There have been renewed calls for Nigeria to consider a six-year, single-term presidency, and I am aware that the idea has been proposed before. Former President Goodluck Jonathan openly advocated a single six-year tenure for the President and governors, arguing that it could help stabilise the political environment and allow leaders to focus more on governance rather than constantly preparing for re-election. The proposal was also discussed during the 2014 National Conference.
For me, however, changing the presidential tenure is not the solution to Nigeria's political challenges.
If our objective is to strengthen democracy, improve governance and create a political system where elected officials are genuinely accountable to the people, then I believe our attention should be directed somewhere else — particularly at the structure and independence of the National Assembly.
We often say that Nigeria practises an American-style presidential democracy. In reality, however, our system differs significantly from the United States in important ways. We sometimes copy the appearance of the American system while doing the opposite when it comes to institutional checks and balances.
One area where Nigeria could learn from the American model is the separation of election cycles.
In the United States, presidential elections take place every four years, while congressional elections take place every two years. The midterm elections occur halfway through a president's four-year term. Importantly, the President is not himself on the ballot during a normal midterm congressional election. Every seat in the House of Representatives is contested every two years, while senators serve six-year terms, with roughly one-third of Senate seats contested every two years.
That arrangement creates an important democratic mechanism: the legislature does not simply rise and fall with the fortunes of the president.
I believe Nigeria should consider a similar principle.
Rather than focusing primarily on extending the President's tenure from four years to six years, we should consider restructuring our electoral calendar.
Presidential, gubernatorial and State House of Assembly elections could be conducted together at one election cycle. The National Assembly elections — for the Senate and House of Representatives — could then take place separately at another point in the electoral calendar.
This would create a form of midterm electoral accountability in Nigeria.
The idea is not to copy America blindly. Nigeria has its own political realities and constitutional structure. Rather, we should examine what institutional arrangements can make our democracy work better for Nigerians.
Under the current constitutional arrangement, the President serves a four-year term, while the National Assembly also operates on a four-year tenure. Section 135 of the Constitution provides for a four-year presidential term, while Section 64 provides for a four-year term for the National Assembly.
I would therefore propose that National Assembly members should have a five-year tenure, with their elections deliberately separated from presidential and gubernatorial elections.
The purpose would be to strengthen legislative independence.
A President who has just won an election should not immediately have the advantage of carrying legislators into office on the same electoral wave and potentially exercising excessive political influence over them. Separating the elections could encourage lawmakers to build stronger relationships with their constituencies and make them more conscious of the fact that their political future depends on the people they represent.
The National Assembly should not be an appendage of whichever administration happens to control the executive branch.
It should be an independent institution capable of scrutinising government policies, questioning expenditure, demanding accountability and representing the interests of Nigerians.
Ultimately, the issue is not simply whether the President should spend four years or six years in office.
The bigger question is: How do we build institutions strong enough to hold every government accountable?
If Nigeria truly wants a stronger democracy, perhaps the conversation should move away from giving the executive more time in office and towards creating a legislature that is sufficiently independent, representative and accountable to withstand executive influence.
That, in my view, would be a far more meaningful reform of our political system.
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