Former Vice President of Nigeria,
Atiku Abubakar has expressed displeasure with the speed with which the six-year
single term proposal was rejected by the House of Representatives.
Reacting to the rejection of the
bill by the House in a statement in Abuja on Monday, Atiku said he is
disappointed by the fact that the lawmakers have thrown away the baby with the
bath water at the expense of the larger interest of the country.
According to Atiku, “in view of
the challenges facing our current democratic order, especially the culture of
rigging that subverts the will of the people, six-year single term would have
ended such untoward practices in our electoral process.”
He explained that “the
desperation for second term by the incumbents is the main reason why they go
for broke and set the rule book on fire, thereby making free and fair elections
impossible by legitimizing rigging at the expense of their challengers that
have no access to public funds.”
Atiku added that “a situation
where the incumbents deploy more public resources to their second term projects
than using the funds for people’s welfare encourages massive rigging that
undermines electoral integrity.”
He noted that “six-year single
term would remove such desperation and enable the incumbents concentrate on the
job for which they were elected in the first place.”
The Waziri Adamawa regretted that
“eight-year term of office rewards incompetence because even incumbents that
have failed would use their access to public funds to return to power by fair
or foul means.”
“I don’t agree with the logic
that eight years would give elected leaders better opportunity to fulfil their
campaign promises. An inherently incompetent incumbent will perform below
average even if you give him/her 20 years in office or give him or her $20
billion dollars”, Atiku stressed.
According to him, it is not how
long a man spends in office, but how well he is adequately prepared for the
job.
He argued that the desperation
for second term is not necessarily driven by patriotism or the passion for
service, but by the obsession with the greed for power for its own sake.
“Second term obsession rewards
incompetence by allowing failed incumbents to be reelected regardless of their
performance record. It also denies political parties the opportunity to replace
failed incumbents with better candidates within the parties in the name of
right of first refusal”.
The former Vice President noted
that the rejection of the six-year single term was a mistake because little
attention was paid to its merits, adding that eight year tenure of four years
each sacrifices merit because the incumbents are automatically entitled to
reelection regardless of their performance records.
Atiku is however of the view that
current holders of the offices under the proposed constitutional review should
not be entitled to a six-year term at the expiration of their second term
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