Form of Government

CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK

Allied to these topics of universal adult suffrage and the Common Electoral Roll are the issues of election of candidates and unrestricted eligibility. With regard to the latter, every Nigerian should, in our opinion, have the right to stand for election in any part of the country. It has been contended that there are people who would feel affronted if someone other than a ‘son of the soil’ were to be presented to them as their candidate. That may well be so. In such circumstance, the affected people are perfectly free to show their resentment by rejecting the ‘stranger’ candidate, and voting solidly for one of themselves. It will not do to anticipate a resentment which may never be shown by marring the pages of our Constitution with a provision which is tangibly and indefensibly discriminatory.

Under the old Constitution with four (later five) Legislatures, the frequency of elections was a terrible and tantalizing nuisance. Each Head of Government was free to dissolve his own Legislature whenever it suited him. As a result, politicians were obliged to spend a good deal of their time and energy either in preparing for elections, in actual electioneering, or in post-election recriminations. In other words, it could not be conscientiously said that Heads of Governments and their Ministers devoted their full time and energy to the work of government and to the formulation and execution of plans and programmes which should make for the material progress and advancement of the people. For the entire populace, there were only short intervals of calm and tranquillity, as the whole country was continually shaken by pre-electioneering, electioneering, and post-electioneering tremors.

With eighteen Regions in the country, and therefore nineteen Legislatures, the position would be infinitely unbearable if the old system continued. It might well mean then that there would be a general election into one Legislature or other every five months on the average; which would in turn mean that, for practically every day of our lives, we would be engaged in electioneering. This, if it were allowed to happen, would put us on the straight and wide road to economic disaster. Furthermore, one sure way of discrediting the ballot box is, so to say, to place the people in a state of permanent electoral siege. It happened in Germany in the early days of Hitler and it could happen anywhere. Multiplicity of elections tends to satiate the people’s appetite for democratic practices. It is obvious, therefore, that everything possible should be done to prevent the occurrence of an insufferable and deleterious situation such as this.

By making provision in the Constitution for all the Legislature to stand automatically dissolved on the same day, we would preclude the dangers which multiplicity of elections imports and also put an end to the practice whereby a Head of Government would dramatically and suddenly call for a general election at a time when to do so might perilously aggravate the political temperature of the entire Federation.

Furthermore, there would be at least four and a half years of comparative calm and serenity, which would be completely free from electioneering and election fever, and during which politicians in charge of administration could devote their whole attention to devising ways and means of tackling and solving the economic and social problems of the country. These same beneficial ends will be achieve by also providing in the constitution that all general elections – both Federal and Regional – including elections of all the Heads of Governments, should be held on one and the same day. If this is done, some additional advantages of far-reaching character are sure to accrue.

The conduct and supervision of elections, as we know, does cost the Governments a lot of money, whilst electioneering is a veritable drain on the precarious finances of political parties. The holding of Federal and Regional elections on the same day will surely result in huge savings for the Central Government as well as for political parties and individual candidates. The demands on the forces of law and order on polling days would be a once and for all quinquennial affair; and policemen in particular would be relieved of the nerve-racking regularity with which they have had to move, hitherto, from Region to Region on different polling days.

Electioneering itself would be broadly-based, as all those who matter in the politics of the Federation would have a personal stake in the outcome of the fight. From the point of view of a large number of candidates, this would be a boon. Under the old system, many candidates had to raise loans-at exorbitant rates of interest to fight what were more or less lone battles. But under the proposed arrangement, things would be made much easier for them. They would reap munificently from the electioneering campaigns of their Party leaders, particularly those of the leaders that are running for the Headships of Governments. They would thus be free from the crushing burdens of local Shylocks. And to the extent that they are saved from getting into the grinding shackles of moneylenders, even to that extent would dishonest practices among parliamentarians be reduced. For it is the frantic effort to lighten his financial burden that has led many a parliamentarian to the path of dishonour.

A good deal has been said and written about the pattern which the structure of our Legislatures should follow. That is to say, whether they should be uni-cameral or bi-cameral.

There are two well-known justifications for the existence of a Second Chamber. The first, which is common both to a Unitary and a Federal Constitution, is that it gives the country’s lawmakers an opportunity for second thoughts which, on major issues, are very necessary and useful. The second, which applies only to a Federal Constitution, is that it helps to correct inter-state disparity in membership which automatically exists in the Lower House where representation is on the basis of population. In the Upper House, representation is usually the same for every constituent State, large or small. Now, let us see how the Legislature of a constituent State, and that of the composite State, fare in the light of these justifications.

CONTINUES NEXT WEEK