Jonathan’s 7-Year Single Tenure Revisited

The furore over the President’s single tenure has by now subsided and appropriately this is an anspicious opportunity to look at the subject more objectively after the hazy dust has simmered down.

Even before President Goodluck Jonathan’s proposal in July 2011, I have always ruminated on how we can overcome our perennial electoral woos or at least reduce the frequency of our elections.

And the President has attempted to solve both challenges confronting the nation as aforestated. Firstly he conducted an election which was by all means, including international observers’ assessment, credible, free and fair.

But this second attempt which is to reduce the frequency of elections has not gone down well with Nigeria’s Professional politicians whose only means of livelihood is the sustenance of Nigeria’s electoral status quo.

A voting system that is founded on political brigandage, national acrimony and a spate of ceaseless assassinations that defy both logic and rationale. Even if we take everything from President Goodluck Jonathan, we can not deny him the fact that he conducted a free and fair election in which most Nigerians, were happy and proud to participate in. It was Abraham Lincoln who said “No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s CONSENT”. And so the sustenance and continued maintenance of credible free and fair elections is a vital and fundamental ingredient for the survival of democracy.

The 2007 Presidential election which brought in President Umar Musa Yar Adua and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan was flawed in various ways and the late President Yar Adua also acknowledged this fact.

This flawed election of 2007 was an embarrassement to all principal officers of the late President Umar Musa Yar Adua’s administration and it was the greatest tonic that laid the fabrics for the 2011 election which was both nationally and international adjudged the best Nigerian election since June 1993. It is with this mindset of electoral excellence that made President Goodluck Joanthan shop for a man of impeccable and unquestionable integrity in the person of Professor Attahiru Jega. Prof. Jega’s antecedent as ASUU’s president in the 90s was worth gambling on and it was a risk the President took without regrets.

And so the 7-year Single Tenure is President Goodluck Jonathan’s way of placing the first layer of bricks after a successful foundation laying ceremony of Nigeria’s much anticipated electoral success.

The aim of the single tenure is to reduce the frequency of elections in Nigeria with its myriad of opportunities and advantages.

For instance it is on record that Nigeria’s fiscal budget increases astronomicaly without any substantiable economic reasons in every election year. For instance in 1997 and 1998 our annual federal budgets were N 0.243 and N 0.240trillion respectively. In 1999 which was an election year it was N 0.299trillion (almost N 0.300 trillion). In 2001 and 2002 our federal annual budgets were N 0.894 and N 0.840 trillion respectively but in 2003 which was an election year it galloped to N 1.446 trillion. The budget did not only hit the trillion Naira mark but also exceeded the mark by another almost half a trillion Naira. And so in an election year we are almost spending twice, the normal annual budget with no visible infrastructural development or tangible investment opportunities for Nigeria and Nigerians.

And again in 2007, another election year, our Federal budget hit the N 2trillion mark and surpassed it by N 300billion and again exceeding the 2006 budget by a big chunk.

Have Nigerians wondered why budgets in election years are always bursting the seams.

The most active instinct in man is the survival instinct. This survival instinct theory affects not only man but animals, organisations, businesses and even governments.

Every government strategises to keep itself in power barring any constitutional or institutional hindrances. And so governments all over the world have schemed out means of staying in power through either statutory or other means.

For instance, in developed countries, the only means of staying in power is by delivering the dividends of democracy to the electorate who has the POWER to decide who wins the next election. But in undeveloped countires like Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe etc, government and politicians steal the nation’s wealth to sustain themselves in power by bribing, snatching (votes) and killing political enemies to declare themselves winners of stage-managed elections.

Apart from the doubling national budgets during election years, our foreign reserves are depleted, the country borrows more money from International Finance Institutions without anything on the ground to show for these borrowings. And so much fiddling of our common treasury takes place without the ordinary man knowing anything about what is happening.

And that was how a former Federal Minister of works “spent” N300 billion on Nigerian federal roads without tarring even 200 kilometres of roads. Of course we all know that the money was ploughed back into the ruling party’s finances to strengthen it for subsequent elections.

By adopting the seven-year single tenure proposal, Nigeria will be reducing the wastages of past generations and investing in Nigeria’s political and economic stability. Nigerian politicians and leaders will then be able to meaningfully slash down the cost of governance and avail the much needed funds for service delivery which domino effect will flow down to the people as dividends of our nascent democracy.

Apart from being a conduit pipe and an avenue of wastages and recklessness, the four-year renewable option is full of distractions and diversions of quality time and attention. Even in the most developed countires of the world like America and France, where the four years and an optional renewable four years is practised, its distractive influence on governance is very pronounced.

For instance, the Republican debates and State primaries are at fever pitch in the USA and this has heated up the American polity and President Barack Obama himself can only shun politicking at his own peril as 2012 is another election year in America.

In France, President Nicholas Sarkozy has taken over the leadership of European affairs through the EU. His command performance role in the NATO bombing of Gadaffi’s Libya and his offer of assistance to help Nigeria overcome her security challenges over Boko Haram are all seen in Paris as an attempt to shore up his dwindling poll rating for the Presidential battle coming up next year.

Conversely, President Calderon of Mexico has had a successfully uninterupetd battle with Mexico’s hard drug gangs because of Mexico’s six years tenure which is however renewable.

But in Nigeria, because of our level of underdevelopment, nothing stops a newly sworn-in president from setting the foundations of his re-election machinery in motion same day as he is elected President. And from thence all funds meant for the infrastructural development of the State are channeled into his re-election bid. Governance is therefore sidelined and the masses groan without any effective means of changing the status quo as even the worst Presidents and governors have always won re-election without the people voting for them.

The most salient reason why the seven-year tenure is unbearable for Nigerian politicians is because in Nigeria another election means the emergence of more millionaires. So the more elections, the more millionaires emerge. In Nigeria, politics is a full time pre-occupation and coupled with the bitterness and acrimony that follow, apostles of “do-or-die” politics have elevated political violence to hitherto unimagined realms.

Most of those in the oppossion of Jonathan’s seven-year single tenure proposal have mishieviously imputed tenure elongation to the President’s proposal despite the President’s vigorous denial of such a plot on Thursday 28 July, 2011.

The opposition argument that the seven-year tenure will encourage corruption, indiscipline and inertia in the incumbents is not only hollow and puerile but also lacks merit. There are statutory provisions in the constitution to checkmate an erring President, with impeachment as the ultimate. Nigeria will from hence demand for no less than visionary and dedicated leaders who will one after the other unlock the hidden treasures of the nation and avail these to better the lot of those pauperized Nigerians who fall under the classification of Franz Fanon’s The wretched of the Earth.

The advantages of a seven-year single tenure which takes into cognizance the differences in tribes and tongues will have a sobering effect on our polity and allay the fears of Nigeria’s marginalised minorities.

Let us not allow partisan politics to derail our nascent democracy. Let us not allow Jonathan-phobia to derail us from our collective destiny of a glorious dawn. President Goodluck Jonathan is already on the mountain top. By virtue of this rare privilege and position, he has seen what ordinary Nigerians are not privileged to see. He has seen so many changes he can make to rectify the deplorable situation in the country. So many leaders have been to this same mountain top and they have seen this rot. And they have not done anything to change the status quo because they are reaping bountifully from the spoils of this anomie.

No mater what the critics say, I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that President Goodluck Jonathan has the vision to lead this country aright and change it from a wasted and wasteful generation to a prosperous nation, fit to be called Africa’s flagship in the comity of nations.

But let us give him time and support to carry out his programmes inspite of our political, cultural and provincial differences.

•Ben Nanagan writes from Lagos