A Professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at Lagos State University, Adewunmi Falode, has called for a review of Nigeria’s constitution to allow a single, non-renewable term of seven years for elected public office holders.
Falode made the call on Tuesday while delivering LASU’s 115th inaugural lecture titled, “Bespoke Solutions: Reimagining, Reifying and Realigning the Wheels of the Nigerian State,” at the Buba Marwa Auditorium of the university.
The scholar argued that Nigeria’s current two-term, four-year arrangement is “wasteful” and contributes to an “unstable, combustible and misaligned” political environment.
According to him, the system had consistently failed to deliver the dividends of democracy because elected officials barely enjoyed five months of undistracted governance before becoming entangled in post-election litigation and preparations for another election cycle.
Falode drew parallels with countries such as Mexico and the Philippines, which operate a single six-year term.
He said that with a seven-year single tenure, Nigerian political office holders would have at least four years of stable governance, while the remaining three years could accommodate campaigns and the resolution of election petitions.
He described Nigeria’s democracy as “elitist, exclusionary and divisive,” noting the huge sums budgeted for elections, aside from expenditure on post-election litigations.
He said, “Democracy has always been expensive in Nigeria. That of the 1983 federal elections frittered away N2bn, and at the end of the day, the military derailed the whole process! In 1999, Nigeria budgeted N1.5bn; N42bn for 2011; N108.8bn in 2015; and N242.2bn in 2022. The monies for post-election litigations and other incidentals are not factored into this. The shocking thing was that at the end of such elections, where humongous money had been expended, with countless lives lost and businesses destroyed, it would still take the intervention of the judiciary for the wheel of democracy to be realigned and readjusted”
According to him, the current cycle leaves office holders with two years spent fending off petitions, about five months for effective governance, and the rest of the term preparing for re-election.
