After some kite flying and media manipulation, President Goodluck Jonathan finally said he intends to propose a constitutional amendment that will provide for a single, elongated tenure of office for the President, State Governors and all Federal and State legislators. Currently, the President and Governors are limited to not more than two, four-year terms. There was no specific information on how long the single term will be. According to the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Rueben Abati, the amendment will take effect from 2015, and the President himself will not be a beneficiary of the amendment. This will suggest that Mr. President will not seek to run for another term of office.
Even though the statement of the Special Adviser is silent on the length of the tenure, there is widespread speculation that the proposed amendment will seek for a seven-year, single-term tenure. The arguments being made for the amendment include the view that the two four-year terms for Presidents and Governors which the Constitution provides for do not help the leadership to focus on governance and the institutionalization of democracy at this stage of our development. It is also intended to eliminate the acrimony which the issue of re-election every four years generates, and the Special Adviser draws attention to the fact that the nation is still smarting from the election-related violence, which he describes as the result of the desperation for power and the tendency of every election to overheat the polity. These endemic crises, he says have stunted the growth and development of democratic values and institutions, as well as the overall economic aspirations of Nigerians. Mr. Abati argues that a longer, single term will make elected executives concentrate on governance and service delivery for their entire term, rather than run governments with re-election as their primary focus. Similarly, he suggests that a longer term for legislators will help to stabilize the polity. Finally, Mr. Abati says the proposed amendment is part of President Jonathan’s transformation agenda aimed at sanitizing the nation’s politics.
Many Nigerians have expected some sort of initiative towards constitutional amendment since President Jonathan indicated last May that he will push through another round of constitutional changes. Most Nigerians have also expected that the changes will seek to give President Jonathan himself some sort of advantage, contingent of course, on the consideration that it will confer other advantages to Governors and Federal and State legislators as well. Now that there are some sketchy details about the planned amendment, the most notable part of the initiative is the claim that President Jonathan will not benefit from it. In clear claims, it means that he has no plans to run for another term in 2015. This interpretation will not impress many Nigerians who believe that the President is already disqualified from running in 2015 by the constitutional provision which bars anyone from being sworn-in more than twice into an executive office. What would appear as an altruistic concession is therefore nothing more than an acknowledgment of the law; and it will not convince Nigerians on its own that the proposed amendment has merit beyond the ambitions of President Jonathan Even if this position is faulty in law, many Nigerians cannot see President Jonathan pushing through an amendment from which he will not benefit.
A more profound question at this stage is what benefit these amendments aim to achieve, for an administration and nation grounded by insecurity, poverty, corruption and the absence of ideas and strategies for moving forward. President Jonathan has used up the entire period since his election to set up a not-so-new Federal Executive Council, and beyond the transformation mantra, the nation is entirely in the dark over how the economic and social infrastructure will begin to be fixed; how the administration intends to heal the wounds of election-related violence; how it will handle the new threats to national security; how to deal with crushing poverty and corruption; and how to galvanize a nation weighed down by cynicism and self-doubt, to dream big dreams.
In the midst of this suffocating quagmire, President Jonathan flashes a constitutional amendment on tenure for elected people who are barely months into their tenures; an amendment that will take effect four years away, if it does get through. The intense arguments and bitter disputes which will follow this effort at an amendment will divert attention and energy away from the challenges of governance and will deprive Nigerians of even the most minimum of the benefits of the democratic process. The proposals will widen the gulf between government and the opposition. They will open up old wounds, as suspicions and recriminations come to the fore and further polarize the nation. They will remind Nigerians of President Obasanjo’s term-term misadventure, and people will close their minds to any arguments about merits or demerits of the amendments. In the end, whether they pass the crucial steps of becoming law or not, these amendments will leave the nation worse off than it is presently.
So why would a President sitting on a mountain of complex problems compound those problems by starting a potentially damaging argument that is irrelevant under the prevailing circumstances? Could it be that the administration is diverting attention from its seeming inability to move the nation out of its massive limitations towards some economic and political reconstruction? Or, as some commentators have said, are there plans to introduce other far-reaching constitutional amendments that will alter the basic structure of the Nigerian State , and which will require the full support of the legislature, which could be secured by an elongation of its tenure as a carrot?
Without a doubt, these amendments will generate a huge and bitter debate, because Nigerians will be suspicious of their real motives, their timing and the possibility that they may be just the first in a line of a long list of other constitutional amendments which will seek to confer undeserved advantages to groups or individuals. Apart from public suspicion and the fact that they represent lowly-placed priorities, there is also the fact that all the reasons behind them are rooted in our failure to institutionalise the conduct of free and fair elections. Whether you give Presidents, Governors or Legislators four, six or seven years, and whether they have one, two or more terms, unless you have a credible electoral system, party primaries will be expensive and will be hijacked by incumbency and money. Elections will be rigged whether we have them after every seven or four years, unless you have an electoral system which will not lend itself to power and money. Leaders will not be better because they have seven years, rather than four. Good governance is not determined by how long you stay in office. Good leaders are genuinely elected; they govern with responsibility and are transparently accountable; and they submit to the popular will during elections.
The argument about number of terms or length of tenure of elected leaders will be more useful if we have settled the basic issues about the nature of our election. What the proposals of President Jonathan seek to do is to attempt to cure a basic political problem with the wrong solution. They divert attention from the need to look hard at our electoral process, and to try to fix it before the next elections in 2015. President Jonathan is reluctant to draw attention to the need for a critical assessment of our electoral process because he is worried that this may be interpreted as a stain on the recent elections that brought him to power. The late President Yar’Adua indicted the elections which gave him victory in 2007, and went ahead to try and improve the electoral process. He did not succeed. If President Jonathan wants to leave a lasting legacy in Nigeria , he cannot do it better than by improving the integrity and credibility of our electoral process. The amount of energy which will be wasted in debating the proposed amendments on tenure for elected leaders will be much better utilized if the nation takes a critical look at our politics and electoral process which make our nation progressively worse off. The best that can be said of the proposed amendment on tenure is that Nigerians should reject it as irrelevant, diversionary and wasteful. Those we have just elected, including President Jonathan should get to work and make a difference in our lives in the four years that they have.
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