Before last Christmas, Niger State’s Governor Mohammed Bago spoke candidly about how complicated and distracting a two-term tenure system had become for Nigeria. To resolve the ills of reelection and misrule, he went on to propose one-term tenure of indeterminate years as the ultimate panacea. He put it tersely: “As the Governor, I am preoccupied with the search for a second term in office and as a result, governance is suffering and this is why one term is better to serve because you will be more focused from the beginning to the end of your one-term tenure.” The debate on tenure system in Nigeria’s political system has been a recurring decimal. It has refused to go away, and has instead found many disciples and proselytes. But the debate should really be put to rest. Arguing about one term or two terms is a needless and superficial argument that detracts from the real structural problem afflicting Nigeria’s political system.
On the surface, Mr Bago makes sense. In his statement, and knowing where the shoe pinches, he made a proposal he believed was simple and effective, a one-dose remedy for all ills. In reality, the problem the one-term tenure medication presumes to solve is far more complicated and much deeper than he or other proponents have made it. For him, however, if there was no need for reelection, a president or governor would be more focused, decisive and urgent about his job. The politics of reelection, he argued, entailed finding or embezzling the needed financial resources, while it would also weaken the executive’s resolve and blunt his policies and programmes. Though he left the issue of how many years should be compressed into that single term, other commentators filled the gap by suggesting anything between five to seven years. In 2011, ex-president Goodluck Jonathan famously suggested a one-term limit and hinted that he would decline to benefit from that amendment should it be adopted.
Mr Bago was clever enough not to put himself in a straitjacket regarding the number of years he envisaged for the one-term limit, though it is not clear he or any other elected executive would appreciate a five-year, one-term limit. But just as it was speculated under Dr Jonathan, the general impression is that a six-year, one-term tenure would be ideal. The question no one has really grappled with and answered, however, is whether the extra two years in a four-year, one-term tenure would not amount to rewarding an irredeemably bad an insufferable leader and tyrant typified by a president like the United State’s Donald Trump. Or whether two years deducted from eight years of two terms of a brilliant and hugely popular and effective president would not shortchange a nation. For an incurably incompetent leader, every year in the first four years would be a national ordeal. To reward his presidency or governorship with an extra two years would not only be intolerable, it would also be catastrophic.
While a clearly defined tenure system is integral to and forms the fulcrum of any political system, and though attention must be paid to finding the right balance, the real problem is far more structural. If a nation is yet to resolve the kind of political system it should operate that accommodates nearly all differences – whether cultural, civilisational or religious – any attempt to leapfrog over that fundamental necessity would likely engender more crises, if not culminate in outright disaster. At independence, British colonial rulers bequeathed Nigeria a fairly workable federal system with regional and parliamentary system anchors. Though term limits were perfunctory, had the system been given time to work, and had the country’s leaders been deep and circumspect, the Westminster system would probably have served Nigeria fairly well. Nevertheless, it was still an alien system. Singapore adapted the same Westminster unicameral system and produced a ‘soft authoritarian’ formula distinct from its British progenies elsewhere, and it has served it well since independence. The presidential system borrowed from the US, complete with improperly grafted and completely alien two-term limit, has proved both unworkable and foreign to Nigeria’s DNA.
