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Single Term: President Jonathan on another Dangerous Move By Haruna Manu Isah ”Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voices of justice when it matters most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph most”……. Haile Seleise. This writer refused to dip his pen in the gall against the charade that took place in the April 2011 polls and subsequent senseless blood bath across some Northern states for some simple reasons. To begin with, I restrained myself from writing for some time now because in an article I wrote and published in the Peoples Daily of 23th February, 2011 titled ‘Republic of Niger and the wind of change: Any lesson for Nigeria” I made some veiled predictions of the likely consequences of any perceived injustice before , during or after the polls. Alas! That unwanted and almost unsolicited prognostication came to pass. I was petrified by that! Equally, I was, about the time of the post election violence, engrossed in reading a book written by Festus Iyayi titled “Violence”. What a coincidence one may wish to think, because Festus Iyayi really captured the causative factors and latent causes of violence as we witnessed and still subsisting across the length and breadth of our dear country, sadly defying all logical security explanations. Acts of violence are committed when a man is denied the opportunity of being educated, of getting a job, of feeding himself and family, of getting medical attention cheaply and promptly’. The book “violence” further stresses that “we often do not realize that it is the society, the type of economic and hence the political system which we are operating in our country that brutalize the individual, rape his manhood. We often do not realize that when such men of poor and limited opportunities react, they are only in a certain measure, answering violence with violence. That was indeed a graphical explanation of violence in Nigeria. What else can one say! The cooperate mismanagement of the country’s common wealth by those in authority and insensitivity to the plights of the common man is aptly described as an act of violence. It can be safe to posit that peaceful political co-existence cannot be guaranteed in an atmosphere of grinding poverty in the midst of plenty. Nepotism, corruption, religious and regional politics are dangerous curves on our road to nationhood. Now, having realized the triviality of staying off pen, yours sincerely resume active duty in a modest attempt to contribute meaningfully to the Nigeria project. It is timely to say that president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will go down in history as one who further sharpened the edges of ethnicity, heightened regional politics and more dangerously, religious-cum-political intolerance. He will be remembered also as one who ruined zoning principle in the political equation of the country, and later made a volte-face to insist for its entrenchment but to no avail. As I write this piece, the ruling PDP has set up a 7 man committee to look into how the already jettisoned zoning contraption can be revived within the party without any remorse. I shudder from the urge to believe the postulation of former U. S Ambassador to Nigeria, J. Campbell, that president Jonathan would probably be the last president of a cooperate Nigeria. That prophecy will never come to pass…. So God help Nigeria! It is a sordid fact that one cannot help such kind of weird thinking in view of prevailing palpable insecurity where nobody sleeps with eyes closed. One may wish to recall that about six years ago, under the able supervision of a despot, Olusegun Obasanjo, then as president, attempt was made to prolong the sufferings of Nigerians by toying with an idea of a third term . It was a true acid test for our ever fledgling democracy, but Nigerians ever grateful to their stars defeated that ill-fated third term agenda as widely known then. One begins to wonder, its only African leaders that are shamelessly goaded by power-drunkenness to the extent of attempting a suicidal tenure elongation. Although, it was estimated that about 60% of African leaders have attempted or gotten one form of tenure elongation or the other. And this most a times happens despite staggering reality of inept stewardship. My dear reader let me dwell on the kernel of this write up at this juncture. When the news of a purported 6 years single term filtered to the public via the twitter social network few weeks ago, not a few Nigerians became jittery for that was how Obasanjo’s third term project started like a mere rumour, then denial and later snowballed into a consuming political inferno that almost drag the country to a precipice. The courage of the then National Assembly is still evergreen in our memory. In the same fashion, the idea of a single term by the presidency of president Goodluck started like one of those grapevine talks, later a denial that Mr. president will not be a beneficiary of the proposed 6year single term, but hear the presidential spokesman Dr Reuben Abati…”I believe what it means in clear terms is that the president will not come in 2015 to benefit IF THE AMENDMENT SAYS SO”. (Daily Trust, 29 July) (emphasis mine). The question is what if the amendment does not say so or is silent on that as it is wont to be? And at what point do Nigerians started developing a confidence in Mr. President who is well known for double speak? We are told equally by Mr. President that the idea of 6years single term was not his, but a product of an inter-party consultative committee set up by the late president Umaru Yar’Adua, and Dr. Goodluck, then as Vice-President was the chairman. It is indeed curious that in the whole gamut of recommendations of that committee it’s only the 6year single tenure that attracts the fancy of Mr. President at this material time. However, those recommendations were tabled before the Uwais’ Electoral Reform Panel, and interestingly 70% of the recommendations were absolved with particular and specific exception to the 6year single term proposal because of its political colorations. ” it is only political, and has nothing with electoral reform. It is not part of recommendation of our commission”…. Moh’d Lawal Uwais (Vanguard, 30, July), contributing on the much debated single tenure being propose by the PDP led federal government. Come to think of it, the said inter-party consultative committee had only 29 members drawn from 4 political parties namely PDP, ANPP, PPA, and APGA, but it was only one (PDP) out of the four political parties supported the single term proposal. It’s a surprise that Mr. President preferred this particular recommendation, otherwise, why not “rotation of offices at states and federal levels to be a constitutional matter and adoption of proportional representation”, which was also part of the recommendations of the inter-party committee. As any discernable mind could see that Mr. president is on another dangerous move, the last time he was on such pastime was when he had to ignore the constitution of his party, the PDP, to contest the April polls against a subsisting zoning principle sometime in January this year. To say the brutal fact, this 6-year single term is ill-timed, ill-informed, and self-serving for obvious reasons. ”The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was the party that brought forward the single tenure proposal to the committee during the meeting chaired by the then Vice-President Dr. Jonathan” (Sunday Trust, 31, July). That was a statement credited to Chief Chekwas Okorie, a member of the said committee. Chief Okorie, a chieftain of APGA further revealed that. .
It can be deduced that the then Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan had wanted to outsmart his late principal, Yar’adua so that the administration of late Yar’adua could only last for 6years thereby paving way for him to contest. It is obvious that the then Vice-President could not wait for four years of two terms to elapse, hence wanted to fast forward event. It was all part of a grand scheme of pursuing personal ambition. Poor Yar’adua, he never knew of this! It amounts to stretching logic beyond its elastic limit, if a government that has spent less than four months in office will get itself enmeshed in the unwholesome politics of tenure elongation at this formative stage. Why can’t the president engage in the serious business of governance, so that Nigerians who lost their lives for him to succeed at the April polls would not be in vain. The president wants tenure elongation, while Boko Haram has arm-twisted the government into a moronic stare, as Niger Delta militants have continued to torment innocent citizen’s right at the president’s backyard. Somewhere we were told that the country has an unemployment level of 41. 6% with less than 3000MW to support the economy. Somewhere we were informed that no Nigerian university falls within the first 8000 university ranking in the world. These and more are some of the problems bedeviling the country that our dear president needs to grapple with, but not a 6year single term drama that only distracts the business of governance. Finally, the composition of the seventh National Assembly gives us confidence that any anti-people bill will never see the light of the day. So may God help the seventh National Assembly to write its name in gold too! Can someone say amen!
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