TWO- YEAR TERM PROPOSED FOR YARA

An international push for a negotiated political settlement of the current political crisis of legitimacy in Nigeria featured Thursday at the United States Congressional hearing.

Specifically the Chairman of the US House Subcommittee on Africa Congressman Donald Payne tabled the idea of halving another round of elections in Nigeria in 2 years and so halving the tenure of the new governments in the country elected from the widely condemned April polls.

Payne put the idea as a form of question to speakers at the congressional hearing Thursday morning in Washington DC titled Nigeria at a crossroads: Elections, Legitimacy and a Way Forward.” Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka spoke at the hearing and so did the US State Department’s top official in the African Bureau, Ambassador Jendayi Frazer among others as key witnesses.

Other speakers were the presidents of two major political think tanks in the US, which monitored the April polls: Kenneth Wollack of the National Democratic Institute, NDI, and Lorne W. Craner of the International Republican Institute, IRI.

Payne put the question first to Frazer who represented the executive arm of the US government at the hearing.

Frazer was however quick to dismiss the idea saying it amounted to an interim government, which he said, would be unconstitutional.

Both Professor Wole Soyinka and Kenneth Wollack, president of the US-based National Democratic Institute, which monitored the April polls supported the idea. Responding to Frazer, Soyinka said he rejected the position that asking for limitation of the tenure of the new governments is wrong. As far as he was concerned, the new governments installed in Nigeria are merely caretaker governments purely for the sake of national survival.

Wollack had earlier broached the idea in his presentation after Frazer comparing what happened at the April polls in Nigeria with a previous experience of the Dominican Republic, where the term of a govt that emerged from serious electoral flaws was cut short from 4 years into 2.

Although Wollack said "Ultimately, Nigerians must find viable and sustainable solutions to these very serious problems, " he then recalled the NDI's experience in past elections world-wide to suggest how such a political crises like the one Nigeria is now might be peacefully resolved.

Said he the NDI’s experience in the Dominican Republic "shows that reconciliation is possible, if a genuine effort is made to reach out to representatives of all sectors of society. In 1994, after seriously flawed national elections, the government of the Dominican Republic, along with religious, business, political party and civic leaders, held a series of roundtables to develop what they called the Pact for Democracy. It included far-reaching electoral and constitutional reforms, followed by early elections two years into the four-year term. The Pact changed the political face of the Dominican Republic and ended a legacy of undemocratic elections."

Even if the complexities of Nigeria and the Dominican Republic are not entirely comparable,” Wollack quoted a former Canadian Prime Minister who led the NDI's election monitoring in Nigeria, Joe Clark who said “the crisis of legitimacy is similar, and the lesson is that unconventional responses can have a better chance of working than following old ways that are known to fail.”

But Ambassador Frazer had spoken earlier rejecting such an idea saying that the US would rather focus on the court process resolving the disputes arising from the elections.

But Professor Soyinka at the 2 hour long hearing gave proposal for a two-year tenure a riveting comeback when he took the floor.

Said he: "In view of what Ambassador Frazer said earlier, I want to call attention to Mr. Wollack's recommendations that this is an unusual situation which requires an unusual remedy."

Speaking in very emphatic tone the Nobel Laureate who received several commendations from members of the US House subcommittee present added that "the notion that a shorter term for this (Yar’adua) presidency will be unconstitutional is simply untenable. The election itself was unconstitutional from the beginning to the end."

The acclaimed playwright who was now speaking outside of his prepared text continued: "In fact it cannot be claimed that an election took place because the process was marred from the very beginning. Long before the election took place, it had failed, it had proceeded along unconstitutional lines and masterminded by one individual who had not yet given up his ambition of ruling the nation dictatorially even after leaving office."

Frazer, the US government's top official on Africa at the State Department in her own view on the idea of a two-year tenure confirmed that the US government has heard about the proposal as one of the proposals to resolve the election crisis in Nigeria. But she worried about "the danger in an interim government." According to her such a move could precipitate a military coup.

Therefore she noted the US would prefer for Nigeria's elections to have "a recourse to the courts." She disclosed that President Umaru Yar’adua has promised the US government to carry out electoral reform. Said Frazer: "We expect

In his own presentation Craner as to the way forward after the election, the IRI president said although “the independence of the Nigerian judiciary was a bright spot throughout the electoral process, I hold out little hope that it will be able to correct this wrong.”

Lamenting that the result would be that “Nigeria, a key strategic partner of the United States, will be run by a man who came to power by questionable means.”

But he still opted for the United States working with the new President Yar’adua, adding however that the US “must not repeat the mistakes of 1999 and 2003” whereby the mistakes of the past where overlooked.

Said he: “The message that Nigeria received following those elections was that the appearance of elections would be enough to satisfy international observers and foreign governments. But, the Nigerian people, and the world, will expect more from the Nigerian government in the elections of 2011. While the public response to April’s travesty has been relatively muted, two failed elections in a row may give rise to greater public hostility in a country that is already a tinderbox poised to blow over ethnic, religious, or economic conflict.”

Donald Payne, the subcommittee chairman who had put forward the idea in a question to Frazer later said the Congressional subcommittee had listened to an "enlightened panel" adding "we have a lot of work to do." He announced that in the next few weeks he would table a bill on the subject of the hearing.

The hearing organized by the US Congressional Sub-Committee on Africa under the leadership of Congressman Donald Payne brought to mind the days of the Abacha dictatorship, which was the last time that Professor Soyinka addressed the US Congress. Soyinka in opening his presentation himself said he had wished that his reunion with the US Congress had been in more pleasant circumstances.

Thursday hearing is significant in that it is coming soon after the much talked about 2007 elections in Nigeria and the subsequent inauguration of a new administration less than two weeks ago. However there have been widespread critical reviews of the elections by both local and international observers that the elections were massively manipulated, violent and that voting did not take place at all in a number of states.

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