Northern Elders Forum chairman backs return to parliamentary system

The Chairman of Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Ango Abdullahi, has endorsed the proposed amendment of Nigerian constitution to revert to the parliamentary system of government.

Mr Abdullahi gave the endorsement on Friday while hosting members of the House of Representatives Parliamentary System Caucus.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported the introduction of the constitutional alteration bill seeking to amend the constitution to abolish the presidential system and reintroduce parliamentary system of government in the country.

A group of 60 members of the House are pushing the legislation in the National Assembly, and they have been moving around the country to solicit support for the bill.

Nigeria practiced the parliamentary system in the First Republic.

Mr Abdullahi, a professor and former vice chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State, said the parliamentary system of government worked for all and sundry, and posited that the current presidential system has failed to yield desired results over the past 24 years.

“If you are talking of failure of the system, it’s totally unfair to say that the parliamentary system failed in Nigeria. It did not. Only that it was not been given sufficient time.

“So, my personal position is that—I’m 100 per cent against the presidential system of government.

“For me, if I’m going to react to your visit, I’ll react in two ways. The first level is my own personal conviction. I’m a product of the First Republic and I cherished being that product, as a teacher who marks exams from A1 to failure, I’ll mark the pioneer leaders as A1, up to the present leadership F10.

“So the military came and insisted that we should abandon what was kicked out in 1966,“ he said.

Mr Abdulahi added; “For 24 years now, just show me where the presidential system succeeds in terms of moving Nigeria forward. A country with 200 million that is generating 4000 megawatts of electricity. 4000 megawatt not enough for a big house in Europe?”

While commending the lawmakers for championing the campaign for a return to the parliamentary system of government, Mr Abdulahi pledged unwavering support for the actualisation of the initiative.

Speaking earlier, Wale Raji (APC, Lagos) who led the caucus for the visit, stated that the cost of governance and election is higher under the presidential system of government than the parliamentary system of government.

He noted that the presidential system of government “is quite expensive for our economic situation and it has hindered the desired economic development that the country deserves. And we also discovered that it’s too cumbersome and it has not really led us to derive the benefit of true democracy unlike what is obtained in the parliamentary system of government where the cost of governance is reduced.

“The government is closer to the people and accountable. We are all aware of the fact that the Prime Minister is from the parliament and there’s regular interaction and it promotes accountability and the cost of running our elections, if you look at since 1999, how much the presidential election… apart from the individual running for the position, the cost to the country but under the parliamentary that will be drastically reduced,” Mr Raji noted.

While arguing that the current presidential system of government has not been beneficial to Nigeria as expected, the lawmaker assured that the parliamentary system of government will be a homegrown system with Nigerian context so as to suit our situation.

In his remarks, the spokesperson of the group, Abdulsamad Dasuki (PDP, Sokoto), said: “part of our proposals we have one bill for local government, one for the state, and one for federal. And in one of our proposals, by God’s grace, in the year 2027, we would like to kickstart with full autonomy and implementation of local government itself, so that we can be well-guided.

“Like he said, we are here to learn, what we are trying to do for Nigeria is to build Nigeria for Nigerians by looking at our peculiarities.”

The bill for the alteration was sponsored by the Minority Leader, Kingsley Chinda (PDP, Rivers) and has already got the endorsement of Bisi Akande, a former national chairman of the APC and Aminu Dantata, another elder statesman.