How 3rd term for Obasanjo came up, by Senator Hambagda

[DT]

Senator Omar Hambagda, who chaired a subcommittee of the National Assembly constitution review panel in 2005-2006, yesterday gave a vivid account of how the controversial proposal for a third presidential term came up during the work of his team and of the main committee headed by Senator Ibrahim Mantu.

On Sunday, Mantu told Daily Trust that Hambagda's subcommittee initiated the third term clause, which would have given former president Olusegun Obasanjo a chance to run for a third term in 2007. Mantu spoke in response to accusations that he was the brains behind the third term proposal, coming after Obasanjo said on Channels TV that the National Assembly initiated the idea.

Speaking to Daily Trust in Abuja yesterday, Hambagda explained the circumstances that led to the third term idea originating from his subcommittee but said he was not responsible for the later decision taken by the lager panel under Mantu.

He said his team made three recommendations to the Mantu committee, namely three terms of four years, two terms of five years and two terms of four years (status quo). He said the three proposals were forwarded to the main committee because there was no consensus on any of them in his subcommittee.

"The sub-committee on the executive which I chaired comprised 15 people. And at that meeting, 12 of us where present. We had all the items under the executive section of the constitution on the agenda and we had to take decision on each one of them. The caveat was that we had to be unanimous on any recommendation before we would submit that recommendation. And so we started," Hambagda said.

"When we came to the subject of tenure, one member suggested maintaining the status quo, that is two terms of four years and one person supported him. Another person suggested three terms of four years and...six people supported him, making it 7.

"And at a point I expressed shock and one member who supported the two terms of four years beckoned me to take it easy, and I did. Then another member suggested two terms of five years, and one person supported him.

"So what we had were three recommendations. One, two terms of four years with two supporters; two, three terms of four years with 7 supporters and two terms of five years with two supporters. That made 11.

"I was the chairman so I didn't vote. So we decided that since we were not unanimous on anyone of it, our number was too small for us to go by majority, so we decided to submit all the three recommendations to the bigger committee that had 84 members. And also we eventually had to go to public hearing. So that's how the three terms came. Three terms was only one of three recommendations from the subcommittee to the main committee which was chaired by Senator Ibrahim Mantu."

According to him, when the matter reached the main committee, it ceased to be within the domain of his subcommittee and the main committee chaired by Mantu continued to deliberate on that.

He said no one ever approached him over any the three recommendations. "A member made a recommendation and democracy means that people should say their voice, no matter how bizarre you have to attend to it, especially under the circumstances," he said.

Hambagda denied insinuations that he was bribed to help push through the agenda. "If nobody ever approached me, then who paid me?" he asked. He however added that the committee did nothing wrong because it acted in accordance with democratic principles.

Hambagda also said the tenure issue was not recommended in a vacuum as it was recommended alongside suggested constitutional provision for rotation, which would last 60 years, by which time Nigeria would have become a nation where every part of the country would have had a test of the presidency.

He blamed Mantu for wasting the resources voted to the project when he rejected advice to prepare six draft bills reflecting the assignments given to the six subcommittees and opted for a single bill which was truncated because of the third term controversy.

"Now we threw out everything and we had to go through this PDP constitution on rotation. That didn't help the country. It created bad blood. But if something was in the federal constitution there would have been no question of debate," he said.

But Hambagda said none of the three recommendations proposed by his committee actually reflected his personal thinking because he was more at home with a single term of either six or seven years, which the Nigerian media had already singled out for a special condemnation.

Hambagda said this was why he avoided suggesting that, and allowed democracy to prevail in the recommendations presented by other members.

When asked whether he sensed any motive when Mantu failed to agree to the advice to prepare six bills, he said: "No I didn't sense any motive. The leadership of the Senate took the final decision and I believe he must have had his reasons which he used to convince them that one bill made more sense."

On the latest move by the presidency to reintroduce a bill for a single tenure, Hambagda said it would be OK provided that the incumbent president would be ready to disqualify himself from being a beneficiary so as to allay the fears of Nigerians.

Hambagda was served two consecutive terms as senator from Borno South, elected on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), between 2003 and 2011.


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Daily Trust