Former Vice-President Atiku
Abubakar says the six-year single term for presidents rejected by the House of Representatives would have prevented election rigging by “desperate”
incumbents.
The lower legislative chamber
rejected a bill seeking to provide for such a term for the president and
governors at Tuesday’s plenary session.
Reacting hours after, Atiku
described the rejection as a missed opportunity that would have improved
Nigeria’s democratic process.
In a statement from Paul Ibe, his
spokesman, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in
the last election, said Nigeria’s current system of a single tenure of four
years with a maximum of two terms rewards incompetence “because even incumbents
that have failed would use their access to public funds to return to power by
fair or foul means”.
“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,” Atiku said.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
He also said he does not agree
with the logic posed by some of the federal lawmakers 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 said.
“Second term obsession … also
denies political parties the opportunity to replace failed incumbents with
better candidates within the parties in the name of right of first refusal.”
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