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…Says it will douse ethnic, religious tensions
From Idu Jude Abuja
Ahead of the 2027 general elections, Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Director of Turning Point Nigeria, Hon. Abraham Ajiya, has advocated for a regional Vice-Presidents system of government as the only solution to douse political tension rising from religious and ethnic diversity during national elections.
According to him, this is the only solution to stop the pressure from the United States and other countries calling for a balance in the system. He said his group is ready to take the advocacy to the National Assembly and the presidency.
Excerpts:
Can you throw more light on this proposal by Turning Point Nigeria?
What we are proposing is for a system of about three regional Vice- presidents, or similar positions known as vice-regional heads. These are typically found in other systems with decentralisation or federal systems. It is found in presidential systems, where local government is structured to mirror the central government’s executive branch, as seen in Indonesia and other countries.
While federal systems (like Nigeria) have a national Vice President and elected deputy state levels, the concept of a vice-regional head operating alongside a regional head is a feature of decentralised, local government structures designed to ensure administrative partnership in regional management
In some contexts, particularly within international organisations or corporations. Regional Vice President refers to a senior executive who manages a geographic region for that country with certain executive powers, rather than an ordinary government official.
For instance, we have key systems with Regional Vice-Presidents and Heads, which have a Decentralised Unitary Systems, e.g., Indonesia. Following democratic reforms such as in Indonesia after 1999, regions, provinces, regencies, or cities elect a regional head (Governor/Regent/Mayor) and a vice-regional head as a single package. These positions work as partners in managing regional autonomy.
Can we talk about regional Vice-Presidents in a federal government structure?
Federal Systems with Vice-Regional Structure, arrangements (e.g South Sudan) are tenable in unique, often post-conflict power-sharing arrangements. Multiple vice presidents may be appointed to represent different regions or factions, such as South Sudan’s structure with five vice presidents representing different areas. And I’m proposing this because I feel there’s a need to balance the system, because anytime a certain region or certain people who are of a different religion than others are in power, the other people tend to agitate a lot.
And I’ve seen it in the current government where people are agitating that the current Vice-President, Kashim Shetima, should be replaced by a Christian from the north.
And I feel that any attempt to remove Shettima might generate a lot of instability, particularly from the region he’s coming from.
Taking a look at Nigeria, once you have a president from the south, as we have now, who is a Muslim, if he were a Christian, you would say, okay, he can easily pick somebody from the north who is a Muslim.
So it is my belief that people of the South-East, South- South, South-West, and North- Central should feel they should be close to the corridor of power.
For instance, we have President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the president and a Muslim, from the South-West, and the Vice- President Shettima, a Muslim, we can also bring a Christian from the South-East as another executive vice-president. Then, we can have maybe Vice President 1, then 2, 3, or 1, 2, 3.
So, instead of removing Shettima, and heating the polity, all we need to do is just to pick a vice-president(2), a Christian from the South-East, and possibly to pick another vice-president (3), another Christian from the North-Central. I think it will balance the system where we have two Christians in the presidency and two Muslims in the presidency.
People will not feel as if their religion will be trampled upon or their tribe is being trampled upon. That is the idea behind this suggestion.
Don’t you think this requires a constitutional amendment?
Well, if the presidency is serious, this thing can be done in less than three months. They can read the constitution, they can amend it as quickly as they want because each of the regions or State Assemblies will automatically go along with this suggestion. So, why do we have this kind of problem is because the presidency itself has not put pressure on the governors in the various states. But once these governors are in line with this suggestion, I can assure you that two, three, or six months is enough for it to be done and dusted.
Many are calling for Constitutional amendment, others for a new constitution, are these in line with what you are saying?
Let me make it clear to you that these calls for a change of constitution is so because of a lack of ideas. If you can inculcate this idea, then I can tell you why people think they should change constitution is because they feel they don’t belong to the system. They feel they don’t feel the presence of government.
Say, for instance, if you don’t bring the South-East now into governance, into the presidency, they would feel as if they are not part of the government. This is so because no matter how good a Southerner is, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is, they still need that person who is very close to the presidency, where things are decided, to represent them. As I said, even cabinet ministers representing each state don’t have such powers as that of the Executive Vice-President, whose constitutional responsibility is not just a mere spare tyre kind of Vice-President. This is where the problem lies. There is always a situation where Vice-Presidents are elected to serve as spare tyres. So they should have duties defined in the constitution, whether with or without the president their roles are defined. And it must be made clear who succeeds the president in the case of incapacitation so that there won’t be a power tussle among the vice presidents.
