Stakeholders in Ebonyi have condemned the trend of endorsing elected political office holders for second tenure while they are still less than two years into their first tenure in office.
The stakeholders, who spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria ,NAN, in separate interviews yesterday in Abakaliki, described the development as undemocratic and unhealthy to the nation’s political evolution.
According to them, the reelection of elected political office holders for second term should be based on service delivery with regard to meeting their campaign promises.
Prof. Eugene Nweke, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academics, Ebonyi State University ,EBSU, and a Professor of Political Science, described the development as a distraction to the public office holder and should be discouraged.
According to him, an elected public officer should focus more on service delivery based on his campaign promises while his reelection should be hinged on evaluation and acceptance by the electorate of his or her performance in office in the first term.
“After election, what counts is what the political office holder has done; of course, it is expected that a person who is in an office can seek reelection as long as the law allows it, but not allowing political jobbers to distract him with second tenure endorsement.
“The media should rise against the ugly development; it should be discouraged and should not be used as the choice of the people”, Nweke said.
On his part, former Commissioner for Works in Ebonyi, Dr Paul Okorie called for mass sensitisation of the electorate against the dangers of endorsing elected public office holders before the end of their current term in office.
Okorie, a governorship aspirant on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party ,PDP, in 2019, said rather than endorsement, people should learn to hold their elected leaders accountable and periodically engage them.
He accused political jobbers of derailing the country’s democratic evolution with the unconstitutional endorsements of serving elected political leaders.
Okorie explained that the development posed a serious threat to the nation’s democracy adding that representative democracy was all about carrying people along and letting them evaluate their elected leaders performances based on their campaign promises.
“When people contest for political office, they make promises of what they will do for the people if elected and I believe that the best thing to do is to track performance of these elected officials and not jumping to endorse them less than six months or one year into office.
“This is undemocratic and sycophantic; when you put leaders in a tenured office, whether president, governor or even local government chairman, you should be able to track and assess their performances within the period of their mandate.
“Endorsing them for second terms while they are still in the early days of their first term leaves them with a poor sense of assessment and to me, this is not democracy and we must change discourage that.
“I don’t support it and this is not the type of democracy practised all over the world”, Okorie said.
Dr John Otu, a former Commissioner for Information and Orientation in Ebonyi, frowned at the development and described second tenure endorsements for the 2027 general election as undemocratic.
He called on law enforcement agencies to clamp down on people, groups or organisations engaging in such an antidemocratic activity.
“The development undermines democracy anywhere you see it in the world; I can’t see how a young man should go about talking about second tenure when the current office holder is still less than two years in office.
“It doesn’t make sense for people to campaign for second tenure for 2027 election in 2025 except in states like Anambra where governorship election will hold in 2025″, Otu said.
