Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Dr Monday Onyekachi Ubani, SAN, has weighed into the renewed debate over a proposed constitutional amendment to introduce a single six-year tenure for Nigeria’s President and state governors, acknowledging that the proposal has “some appeal and merit” in eliminating the political distractions of re-election campaigns but warning that removing the prospect of re-election could “inadvertently weaken democratic responsiveness and accountability,” and arguing that the real challenge before Nigeria is not how long a leader serves but how to ensure whoever occupies office governs effectively.
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In a policy commentary titled “Six-Year Single Tenure for the President and Governors: A Solution or a Distraction?”, Ubani responded to the renewed push for tenure reform led by Distinguished Senator Opeyemi Bamidele and his colleagues in the National Assembly, who have argued that a chief executive who is not seeking re-election will be less distracted by politics and more focused on governance.
While acknowledging the logic of the argument, Ubani systematically examined the proposition from constitutional, comparative, and governance perspectives, ultimately concluding that tenure reform alone “cannot substitute for competent leadership, institutional integrity, and citizen participation.”
Ubani began by acknowledging the practical problem that the single tenure proposal seeks to address. Under Nigeria’s current constitutional arrangement, the President and governors are elected for four years and may seek one additional term.
“In practice, like what is presently playing out, preparations for re-election often commence well before the expiration of the first term, creating political pressures that can influence policy choices,” Ubani observed, in what appeared to be a reference to the political activities that have dominated the current administration’s first-term landscape.
He conceded that a single tenure “could potentially eliminate this concern and encourage long-term policy implementation,” acknowledging that the proponents’ central argument carries weight.
However, Ubani argued that the debate cannot be reduced to administrative efficiency alone, pivoting to what he described as the fundamental architecture of democratic governance.
“Democracy is fundamentally built on accountability and good governance. The prospect of re-election serves as one of the most powerful mechanisms through which citizens evaluate governmental performance,” Ubani stated.
“Removing that incentive for appraisal may inadvertently weaken democratic responsiveness and accountability,” the Senior Advocate warned.
The argument strikes at the heart of the single tenure proposition. If a president or governor knows from the moment of inauguration that they will never face the electorate again, the most direct mechanism through which citizens can reward good performance or punish poor governance is removed. The leader becomes, in effect, a lame duck from day one, with no electoral consequence for ignoring public opinion, breaking campaign promises, or pursuing policies that benefit narrow interests rather than the broader population.
Ubani drew on comparative constitutional experience to challenge the assumption that longer tenures produce better governance.
“Comparative constitutional experience demonstrates that no direct correlation exists between the length of tenure and the quality of governance,” Ubani stated.
He noted that nations in the Americas and Northern Europe with fixed and relatively short executive tenures have produced transformative leaders, while “many countries in Africa that permitted lengthy periods in office have suffered from poor governance, institutional decay, and democratic erosion.”
The contrast is stark. Countries like the United States, with a four-year presidential term (renewable once), and most European democracies, with similarly limited executive tenures, have produced leaders who achieved significant policy outcomes within tight timeframes precisely because the pressure of accountability and the discipline of a defined term concentrated their focus on deliverables.
Meanwhile, African nations that experimented with extended or unlimited presidential tenures, from Mobutu’s Zaire to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to the constitutional manipulations in several West and Central African states, have generally experienced the opposite outcome: leaders who used extended time in office not to deliver governance dividends but to entrench personal power, weaken institutions, and erode democratic norms.
Ubani argued that Nigeria’s own history supports the primacy of leadership quality and institutional effectiveness over tenure duration.
“The Nigerian experience equally suggests that governance outcomes are influenced more by leadership quality and institutional effectiveness than by tenure duration,” Ubani stated.
He identified what he considers the true determinants of governmental success: “Strong institutions, respect for constitutional limits, transparency, and adherence to the rule of law remain the primary determinants of governmental success.”
The implication is that changing the tenure framework while leaving the institutional environment unchanged would address a symptom rather than the disease. If Nigeria’s governance challenges stem from weak institutions, poor leadership selection processes, corruption, and disregard for the rule of law, then giving leaders six years instead of four-plus-four does not address any of those underlying problems.
Ubani urged that the constitutional debate be broadened beyond the narrow question of tenure duration.
“From a constitutional perspective, our debate should not be framed as a choice between six years and eight years alone. Rather, an exhaustive inquiry should focus on which arrangement best promotes accountability, stability, effective governance, and democratic development,” Ubani stated.
He acknowledged that a constitutional amendment introducing a six-year single tenure is “legally feasible in Nigeria if it follows the amendment procedures prescribed by the Constitution,” but posed what he described as the more important question: “whether such a change would address the underlying challenges of governance in Nigeria.”
His answer was characteristically measured: “The answer is likely nuanced. It is possible that tenure reform may alter political incentives, but it cannot substitute for competent leadership, institutional integrity, and citizen participation which we all crave for.”
Ubani concluded with a formulation that reduced the debate to its essential elements.
“A good leader can achieve significant results within a limited tenure, while a poor leader may squander and ruin his or her country the more even when given an extended period in office,” the Senior Advocate stated.
“The real challenge before Nigeria is therefore not simply how long a President or governor should remain in office, but how to ensure that whoever occupies the office governs effectively with attendant dividends of democracy, responsibly, and in accordance with constitutional principles. That objective remains the true measure of a dream of a democratic success,” Ubani concluded.
The single tenure debate was reignited by Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, the former governor of Ekiti State and current senator, who alongside colleagues has proposed a constitutional amendment that would replace the current four-year renewable term with a single six-year term for both the President and state governors.
Proponents argue that the amendment would free chief executives from the political calculations and factional pressures associated with seeking a second term, allow them to focus on long-term policy goals rather than short-term political survival, reduce the enormous financial cost of conducting primary elections and general elections every four years, and eliminate the governance paralysis that typically characterises the final year of a first term when political attention shifts entirely to re-election.
Opponents, including Ubani, argue that the proposal would remove the most direct accountability mechanism available to citizens, create a situation where leaders have no electoral consequence for poor performance, potentially worsen governance by giving incompetent leaders two additional years in office compared to the current single four-year term, and fail to address the structural issues of institutional weakness, corruption, and poor leadership selection that are the real causes of Nigeria’s governance challenges.
The debate is not new. Similar proposals have been considered at various points in Nigeria’s constitutional history, including during the 2014 National Conference and previous National Assembly constitutional amendment exercises. None has achieved the two-thirds majority in both chambers of the National Assembly and ratification by at least 24 state Houses of Assembly required to amend the Constitution.
Whether the current push, coming at a time of widespread public dissatisfaction with governance outcomes and intense political activity ahead of the 2027 elections, will advance further than its predecessors remains to be seen.
Ubani’s intervention, framing the question as “a solution or a distraction,” suggests that at least one prominent voice within the legal profession believes the answer lies not in tenure engineering but in the harder, less glamorous work of building the institutions, transparency mechanisms, and leadership selection processes that determine whether any tenure, of whatever length, produces governance that serves the people.
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