Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Lasun Yusuf, has began moves to make fresh input into the elections into the offices of the president and governor of a state, with a ceiling that whoever act as a president or governor for a period of two years would only be eligible to contest another four-year term instead of two terms of four years.
Honourable Yusuf is the chairman of the special Ad hoc Committee on the review of the 1999 constitution in the House.
The move, if scaled through, could bar former President Goodluck Jonathan from taking another shot at the Presidency, which he tried to do in the last 2015 elections.
There was heated argument in the polity over the eligibility of former President Jonathan to run for 2015 election when it was argued that he completed the joint mandate of his former boss, late President Umar Yar’Adua.
As part of the 1999 Constitutional review process, Honourable Yusuf, according to his Chief Press Secretary, Mr Wole Oladimeji, was sponsoring a Bill which provided that “no person who had held office of president or governor of a state or acting as president or governor of a state for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president or governor, shall be elected to the office of president or governor of a state more than once.”
The new bill, which he said had scaled the first reading on the floor of the House was to give constitutional protection to the two terms tradition.
According to the statement, “by virtue of the combine provisions of sections 137(1)(b) and 182(1)(b) of the constitution, the president of Nigeria and governor of a state shall serve in those capacities for a maximum period of eight years.
“However, the constitution equally envisaged circumstances where a person can be chosen to act as president or governor. These include when the president or a governor resign dies or is impeached,”the statement noted.
Source: Nigerian Tribune
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