Recently, Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, advocated a single term of five or six years for elected political office holders across all levels of government in the country, against the current double term of four years each.
Makinde who advocated this while playing host to Muslim faithful, alongside traditional rulers and political office holders in his Ikolaba private residence in Ibadan, the state capital, shortly after the Eid-el-Kabir prayers recently, postulated that a single term of five or six years is enough for any government to focus and serve the people and deliver on its mandate.
He did not waste time in calling for a constitutional amendment to effect the change immediately and likely to cut short his tenure as governor with two years of his second term.
“I was just looking at the trajectory for me in government. I have spent six years already, and due to no fault of anybody, we lost the year 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We lost almost one year, campaigning all over the place for the second tenure. Now, people have started distracting us from what I want to do next and all of that. So, I feel that, effectively, the time we can say we are very serious with governance is just about five out of the eight years.
“That is why I feel that if you remove all these distractions, a single tenure of five or six years is actually enough to focus and do the work that we are trying to do in eight years.
It is not entirely a novel proposal, there have been many before now. This position had been canvassed over severally. In a not too distant past a group of 35 members of nation’s green chamber-the House of Representatives under the aegis of “The Reformers” had proposed similarly a six-year term for political office holders across the nation.
They had championed bills to change the tenure of the president and governors to a single term of six years.
The group also proposed the rotation of the presidency between the North and the South as well as the creation of a second vice president.
These proposals are part of six constitutional alteration bills introduced by the lawmakers on the floor of the House.
The members noted their proposals were water-tight and was going to see the light of the day eventually.
Interestingly, ex-Vice President Atiku Abubakar leads the pack among distinguished politicians with a similar view in the past. He called for a six-year tenure of rotational presidency and governorship positions.
We align our thoughts with the proponents of a single six-year tenure as most times observers believe office holders are often seen to make the best of their tenures just in the first run while making the second term a sheer jamboree since they are not returning to contest in that office any longer.
These are constitutional issues and we hope the proponents of these bills would follow through with all tenacity to ensure they sail through to curtail the shortcomings the present system attracts-particularly the distraction for getting a second term by all means when the first term is still on course. The current scenario allows office holders to lose valuable time expended on working to secure a second term instead of ensuring a proper grip on governance issues.
Five to six years is considered adequate to deliver on a mandate if the office holders are working on purpose.
While the issue is still at the rudimentary level in the House, we call on its proponents to dust the files and work assiduously to ensure they get the necessary amendments that could expedite the legalisation of that proposition.
