“Let there be a proper election where even the opposition may win” – Ebiri
FeaturedSpecial Reports June 17, 2013 admin
Former governor of Cross River State and Chairman of the Presidential Committee on the Review of the Nigerian Constitution (1991-2001), Chief Clement Ebri, spoke to Regional Correspondent, Diana Okon-Effiong in Calabar on the implications for institutionalisation of a six-year-single tenure for the presidency, governors as canvassed in some quarters including the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and other contentious issues. According to him the present institutions in Nigeria are not strong enough to sustain such demands. He said that the electoral system; the judicial system and the legislature should be rather be strengthened first. Excerpts:
Too much power concentrated in the presidency; governors presently.
It will be suicidal. We should continue to experiment with what we have presently – 4-year tenure for two terms. But the term should not run consecutively; that is two terms at a stretch.
There should be no automatic ticket. Let us make laws that will make it impossible for a chief executive to remain in office and conduct an election.
Aspect of succession – having committed so much havoc would want somebody to cover up.
There are certain conditions prevalent in Nigeria’s political system now. For instance the electoral system is still in the hands of the executive arm of government. A situation where the president appoints the Chairman of INEC, appoints the Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) in states. This definitely, does not augur well for democracy.
The recommendation of Justice Uwais committee was set aside for certain self-serving reasons. If you have a proper electoral system that could not be doctored or manipulated a lot of people who ought not to be in public offices would not be occupying such offices today.
What you find now is intimidation where everything is taken to the centre; powers are appropriated at the centre and instructions are sent back to the states.
The electoral system has to be polished up completely and it should be so neutral. You saw what happened few years ago in Ghana where somebody is in office and still loses an election. The ruling party came out with more than 49 per cent and the opposition with more than 47 per cent.
What that simply shows is that access to political power in that country does not convey undue advantage on the incumbent. And even when there was a run-off the opposition won.
You cannot have that in Nigeria because the president is too powerful; he controls the resources; the treasury. Even at the state level the governor has unlimited powers, they can do anything to you.
You saw what happened recently in Nigeria; somebody nursing a presidential ambition, his plane is grounded, all of a sudden everything about that state is bad, the commissioner of police instructed to destabilise the state and all of that.
The president should not have such enormous powers; so if you allow such a thing for six years it means the country can be destroyed and the president or whoever will behave like a bull in china‘s shop, destroying everything. If that is done the cost of rebuilding will be so high; we do not want that kind of situation.
So the first thing we have to do before we start thinking of the six-year tenure is to strengthen democratic institutions, let there be a proper election where even the opposition may win and there will be some kind of balance in the legislature; the judiciary should be able to call the executive to order or even give judgement against the executive without fear or favour.
We should have a legislature that should be able to impeach a governor within six months or one year in office if that is necessary. But that is not possible today because all the legislators are virtually in the pockets of the chief executives of states today.
At the national level the Senate and the House of Representatives just managing a little bit to control the executive, not enough as it ought to be, to cut them to size and effect necessary checks on the executives because of the enormous powers conveyed on the executives by the constitution.
So until we are be able to curb theses powers we should not think of giving six years to anybody because those six years could be years of torment; years of behaving like the bull in china’s shop and the amount of damage that could be inflicted in those six years could be so enormous that that it may not be possible to reverse.
So while we are still building these institutions I think we should still mange with the system we have which is four year tenure in fact that should not run consecutively.
In fact as Chairman of the Constitution Review Committee between 1999 and 2000 we thought of two-year tenure of five years each but non consecutively.
In other words if you go into office you must live after five years; after a long time if your people feel you did a good job remain the best and should come back they can still bring you back to do one final term of five years.
Now see what has happened in Kano state, Governor Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, did one term and could not be re-elected but after eight years he came back and he is doing a great job. Kwankwaso missed a second term but he came out to be a better governor.
You cannot remain in office for ever. Let us make laws that will make it virtually impossible for a chief executive to remain in office and conduct an election.
Even the five years that we proposed that time I do not even support it any longer because of the changes because at the time we did id it Nigeria had just come out of June ‘99 elections and the level of impunity was not that high.
But from what I have seen now I will not even encourage a situation where somebody will remain in an office and conduct an election.
The governor or president should resign before an election. There is an Asian country where the president resigned three months before an election and the retired chief Justice who was not appointed by the outgoing government will take charge of government and put structures for an election.
That kind of thing will also be most suitable for Nigeria. But if somebody should stay for six years he could still come back through other means, bring his cronies to perpetrate the same thing.
The president or governor should not have any hand in the appointment of any electoral officer and we should practice true federalism.
Why should a governor of a state invite the president to come and commission a project? Does that happen in America?
Power Sharing
We should also consider the issue of sharing power. A secretary of state, the deputy governor, Vice president can come from a different party.
This will encourage checks and balances and discourage appropriation of various arms of government that should serve as checks to the executive.
Six-year tenure may be okay in countries where structures are properly developed, corruption-free systems where the president or governor does not have enormous powers.
But in Nigeria, where the executive have unlimited powers and the capacity to spend state funds the way they want, exploit recurrent poverty that they had created to buy people over and continue to remain in power, it will be wrong for now.
Even when we had parliamentary system the chairman of public account committee came from the opposition party. That shows that even our forefathers in politics and governance had anticipated envisaged a situation for checks and balance. But now after elections the president, the chief executive of states, become a loose canon
Let us remain with what we have now, we can have four year tenure, subject to second tenure, but let it not be consecutive. And by three months to election they should resign.
You should not stay in office to conduct elections either for yourself or for some other person to come in.
Council tenure
In some states some governors are asking for two or three years for local governments. Why did they not ask for more years there? Even if you do one term and go, if you strengthen institutions there will be continuity, transition, either through party structures and programmes and so on. Let us not encourage chop-and-go-situation.
At the local government level, for me, the tenure should not be less than three years but let that person be acceptable to the people at the grassroots level. We should equally allow that to apply until the system stabilises. Let the institutions be strengthened first.
Absence of opposition in some states and Local Government legislatures
A situation where there are no opposition is no democracy at all. It is akin to the military era as far as I am concern. Those who felt that there are no opposition are not being sincere.
There are no opposition because you have disabled them not because they there are no opposition but on your ability to utilise state resources against them! The electoral system has been corrupted to discourage opposition.
Ebri’s views on Cross River State’s Governorship position to elements from Cross River North in 2013
Well even the governor, Senator Liyel Imoke has pronounced on this. And as somebody who has been governor of this state I believe that that is the right thing to do. It has my support, it makes sense, it has to do with equity. There is no reason why that should not happen and nobody should think otherwise because that is the way it should be.
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