Last week, I made a “theoretical” case for the return of former President Goodluck Jonathan to power in 2027. It was an unusual intervention. Unusual because I was very critical of the Jonathan presidency and strongly condemned his barely disguised attempt at a comeback in 2023 after his re-election defeat in 2015. However, the intervention was born out of circumstance. That circumstance, as I explained last week, is the reality of the 2027 presidential election, based on the following imperatives.
One, to avoid heightened political tensions, the presidency should remain in the South for a second term in 2027 before returning to the North in 2031. Two, while power should remain in the South in 2027, it doesn’t have to remain in the South-West but could go to any other geo-political zone in the South. Three, if President Bola Tinubu from the South-West were rejected in 2027, the next President from the South could only do a single term of four years. Four, that scenario poses a challenge for the leading southern candidates, notably Peter Obi and Rotimi Amaechi, either of whom, being a first-time president, would be constitutionally entitled to two terms, but favours Jonathan who, constitutionally, can only do one more term.
For the avoidance of doubt, I would rather Obi became president than Jonathan returned to power. But as a non-partisan columnist, my duty is to highlight problematic issues and pose difficult questions to aid informed and objective public discourse. That was why I raised a concern in last week’s column about Obi’s pledge to do only one term as president, if elected in 2027. Well, I am compelled to return to the subject this week, not only because Obi doubled down on the one-term-only pledge in his recent interview with Seun Okinbaloye on Channels Television but also because Amaechi echoed Obi’s pledge and vowed that he, too, would run for a single-term presidency.
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The first question is: Why are they making this single-term pledge? After all, when Amaechi ran for the APC’s presidential ticket in 2022, he did not vow to run for only one term as president, nor did Obi promise to serve for a single term of four years when he ran for president under the Labour Party in 2023. So, what changed? Well, both of them recognised the absolute political imperative that if a Southerner was elected as President again in 2027, he can only do one term in office because the presidency must return to the North in 2031.
Indeed, Obi was honest enough to admit this in his Channels TV interview. Pressed by Okinbaloye on why he insisted he would do a single term when he’s constitutionally entitled to two terms, Obi replied: “We have an unwritten constitution. By the time this government completes four years, there’s an unwritten agreement that the next four years are for the South.” Then, he added: “I, as president, will categorically honour that agreement and do only four years.”
So, it’s clear that Obi and Amaechi are only promising a one-term presidency to reassure the North that, if elected president in 2027, they would honour the rotational arrangement under which power must return to the North in 2031. But it is a sad indictment of the state of Nigerian politics that, out of desperation for power, a politician would adopt a strategy of “half a loaf is better than none” and say: just give me the presidency for four years!
“But it is a sad indictment of the state of Nigerian politics that, out of desperation for power, a politician would adopt a strategy of “half a loaf is better than none” and say: just give me the presidency for four years!”
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar adopted the same single-term-only strategy in the 2019 presidential election because Southern leaders, such as the late Afenifere leader, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, and the late Pan-Niger-Delta-Forum leader, Pa Edwin Clark, said they would only support him if he agreed to run for only one term to complete the North’s second term after which power must return to the South in 2023. To convince Nigerians that he was serious about the pledge, Atiku said: “If there is an iron-clad legal document that binds me, I am willing to publicly commit to it.” That was how desperately he wanted the presidency.
I wrote a column at the time titled “Atiku is giving hostages to fortune in quest for power” (BusinessDay, November 5, 2018). Interestingly, Atiku did not repeat the single-term pledge in 2023. So, it was a desperate ploy to win the presidency in 2019. But if Atiku had won that election, the truth is, having had a grip on power, he would almost certainly have broken the single-term promise. No “iron-clad legal document” would have prevented him from running for a second-term, to which he was constitutionally entitled.
Talking of broken pledges, remember Jonathan? After the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2010, many Northerners believed another Northerner, not Jonathan, his vice-president, should complete Yar’Adua’s remaining first term and the North’s second term. According to prominent PDP leaders, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a deal was struck with Jonathan in which he agreed to run for only one term. Obasanjo said the deal was the basis on which he and other prominent PDP leaders supported Jonathan’s presidential bid in 2011. But even if Jonathan wanted to honour the “gentleman’s agreement”, truth is, with the trappings of power and pressures from countless acolytes, praise-singers and other vested interests, no one could stop him from running again in 2015. That’s the nature of political power; few can resist its allure and willingly relinquish it!
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But Obi wants Nigerians to believe he is different. Okinbaloye asked: “Can Nigerians trust that commitment of a single term from you?” Obi replied: “I said it and I put it in capital. I don’t need a day more than four years.” That’s a replay of Atiku’s “iron-clad” pledge in 2019 when, interestingly, Obi was his running mate. But I say now, as I did then: the single-term pledge smacks of desperation and stretches credulity. According to a recent online poll, 83 percent of the respondents preferred Obi to either Atiku or Amaechi as the presidential candidate of the new coalition, African Democratic Congress, ADC. Had the respondents been asked if Obi should only do a single term as president, they would overwhelmingly have said “No”. A voluntary single-term presidency is an uncharted territory, and if a President Obi were to decide not to run for a second term in 2031, he would face unimaginable pressures from his followers to run, fuelling political tension in the country.
Yet, let’s be clear. Obi and Amaechi made the single-term pledges to reassure Northerners that power would return to the North in 2031. Thus, it’s up to the North to decide what to make of the pledges. However, for Nigeria, it is worrisome that when asked what he would achieve in just four years, Obi said: “Nobody expects 100 percent results; they expect 100 percent efforts.” He said he would not fix Nigeria in four years but “will show the direction of good governance”. But what kind of good governance is it if 100 percent efforts do not yield substantial, tangible results? In the end, it’s delivery that matters!
Truth be told, a single-term-presidency pledge is only credible if it produces a National Unity Government dedicated to a root-and-branch restructuring of Nigeria. Anything short of that is a desperate, cynical and self-serving ploy for power. Beware!
