By Nnamdi Nwigwe
Our beloved country, Nigeria, would be a more peaceful place if statesmen among us would bestir themselves now to do something tangible to forestall the political paroxysms that await our nation in the year 2015.
The forebodings are getting truly worrisome. The Presidential election that is scheduled to take place next year seems like an election to end all elections.
A study of the vituperations of many unthinking political actors would reveal a people tumbling down a bottomless precipice and hell-bent to take everybody along.
The soothing and stabilising voices of our statesmen are deafeningly silent on the din and cacophony of the so-called politicians across the country.
The more responsible sections of the media are also being sucked into the centrifuge of irresponsible rantings by fellow compatriots whose only concern is to be heard or to be seen as vocal or radical elements in the polity.
Let’s go into specifics: Our President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, would have done six years on the job by the end of his current tenure in 2015.
He got into office in 2007 as Vice President to Alhaji Musa Yar’Adua who died midway into their tenure.
Jonathan served out the remaining two years with Arc. Namadi Sambo who came from his gubernatorial office in Kaduna to take up the job of Vice President.
As another Presidential election approaches in 2015, the polity is agog with high tension horse trading as to who runs for the office from the ruling People’s Democratic Party, (PDP).Some people say Jonathan should go ahead and vie for the office and thus do a second four-year term as he is constitutionally entitled. It probably doesn’t occur to such advocates that Jonathan would have done a total of 10 years as President when the law says eight years maximum.
Those within PDP who demand the withdrawal of Jonathan from the contest say he would be flying against the party’s unwritten agreement that it is now the turn of the “North” to rule since Jonathan, a “Southerner,” virtually appropriated “their” entitlement after the death of Yar’Adua, and again in 2011. From both sides of the advocacy have come threats that Nigeria would cease to exist if they do not have their way.
Indeed, the media has reported some deranged views to the effect that Jonathan must return to Aso Villa after the 2015 polls or else Nigeria will be Nigeria no more.
Such a threat came even when Jonathan has not signified interest in continuing in office after his current tenure.
As a counter, those who say Jonathan will only rule over their dead bodies, come 2015, are alleged to be stoking the fires that have begun raging across the country, apparently to try the resolve of the President to maintain security in the country.
Providentially, there have been some statesman-like suggestions to steer the ship of the nation away from the impregnable rock against which she is speeding to crash.
Most prominent is the proposal that President and Governors should begin to serve for only one tenure beginning from when the last Governor completed a second term of four years.
As for President Jonathan, the nature of his ascendency would suggest that he does eight years until 2017 when he quits for another presidential election to usher-in a President who would now serve for one tenure of either five years or six, depending on what Nigerians prescribe in an amended Constitution.
This sounds both innovative and commonsensical. Can we give it a try? There are so many advantages to this proposition if we can avert our mind to it.
To begin with, the war chest already being assembled by aspirants for the Presidential battle in 2015 would have been rendered redundant. Secondly, it would be better utilized to set up honest enterprises to employ jobless youths. Thirdly, the idea of an incumbent running for a return and using public funds against fellow contestants would not be there.
The suggestion for one term tenure was actually mooted by President Jonathan himself some time last year. So strident was the vocal opposition to it that Mr. President had to confess that the idea was actually not his but that of the Council of State at their last meeting.
“Tenure elongation” is a phrase many Nigerians don’t want to hear because of their nasty experience of pre-2007 Presidential poll with former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.
But Jonathan’s or Council of State’s suggestion is very far from tenure elongation. The brilliant brainwave of letting Jonathan remain in office till 2017 satisfies those who insist on his doing eight years as well as those who say he shouldn’t contest in 2015.In 2017, the stage would be clear for all those who want to occupy Aso Villa, to throw their hats into the ring. And as they emerge, their states of origin would not matter. The President surely has to come from somewhere in Nigeria. We are 14 years into 21st century.
Source: The Sun Newspaper, posted by Crescent University Mirror (Editorial Team )
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