 |
| Senator Ike Ekweremadu |
by: Omololu Ogunmade in Abuja
Deputy Senate President and Chairman of Senate Committee on
the Review of 1999 Constitution, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, Thursday cleared the
air on the single tenure of six years
recommended for the president and governors.
He said the decision was taken to avoid a situation where
the National Assembly would be accused of conniving with President Goodluck
Jonathan to elongate his tenure.
Ekweremadu who made the clarification while answering
questions from reporters, said if the recommendation received the support of
the required two-thirds of both the national and state legislatures, the
proposal would take effect as soon as the amended process was concluded.
He recalled that when Jonathan mooted the idea, he was
accused of plotting to elongate his tenure by proposing a six-year single term.
Therefore, he said the committee felt it was better for
incumbent heads of the executive to make a sacrifice by leaving the office
after a single term of four years than to contest for another tenure of six
years and end up spending 10 years in office instead of eight years.
“You will recall that the president was the first person to
call for a single tenure of six-years. When he did so, he was accused of
originating the idea because he wanted to elongate his stay in office. So, we
don’t want Nigerians to say that we colluded with the president to elongate his
stay in office because somebody who ought to spend eight years in office will
now spend 10 years. We thought it was better for somebody to make a sacrifice
instead of staying in office for 10 years,” Ekweremadu added.
On the reason a vice-president or deputy governor who
succeeds his dead principal should be barred from standing for election after
serving out the tenure of the latter, Ekweremadu said if the former was allowed
to do so, the whole essence of a single tenure would have been defeated.
He said instead of such persons to be seeking another
election, they should rather have cause to be grateful that they had served at
the top echelon of governments and by so doing, posterity would remember them
to be among those who had been privileged to occupy such offices.
He also explained that if such persons were not barred from
contesting elections, the polity would be heated, noting that even if they were
not interested in standing for elections, external forces within and outside
the government could also pressure them to do so.
“Therefore, institutional system would have been damaged.
So, there is no need for you to scheme for a comeback to avoid overheating the
polity,” he said.
According to him, the move would enable such a person to
concentrate on governance, adding that the number of years a person spends in
office does not necessarily translate to performance.
He recalled that the late General Murtala Muhammed spent a
brief period in office and yet left indelible footprints which he said had
remained reference points till date.
He also explained that state houses of assembly, the
judiciary and state independent electoral commissions were given autonomy
because they are critical institutions of democracy that the committee felt
needed to be strengthened.
On the reason the committee rejected state police,
Ekweremadu who said he personally believed that the option of state police was
the best way to enhance effective security in different parts of the country,
added that the committee retained the federal policing system because it found
from the public hearings held in different parts of the country that Nigerians
wanted improvement on the present police structure as against altering it.
He also explained that it did not recommend a special status
for Lagos because the committee found that places such as Lokoja, Calabar and
Kaduna had also at different times served as the capital of Nigeria and if a
special status was recommended for only Lagos, protest would arise from such
places.
On the reason the president is overruled from signing the
amended constitution before it takes effect, Ekweremadu explained that since
the Nigerian constitution is patterned after that of the United States, there
would be no need for the president to do so, as his US counterpart does not.
No comments:
Post a Comment