So, I’m suggesting at least two or three Vice-Presidents to represent each region. Then the president should be the fourth person who supervises and coordinates the activities of these vice presidents. This, I believe, should kill these religious and ethnic biases that bring agitations to every political dispensation.
In your recommendation, do you think a region can produce the president and another vice-president at the same time?
No it is not possible. And when a region produces the president, automatically the chance for Vice-President goes to another region. And to balance the representation, both the president and vice-presidents should not be of the same religion, and these should be well spelled out in the constitution, for example, if the North is to produce 2 Vice-Presidents, all of them should not be of the same religion so that it might not be taken by the majority alone.
Do you think the presidential system of government contributed to Nigeria being one of the most corrupt countries in the world?
Iam not here to discuss corruption and I would not want to be dragged into that controversy now. This is because any system of government has its own fair share of corrupt society. But what I want is stability of the polity because the organisation ‘Turning Point Nigeria’ has its primary assignment on the constitutional arrangement, where we can have two or three Vice-Presidents. So, if we can achieve this, the issue of tackling corruption, will also be addressed naturally. But the priority now is to see that the tension in the polity is doused. There is too much tension around, there is this religion, ethnicity agitations here and there. Our political spaces and choices of leaders are no longer based on merit but on religion and ethnicity. So we want to use this to strike a balance for proper representation in government. So, we are calling on the presidency and the National Assembly to amend the constitution as quickly as possible to allow the other two vice-presidents to be elected, and enable Shettima be there, since there is this pressure from the USA that Muslim tickets can no longer be feasible in Nigeria. It is just a matter of creating two additional offices to strike a religious balance among the offices of the vice presidents. This is because ahead of 2027, the political system is beginning to heat up on whether Nigeria will still go on Muslim-Muslim ticket or whether Tinubu should drop Shettima. Take, for instance, dropping the vice-president should not come up at all. We shouldn’t forget that they won the election on a joint ticket and their region may not take it lightly.
One thing is to talk about it, but making it happen is another. How does Turning Point Nigeria begin this Journey?
I don’t want to drop the whole Blueprint here, because I don’t know how they would go about it, but soon we will go to the National Assembly to make a presentation of our proposal.
But let me also tell you that the journey has already begun with this press interview to inform the world of our intentions and efforts to end the problem of religious and ethnic differences during elections. We are starting it now and will eventually go to Senate President. And we will also pay visits to certain cabinet ministers. And possibly, we will also visit some influential states governors, and with this interview, they should be aware that we mean it and that we are going to come. And we are also making it known to other Nigerians to be aware of the new ideology and that Turning Point Nigeria is also serious about the advocacy.
What we’re saying is that this thing is easy if we want to do it. For instance, when the late president Yar’Adua was sick, and the constitution does not have a provision for the vice president to assume duty as president until he comes back, but they had to invoke the doctrine of necessity to cement that. And today, the constitution was amended to guide against such occurrences in the future. And now everyone knows that if the president fails to transmit power within fifteen days, automatically the vice president takes over. I think the presidency and all of Nigerians should see where we are coming from. We have done our part by proffering solutions. The remaining one is a constitutional responsibility.
Do you also propose the resource control of these regions for the vice-presidents?
No I am not talking of resource control. But I believe they derive their powers from the constitution. I am only after balancing the system for equity and justice. If there were equity and justice, the agitations wouldn’t have been as bad as they are today.
Do you propose that these offices be domiciled in Abuja or in the regions?
No, I am not proposing that. Everything should be in Abuja. Let’s not get it wrong. The idea does not only represent a region. It also represents religion, which is not of a particular region. So what we are saying is that when someone from the South-East is the president for instance, the vice- president goes to another region, likewise other regions. So it is not for a particular region. It is an idea that sees that rotation works.
Do you think this can be achieved before the 2027 elections?
Yes, and the main point is that we want to diffuse the tension, which other foreign nations are waiting to take advantage of. We thought of extending it till next season. But we have seen that the rumble that may come from the agitation of removing Shettima may cause serious disunity.
