In
this interview with journalists, the Deputy President of the Senate and
Chairman, Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution,
Senator Ike Ekweremadu, speaks on single tenure for elected officials,
state police and sundry issues.
in the light of current happenings within the polity, are you still an advocate of single-term tenure for elected officials?
Yes, single term is an important issue to
me. When the matter came up at the level of our committee, we were
mindful of the political atmosphere. We drew inspiration from what
happened in other jurisdictions. It happened in Latin Americas in the
70s. They had a circumstance we find ourselves today. The issue of
transition from one administration to another was a major issue and
there was crisis within their region. So, they started to amend their
constitution at that time to create a single term in each of those
countries and it was their transition period. And this now established
their democracy. And some of them amended their constitution to go back
to two terms of four years, five years or six years. So, we thought it
was something we can recommend to our country.
Of what benefit will this to Nigeria considering our peculiarities?
If you look at what is going on now, all
the core problems we have in all the parties centre on the issue of
succession. So, we believe strongly that, that matter can still be
revisited. But I think the mistake we made in our recommendation was
where we said the incumbent would not benefit from it. Then, there was a
kind of coalition of forces to defeat it. So, I believe that if the
players in the polity or stakeholders are able to come together, I
believe strongly that this is one way to deal with the situation. It
could be a win-win situation for everybody. And I believe that the way
it could work is, now, people have been elected for four years; let
everybody completes the four years tenure for which he or she is
elected. And then, through the doctrine of necessity, or a sort of
jurisprudential approach, do some kind of transition of two years. In
which case, those present occupiers like the President and state
governors, who are completing their tenures, may be, will now do another
two years that would end in 2017. You can see that those who are
fighting the President, their complaint is that, if the President gets
his second term when they are gone, he would start to chase them. So, if
we all agree that, that is a way to solve the problem, after two years,
both the President and other governors now exit, I believe that the
fear would not be there and there would not be much pressure on the
polity.
We don’t have much problem with the
legislative positions. We can go ahead and hold legislative election in
2015. The advantage there is when we organise the legislative election
in 2015, then we conduct executive election in 2017, we have two-year
gap for the INEC to have a breathing space to prepare well.
In America for instance, there is this
two years separation. In fact, in most countries even in Senegal, and
other places in Africa, they have adopted such separation of legislative
elections from executive elections. If we create a two-year gap, it
creates a situation where the country would not be engulfed in crisis in
the process of conducting all the elections at the same time. I think
it is something we have to reflect on and see if there is something that
can help resolve some of the challenges that we currently have. I hope
that if we are able to do that and we all agree to it, it will solve
even the executive situations.
It is believed that most of the
challenges we have today result from charged atmosphere arising from
jammed elections. And somehow, everybody will benefit. All we need to do
is to exercise patience and give them two more years. After that, we
move to one term tenure that can be five years, six years or seven years
depending on what we all agree upon. The cost of all these elections
and all the problems that come with it would have all been resolved. So,
it will help to reduce cost of election and also reduce the crisis that
may come up due to ambition to run for another term in office.
How then can we bring the matter back for discussion?
We didn’t know that the President and the
executive would come up with the idea of a national dialogue when we
were doing the present constitution amendment when we came up with the
amendment of Section 9 of the constitution. And for the matter to come
up again, it must come in form of a formal motion. But because we are
serving the people, we would be more than willing to do that if that is
what the people of Nigeria desire.
If there is a debate on it in
conversation and Nigerians believe that the way things are, we need to
think along that line and be able to use it to resolve the existing
political tension in this country, just as we did during the ill health
of our late President, we would be more than willing as a national
service to have a look into it and be able to reach a level of
understanding in the National Assembly. So, we will be willing to
discuss it provided that, that is exactly what Nigerians want. But, for
now, the matter was defeated in the Senate. If we are going to bring it
up again, there must be another motion to resuscitate it.
In view of the security challenges in the country, what is your take on the issue of multi-level policing?
Let me start with multi-level policing;
Nigerians know my position on this. I have a personal position and an
official position. I belong to an institution which is the Senate. And
at the level of Committee on Constitution Amendment, it rejected the
suggestion for the creation of state police; we could not take it, even
to the floor. And as a person, it is my job and my responsibility to
present the report of the committee and I needed to explain to my
colleagues why we made that recommendation. The reason we gave was that
Nigeria was not ripe for state police, though it will be for the future.
That is the official position of the committee which I head.
As an individual, I believe we can never
resolve our security challenges in Nigeria as long as we are doing what
we are doing now. Never! If you like, continue to do what we are doing
and the fact will repeat itself. We will still be having what we
currently have. The reason is clear. No other country is doing what we
are doing in term of policing. Most countries have adopted what I call
decentralised policing. If you like, call it multi-level policing.
Nobody does state police. What we now do is multi-level policing and if
you like, call it decentralised policing. If the security challenges
become complicated, you have to bring in complicated process to address
it. We cannot have a federal type of government that adopts a unitary
system of police and expect that to succeed. Even the white men, when
they did the amalgamation, they knew that a centralised police could not
work in Nigeria. So, the type of police they set up was the Native
Authority Police. That was the first type of police we had in Nigeria.
So, it worked. They even introduced the prison that was native authority
based.
It was later in the years
which followed, I think in 1936, that they decided to set up a federal
police. So, the federal police and local authority police co-existed
together till 1966 when the army took over. When they took over, they
set up a committee to review that type of police and they came to the
conclusion that they were using it to intimidate political enemies. It
was bound to happen because the white men did not bother to set up a
structure to regulate that kind of level of policing. So, there was
nothing like Police Service Commission, may be at the centre, with a
guideline to structure that type of native authority policing to be able
to determine at what bound they must stop. So, they were doing things
the way they liked. Culled from Punch newspaper.
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