DEPUTY Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, said, yesterday, if
Africa must get it right, it has become imperative for the adoption of what he
described as a hybrid of the presidential and parliamentary systems....
According
to Ekweremadu, the proposed system will have safeguards, such as single term,
rotational presidency, proportional representation, vote of no confidence in
place of rigorous impeachment processes to better guarantee democratic
governance and constitutionalism.Ekweremadu, who prescribed
far-reaching constitutional reforms as panacea for the challenges of leadership
and development in Africa, however, observed that even though many African
countries, Nigeria inclusive, had recorded relative success in reviewing the
constitution, the issues that plague the continent can hardly be fully resolved
by way of constitutional amendments. Ekweremadu spoke in New York, Monday
night, while delivering the 10th anniversary lecture of the Centre for Media
and Peace Initiatives, entitled Constitutionalism and the Challenges of
Leadership in Africa: An Evaluation of Tested Models. In a statement yesterday
by his Special Adviser, Media, Uche Anichikwu, the Deputy Senate President said
salient features in Africa, such as weak, ineffective and overbearing leaders,
ethnic irredentism, agitations for partitioning, restructuring, systemic
injustices and inequities, will never go away unless constitutionalism, based
on appropriate constitutions, are entrenched to address the factors that breed
them.
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