Northern leaders under the platform of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), has called for a system where an incumbent President or governor is barred from supervising an election in which he is a candidate.
The ACF made the demand in a memorandum it presented to the ongoing National Conference.
According to the memorandum, the group said while it supports multiple terms for the two offices and their deputies, it also makes allowance for motivation and reward. It advocated for multiple tenures that are not consecutive as practiced in Chile or in the alternative the creation of caretaker system as practiced in Bangladesh.
ACF, a socio-cultural organisation and founded in March 2000, has former Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Coomassie as its chairman.
The forum in the 11-page memorandum sub- divided into 20 headings and signed by Coomassie, said: ?ACF prefers multiple tenures for President/Governors because such system makes allowance for motivation and reward.
But in the case of single term, the good and reckless are grouped together.?
It maintained that ?as a result, the only incentive for leaders is ability to pillage public funds at collective peril. However, if the search is for a way of eliminating abuse of incumbency, it may be more productive to consider the practice in Chile which allows for multiple tenures that are not consecutive.
That is to say no President is allowed to conduct an election in which he is a candidate.
?Another alternative is to use the Bangladesh practice which uses Care-Taker Government to conduct the elections.?
The forum held that there is nothing wrong with the nation?s current structure and form of government, just as it rejected any plans to alter the current structure and form of the Nigerian government.
The forum said: ?It is, therefore, the considered view of ACF that there is nothing wrong with the current federal structure with states as the federating units. All that is required is purposeful leadership that is humane in spirit, moral in purpose and wise in uses.?
With only 10 months to the general elections, the forum also called for the sustenance of the current presidential system of government as opposed to the parliamentary system. It, however, suggested that the size of the governments should be trimmed for effective performance.
ACF said: ?Some ministries should be merged while appointments of minister to represent geographical zones should be abolished. More so, that such practice conveys the wrong headed impression that zones are also federating units.?
Stressing that though the presidential system had worked successfully in America, the ACF said the apparent failure of leadership in Nigeria may have nothing to do with the system of government, but with the operators.
It stated that what the country needs is a purposeful leadership needed for rewiring of the politics and reengineering of our sense of justice.
The forum said since a political economy makes the governments in Nigeria to determine who gets what, why, where, how and when, it may be difficult to do away with politics of identity called power shift, rotation and zoning.
It, therefore, suggested that the issue of zoning, whether the presidential or governorship power, should not be a constitutional matter; but should be left for
political parties to manage.
