Afe Babalola writes Buhari, advocates six-year single term

Erudite lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Afe Babalola, has asked the

President-elect, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to seriously consider a further amendment of the 1999 Constitution once he assumes office on May 29.

Babalola, in a letter dated April 1, 2015, asked the President-elect to facilitate an amendment of the Constitution to further unite the country and particularly to create a single term of six years for the President.

He argued that the current four-year term did not allow the country’s President enough time to work for the nation.

According to him, any newly-elected President on assumption of office spends the first year to settle down, works for only two years and spends the last of the four years campaigning for his second term or re-election.

The letter read in part, “I suggest that there is urgent need to restructure the country’s constitution and reform it to ensure that Nigeria emerges as a nation united, where a leader will emerge through votes cast during election not based on religious or ethnic affiliations. These problems, in my humble view, are what you should quickly address when you assume power come May 29, 2015.

“And this brings me to the age-long advocacy of a single six-year term for the country’s President, which would have allowed him to work harder and achieve more instead of the present four-year term, which allows him only two years of serious work as he will spend the first year to settle down and use the last of the four years to campaign for his second term.”

While congratulating Buhari on his victory in the March 28 poll, Babalola also reminded the President-elect of the uniqueness of the political campaigns that preceded the election, where the two major parties were united in their view that various sectors of the country, such as education, power, security among others, were in dire need of restructuring.

He, however, urged Buhari not to abandon but to consolidate on the foundation that the present administration of President Goodluck Jonathan had laid down.

The letter further read, “As a statesman, you should be ready to build on the foundation laid by Dr. Jonathan’s administration to the advantage of Nigerians. This is the more so in a country like Nigeria where people find it difficult to distinguish between politics and governance, a development which often makes people taking over the reins of government from their predecessor to always abandon the projects of the predecessors and start their own, particularly when such predecessors are not from the same party with the helmsman.”

Babalola, who is the founder of the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, in a separate letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, described Jonathan as “the hero of this presidential election.”

He noted that apart from Ibrahim Kwankwanso of Kano State and the immediate past Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, Jonathan, he said, was the only other leader who had demonstrated the courage to concede defeat and congratulate the winner after an election.

Babalola, however, urged Jonathan to reflect on the factors responsible for his defeat, an exercise he said would come in handy in the President’s future endeavours.

He thanked the President for serving the country to the best of his potential and particularly for his role in preventing the country from turning into “another theatre of war with attendant gory carnage, burning, maiming and killing as well as wanton destruction of both ambulatory and non-ambulatory properties similar to the events of 1983 after the gubernatorial election in the then bigger Ondo State.”

“By this singular and unique act, you have not only demonstrated that truly you are a “man of honour” and that you are indeed not desperate to remain in office as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he told the President.