President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday technically distanced himself from the controversial single tenure agenda when he said the proposal "is not my idea." Jonathan, who spoke at the 56th National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in Abuja said the information got leaked to the press in the process of consultation.
According to him, the single term idea emanated from the recommendations of the inter-party committee, excluding the Action Congress of Nigeria, made to the Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwias Electoral Reforms panel. He said he was the chairman of the committee that was constituted by late President Umaru Yar'Adua. Besides, he said he has not consulted with the party
leadership nor the leadership of the National Assembly on the issue. He said however, that the idea was good as it would help to reduce acrimony and election cost. "It (single tenure) has nothing to do with the four year presidency that Nigerians have given to us. We just wanted to clarify it and I think we need to mention that it was not my idea; it was the idea of the committee that I chaired which we believe those of us, the majority members of the committee believe, is the best option," Jonathan said. He added that the idea was not meant to elongate his tenure as the opposition groups are insinuating. Jonathan said: " There is a brief comment I want to make on this so called single tenure. I wouldn’t have love to, but probably, it is becoming so topical in the papers. Most of the papers carried it today and when things happen, they do take it to a different direction. "Since we are meeting here as the NEC of the party, it is probably proper to clarify some of these issues so that it will not be misunderstood. The rumour came in, it is me that asked some few people, whether a single tenure will be a better option than a double tenure. "Before I take any decision, I used to ask people. But, that is not the end of consultation. It is a major chain. So, before I can even send such a bill to the National Assembly, I will consult with the governors because, any constitutional amendment involves the states and if they are not on the same page with you, there is no way such an amendment
can easily sail through," the president added.

www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/news-update/13900-single-term-not-my-idea-says-jonathan.html

He's obviously feeling the heat.

The attempt to distance himself is even more shameful than the act itself.

Is he saying that as Chairman of the committee who doubles as commander in chief of the armed forces he still did not wield enough consultative power to influence the direction of policies and outcomes so that he can stand by them?

Is he saying that we now have a new channel of introducing bills in which the Presidency can send bills to the NASS which the President himself does not believe in?


WHO IS RUNNING NIGERIA??

liar liar pants on fire

so who the hell was Reuben abati broadcasting for?

Gosh you gotta love how this is playing out!

Tenure elongation wont work in Nigeria. We just have ,too many Hawks and Vultures hanging around planning A bite out of the National Cake and has nothing to do with putting the Nations interest at heart.

mikeansy:

The attempt to distance himself is even more shameful than the act itself.

Is he saying that as Chairman of the committee who doubles as commander in chief of the armed forces he still did not wield enough consultative power to influence the direction of policies and outcomes so that he can stand by them?

Is he saying that we now have a new channel of introducing bills in which the Presidency can send bills to the NASS which the President himself does not believe in?


WHO IS RUNNING NIGERIA??

Even if I chop 12 wraps of Akpu, I still couldn't have said it better.

So who's lyıng now? Jonathan o Abatı? Because sıgned the release on Nıgerıa Vıllage Square.

Not a Jonathan fan but am embarassed on his behalf. Na wa oh, at least have the liver to defend your self seeking agenda now! Na Abati go take the faukt for Jonah, any way Abati earn ya salary, you never begin see yet. As someone talk, maybe Abati was high on fresh air when he released that press statement. Jonah has gone Shaggy " it wasn't me"

He was just trying his luck. I'm sure he's starting to see the limits of good luck. (Pun intended)

Nigerian Politicians don't know how to make a gracious U-Turn.

There is something cool and human about the President coming out to say, "we got it wrong, our intention was for the best interest of Nigeria, however our decision was lacking in judgement".
Case closed!!!!!

Everybody will move on to the next thing.


The response by GEJ seems to me like a shameles trailer doing a 5-point turn on the expressway.

LOL so he noticed that people would not talk it likly with his plans .lol

at least let him just do his job and stop wasting time on unimportant issues such as this

this vindicates all those that's been saying jona is incapable of logical reasoning with his own brain!

Typical reaction from spineless Jonah. Abati now is the time to quit.

This guy is getting more reetarded, m0r0nic and clueeless as the days go by.

By this time next years His odensity and mumuncity might kill him if care is not taken.


Can he just quit and Let madam Umblerra rule?

At least he knows it's not his idea!!!

That Uwais nonsense report that all Nigerians were clamouring for

Same report had this nonsense

Why don't Nigerians read read read read? Gosh, Anyone could pass a constitution amendment that'll take away their right and parade it as a good amendment in the media and everyone will jump on the band wagon,

I think Yaradua has a hand in the Uwais report and this report came during his tenure, Uwais report my butt!!

Now where is Abati to come and clear the poo. His master don poo poo for pant.

ahhh where is the double facepalm when you need it!!

This man should just stop talking!!! He hasnt said much since he 'resumed' but almost every comment from him is nauseating

Sometimes you have to wonder what is wrong with Nigerians. Why are you all congregating like vultures to feast on a non existent carcass?
Below is an excerpt of the statement released by Abati

'The ENVISAGED Bill is part of the
Jonathan administration’s transformation agenda
aimed at sanitizing the nation’s politics. The
President believes that this single move, when
actualized, will change the face of our politics and
accelerate the overall development of our nation.
If the proposed amendment is accepted by the
National Assembly, the President assures that he
will not in any way be a beneficiary.
(Sgd)Reuben Abati
Special Adviser to the President (Media and
Publicity)
State House,
Abuja
www.facebook.com/notes/goodluck-jonathan/
president-jonathan-and-tenure-of-
office/253387558022220RT

ENVISAGED : verb, To imagine something as a future possibility. To form a mental picture of something.

