an important part of the Uwais election recommendation. The limitation of tenure for office holders has always been the subject of debate and recommendation in all electoral disputations. But the need to take a decisive and definitive resolution has always been lacking.

The proposed bill for political office holders is designed to drastically reduce the cost and four-yearly elections and distractions capable of derailing the provision of purposeful governance to the people.

Let’s emphatically underscore the fact that political elections remain the biggest problem of Nigeria. Right from independence, Nigeria’s civil strife and political violence have been largely tied to pre, during and post elections. It was what snowballed into the unfortunate national pogrom, the Nigerian Civil War, which the country is still struggling to overcome its searing scars from its consciousness. This even the worst critics of the proposed bill would readily admit.

Like in most African countries, if not all, preparing for election in Nigeria is akin to preparing for war. At the federal government level, as well as at states level, budgets of ministries, departments and agencies are usually deployed to finance elections. It is sad that so many Nigerians forget so quickly. Are elections not “a do-or-die affair” in Nigeria? Are elections not golden opportunities for killings, maiming and wreaking vengeance on perceived social, economic, religious and intellectual enemies?

We forget too soon the wars and battles that take place before, during and after elections. We forget too soon the huge waste in human and material resources during and after each election. We forget too soon, the acrimony and divisiveness and unhealthy atmosphere that are the aftermath of elections in our clime.

It is sad that so many Nigerians do not know where they are coming from. Or they just choose to ignore their history; or they know but do not understand it; or they are not interested in its salient lessons; or that they preposterously choose to ignore it, or all of them put together. It is this indecent haste to fly into the future by the younger generation that has bred all the monstrous and invincible corruption virus in all the strata of our existence as a people, be it moral, intellectual, economic, social and political corruption.

Election period in Nigeria is characterized by extremism. There are tension, ethnic jingoism and religious fundamentalism. For a typical Nigerian politician, as soon as he wins an election, he starts thinking about the next election and all the machinery of government are marshaled towards winning the next election at all cost.

In other words, our political leaders are more passionate about winning elections than focusing attention on dividends of democracy. For any genuine patriotic Nigerian, President Jonathan rather deserves applause providing a crisp vision and solution to the recurrent electoral violence in our country.

While most critics of President Jonathan’s idea of six years tenure for the president and state governors admit that the idea is a good one, their biggest headache is that the timing of the proposal is inappropriate. At this point, it is most appropriate to caution ourselves, as well as the younger generations, that we should not play to the gallery with issues that require honest and holistic attention in order not to undermine the implacable judgment of history.

Like the president rightly admitted, the idea of six years of single tenure for the president and the state governors did not originate from him.

Between 1994/95, the regime of General Sani Abacha convened a National Constitutional Conference. During that conference, the committee on election and political parties carefully studied the history of elections in Nigeria and all the socio-political tensions from 1960 till then and took a bold move to review the nation’s electoral laws to that effect.

Also in 2005, President Olusegun Obasanjo convened another National Political Reform Conference in order to confront the strident calls for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation. That conference which was a gathering of some of the country’s best minds, had equally positively contemplated the idea.

Preparatory to independence in 1960, elections were held in 1959. No party won clearly in that election and so the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC, and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroon, NCNC, formed a government that saw Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe of the NCNC as the governor-general and Sir Abubaka Tafawa Balewa of the NPC as Prime Minister.

From 1962 to 1963, elections in the Western Region and the Mid-Western Region were characterized by violence and mayhem.  In 1964, there was a general election in which a coalition between the NPC and the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), I. S. Akintola’s splinter faction from the Chief Awolowo-led Action Group, AG, formed National Alliance to emerge victorious as a coalition. It was a hot election whose animosity became protracted up to 1966 when the military felt they had had enough of the excesses of the then political elite. The result was the bloody coup whose impact led to the civil war.

Looking at the 2011 post general election crises in which nearly 1, 000 persons were killed, do we really need a reminder that the idea is even belated? We have not mentioned series of bloody violence that characterized elections from 1999 to 2007 and dozens of innocent lives lost.

With 64 political parties but reduced to 57 recently, Nigeria has the most politically congested space in the world. This is the only way to express the outrageous excitement of the Nigerian politicians at elections. Besides, the reasons advanced by the President for this proposal are unassailable.

It is widely held that, Nigeria conducts and runs the most expensive elections and democracy in the world. For example, the Babangida regime allegedly sank billions of dollars of the oil windfall on elections without any result.

The president has explained constructively that, he has consulted widely at the highest political levels before he made the idea public. But armchair critics have continued to deploy instruments of propaganda to downplay this courageous and pan-Nigerian step by Mr President towards righting the major enemy of Nigerian peace and development: Election.

Dr Okonny is a member of the Governing Council of the University of Benin