Election may not hold in 2015: Single term ‘ll solve all our problems -Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu *Extend Jonathan’s tenure to 2017 *Extend tenure of all governors to 2017 When the matter came up at the level of our committee we were mindful of the political atmosphere, we also tried to draw inspiration from what happened in other jurisdictions, especially in Latin America in the seventies where they had circumstances in which the issue of transition from one president to another was a major issue and was causing crises within their region and they decided to amend their constitution at the time to create single term in each of those countries, and it was for a transition period. This helped to stabilise their democracy and now, some of them are amending their constitutions to go back to two terms of maybe four or five years. So, we felt that it was something we could recommend to our country. If you look at what is going on in Nigeria, in both the new PDP and APC are based on the issue of succession. We believe strongly that that matter is something that could be revisited. But I think the mistake we made in our recommendation was when we said incumbents would not benefit from it, and I think there was then some kind of coalition of forces to defeat it. Yes, I believe that if the players in the polity, that is, the stakeholders are able to come together, I believe strongly that it is one way to deal with the situation. It could be a win-win situation for everybody and I believe that the one way it could work is…now people have been elected for four years, now let everybody complete the four year tenure for which they have been elected and we can through the doctrine of necessity do some kind of transition of two years in which case, those who are now present occupants like the president and the governors who are finishing their term, could now do another two years that will end in 2017
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 10:43:08 +0000
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