No extending President’s tenure beyond 4 yrs, says Ihedioha

BY OKEY NDIRIBE, EMMAN OVUAKPORIE & IKECHUKWU NNOCHIRI
ABUJA—Deputy Speaker and Chairman, House of Representatives Committee
on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, Mr Emeka Ihedioha, yesterday,
maintained that nothing would compel the National Assembly to extend
the tenure provision for the office of the President beyond four
years.
Ihedioha, who spoke at an event organized by Civil Society
Organisations, CSOs, led by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre,
PLAC, to review some of the proposed amendments to the constitution,
said despite pressures on the legislative arm of government to
elongate the tenure of the President to seven years,"we have
unanimously rejected such proposal as doing so will be contrary to the
wish of the people."
Deputy Speaker, Emeka Ihedioha
Highlighting the circumstances that informed the lower legislative
chamber of the National Assembly to dissociate itself from moves to
amend the constitution to create an extendedsingle tenure for both the
office of the President and governor, Ihedioha said:"This is one area
where the committeerelied on the results obtained from thePeoples
Public Session.
"Indeed item 25 asked the question, 'should section 135 and 180(2) be
amended to create a single tenure of five, six or seven years for the
office of President and Governor respectively?"
"245 Federal constituencies rejected the question of a single tenure
for Chief Executives while 110 Federal Constituencies supported same
with five abstentions. The committee did not stop here. It posed a
direct question "should the (four year) two term tenure provision for
the office of the President or office of Governor be retained in the
Constitution?
"To this further question, 263 Federal Constituencies voted 'Yes' and
only 95 Federal Constituencies voted 'No' withtwo abstentions.
With this level of unanimity, it was not difficult for the committee
to adopt the current four year renewable tenure and to reject the
single term proposal of neither five, six or seven years.
"This is the clear position of Nigerians on this issue. It was not
therefore difficult for the House of Representatives to reject
proposal for extension of tenure of the executive. Itwas purely the
wish of the people. Once the people take a priority, we arehonour
bound to abide by it.
"As a representative institution, the House of Reps made an effort to
give pride of place to the views, wishes andaspirations of its
constituents-the Nigerian people in this constitution review exercise.