Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu has said Nigeria should adopt a modified presidential system of government to engender effective governance and sustainable democracy.
He also said the nation should return to regionalism, where the six geo-political zones would become the federating units.
Ekweremadu, who is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Constitution Review, spoke at a lecture he delivered at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, Washington, United States, with the theme: Constitution Review in An Emerging Democracy: The Nigerian Experience.
Among the areas of modification he sought is the introduction of question times in the parliament, to hold the ministers consistently accountable, and the replacement of impeachment with a procedure for vote of no confidence.
With the arrangement, he said the country could checkmate the overbearing attitude of non-performing ministers and control the activities of “super ministers”.
Nigeria, the senator said, should retain its presidential system to hold together the contending forces of the federation.
Ekweremadu also said the nation should examine the subsisting Simple Majority system of election and consider the adoption of Proportional Representation.
The Deputy Senate President said the country would be better served with Proportional Representation system of election than the zero-sum attributes of First-past-the-post system, where a candidate for an election could emerge winner on the strength of the votes from his area.
Ekweremadu said: “The presidential system has often come under criticisms for its concentration of powers in political chief executives, encouragement of divisive, zero-sum factional and sectional competition for political offices, expensiveness and promotion of the politics of strong men, rather than strong institutions.
“However, supporters of the current presidential system point to the failures of parliamentary rule in the First Republic, claiming that the trouble with Nigeria is not the choice of governmental systems per se, but the warped implementation or corrupt operation of these systems.
“I suggest a modification of the present presidential system. We need the presidential system to hold together the contending forces of our federation.
“Such modification includes the introduction of question times in the parliament, to hold the ministers consistently accountable, and the replacement of impeachment with a procedure for vote of no confidence.
“The Proportional Representation (PR) system is increasingly becoming popular around the world, suggesting an increasing movement away from pure Plurality-Majority system.
“This may not be unconnected with the value rendition of fairness, depth of representation, and more adaptable variants of the PR.
“Nigeria may be better served with the PR system than the zero-sum attributes of First-past-the-post system.”
In other fora before this, I have advocated a return to regionalism instead of creating more states and dispersing resources thinly.
“In that case, the six geo-political zones in the country will become the federating units.
“This, to me, seems the major plausible thing to do if Nigeria is to nurse any hope of significantly reversing the dwindling fortunes of our federalism by engendering viability and self-reliance of the component units, massive development, healthy competition, reduce the cost of
“Interestingly, geopolitical zones are already moving towards regional integration for development.
“The Governors and leaders of the South-West, which constituted the old Western Region not long ago, met to draw a charter and trajectory for regional cooperation for development.”
On local government, he debates around them are indications that the country’s constitutional identity is continually evolving and deeply contested.
The indications, he said, suggest further that the making of the country’s constitution is still very much a work in progress.
Ekweremadu said that intense constitution reform debates have developed around some proposals including to: rescind the immunity from criminal prosecution currently enjoyed by political executives; endow traditional rulers with a constitutional role; expunge the Land Use Act and related military decree-laws from the Constitution; provide for independent candidacy in elections; enshrine diaspora voting.
Other issues he listed include; make the constitutional directives or objectives on socio-economic rights justiciable; transform the bicameral federal legislature into a unicameral structure (to reduce the costs of governance); designate the Federal capital Territory of Abuja as a mayoralty; delete the recognition currently given to three (Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba) of Nigeria’s numerous indigenous languages in the Constitution; formalise the informal, but widely practiced convention of six geopolitical zones for ethno-regional rotation and sharing of major political offices and opportunities.
He said due to absence of national consensus on many of the issues, the National Assembly opted for a piecemeal or incremental, rather than wholesale or mega-constitutional approach to constitution reform.
The approach, he noted, gives priority attention to urgent reform issues on which a degree of consensus exists, while relegating or deferring other issues to later phases of a continuing constitutional reform process.
“Thus, three rounds of alterations were made to the Constitution in 2010-11 following the harmonization of the work of the Senate and House of Representatives’ Committees on Constitution Review, the ratification of many of the clauses on the harmonized constitutional amendment bill by the required two-thirds majority of the state houses of assembly, and the assent of the alterations by President Goodluck Jonathan,” he said.
On challenges of constitution review exercise in the country, he said that “in places such as Nigeria where democracy is gradually being established after long years of dictatorships, where democratic values have been severally disrupted by military incursions and mentality; where a sense of national identity is at best fluid; where ethnic loyalty and politics trumps a sense of nationhood, the politics and process of constitution-making is highly intricate and rife with incredible challenges.”
He noted that as a result of the challenges, efforts at evolving a people-driven constitution with the capacity to engender sustainable development and secure the political, social and economic future of a nation are often inhibited, or in some extreme cases, aborted by a plethora of difficulties.
Ekweremadu said that the National Assembly has robustly nurtured and managed Nigeria’s complex, contentious, and multifaceted constitutional reform process.
The Assembly, he said, has given a nod to the imperatives of a democratic and participatory constitutional reform process through various mechanisms for promoting popular participation and public consultation in the process.
He added that the Assembly has pursued an incremental approach to constitution making, “thereby reflecting the difficulty of achieving mega-constitutional change in Nigeria’s fractious and contentious polity as well as the need to avoid aggravating the existing stress points or fault lines of national politics.”
He said: “The National Assembly has prioritised one of the most urgent and fundamental pillars of federal democratic preservation and consolidation in Nigeria by implementing constitution amendments designed to strengthen, or enhance the neutrality and independence of critical oversight institutions like the electoral commission, the legislature and the judiciary.
“The Assembly has also given recognition to the opportunities of non-constitutional renewal in which improvements and reforms in our political practice and development can be achieved through mechanisms like ordinary legislation, informal political conventions, and judicial interpretation, as distinct from the more tedious and contentious mechanism of constitutional amendment.
“At the same time, the National Assembly has been attentive to demands for more fundamental constitutional change in the federation by accepting (rather than simply rebuffing or dismissing) these demands as critical inputs into a continuous process of national constitutional dialogue and reform.
“I believe all of these aspects of the constitutional reform work of the National Assembly have been critical, and will remain pivotal, to the sustenance of Nigeria’s current, most enduring, experiment in federal constitutional democracy.”
On why past efforts at constitution review failed, he said that those involved did not resist the temptation of biting more than they can chew.
This, he said, was partly responsible for the inability of the 4th and 5th National Assembly to amend the 1999 Constitution.
According to him, the Joint Committee on Constitution Review of the 5th National Assembly (2003 to 2007) came up with an Amendment Bill that sought to effect a whooping 120 amendments to the Constitution.
“Unfortunately, but not quite unexpectedly, they all crashed in a day,” he said.