Honestly, i do not know what you guys are going off about. He just said the original idea was not his and in any case the bill is not ready so what am i missing?

I love me a president that can make a u-turn instead of stubbornly driving the whole country into a ditch.

Seun:

I love me a president that can make a u-turn instead of stubbornly driving the whole country into a ditch.

Are you delusional? What U-Turn?? ROFLMAO!!!

Seun:

I love me a president that can make a u-turn instead of stubbornly driving the whole country into a ditch.

so na u-turn by u-turn this druken fisherman will be driving our affairs till we enter ditch

Kobojunkie:

Are you delusional? What U-Turn?? ROFLMAO!!!

leave them jare oyi lon ko awon mejeji u-turn my foot.

You just get tired of some nigerians at-times, especially some of them on nairaland. The same justice uwais report, you have been clamouring to be implemented, has now been offered to you, and the best you can say is the president is dumb, clueless, moronic, "the drunken fisherman, is more intelligent than he appears, he seeks to elongate his tenure. The same way a party chieftain(cannot recall the party) on ait news, made a mockery of himself on national t.v, he said "that GEJ godfather obasanjo, failed in his tenure elongation and GEJ would also fail in his own tenure elongation". Without any credible argument, he chose to blatantly ignore the part, were president jonathan said he would not be a "beneficiary", if it comes into law. He(party chieftain) ended with a quote "you can fool some people sometimes, but you cannot fool everybody all the time". No sensible argument as to why he (party chieftain) thinks the bill would be bad for the country. It is the same way many nairalanders who oppose jonathan think. Nigerians please them, you are damned, don't please them, you are still damned.

Henry120:

You just get tired of some nigerians at-times, especially some of them on nairaland. The same justice uwais report, you have been clamouring to be implemented, has now been offered to you, and the best you can say is the president is dumb, clueless, moronic, "the drunken fisherman, is more intelligent than he appears, he seeks to elongate his tenure. The same way a party chieftain(cannot recall the party) on ait news, made a mockery of himself on national t.v, he said "that GEJ godfather obasanjo, failed in his tenure elongation and GEJ would also fail in his own tenure elongation". Without any credible argument, he chose to blatantly ignore the part, were president jonathan said he would not be a "beneficiary", if it comes into law. He(party chieftain) ended with a quote "you can fool some people sometimes, but you cannot fool everybody all the time". No sensible argument as to why he (party chieftain) thinks the bill would be bad for the country. It is the same way many nairalanders who oppose jonathan think. Nigerians please them, you are damned, don't please them, you are still damned.

Whether Jonathan be a beneficiary OR NOT, the problem here is WHY THIS? Knowing what we know of our politicians up to this very moment, why do we need elongation of term? If anything, we need a shortening of terms so we can MOVE ON to better options quicker and not continue to WASTE AWAY our LIVES and our FUTURES while we pretend these people will eventually get their act together and then act. 

Just take a look at the record from the last 12 years alone, and if anything, you see that giving these people less time to fool us with their 419 talk is a very good idea . . . not giving them more time to play us for fools. Obasanjo spent 8 whole years and we all know how that all ended up. This is the same man who came up with this idea after sitting atop Nigeria for 8 years. Yar adua came in after him and WASTED, completely WASTED our time for 3 years. A child born 12 years ago still does not have a better chance today than back in 1999.

So Why this BILL? That remains the QUESTION.


To the one who has computed that we spend so much on elections, I will tell you this, we do not spend enough! We loose so much more .  . . we waste so much more when we allow these goons continue unchecked. Since 1999, the country has lost at least 20 BILLIONS of DOLLARS on NOTHING. We are talking more than 20 times of the amount JEGA spent during the last election. Even if we had an election, JEGA style, every year, we would still not have spent as much as we have lost since 1999. Let's try harder to be HONEST with ourselves.

Henry120:

You just get tired of some nigerians at-times, especially some of them on nairaland. The same justice uwais report, you have been clamouring to be implemented, has now been offered to you, and the best you can say is the president is dumb, clueless, moronic, "the drunken fisherman, is more intelligent than he appears, he seeks to elongate his tenure. The same way a party chieftain(cannot recall the party) on ait news, made a mockery of himself on national t.v, he said "that GEJ godfather obasanjo, failed in his tenure elongation and GEJ would also fail in his own tenure elongation". Without any credible argument, he chose to blatantly ignore the part, were president jonathan said he would not be a "beneficiary", if it comes into law. He(party chieftain) ended with a quote "you can fool some people sometimes, but you cannot fool everybody all the time". No sensible argument as to why he (party chieftain) thinks the bill would be bad for the country. It is the same way many nairalanders who oppose jonathan think. Nigerians please them, you are damned, don't please them, you are still damned.

Its bad for the country because it makes the government even less answerable to the people. The way things are now, governors and the president have to worry about re-election. If they don't perform well, the people can punish them after 4 years by kicking them out of office. (This works in theory at least, the PDP rigging machine is a very effective way around this.) If this ridiculous proposal passes, our leaders will be able to sit back and steal to their hearts content for 7 years after rigging/shooting their way into power. No need to worry about keeping the peasants happy, just make sure your successor doesn't probe you and your are free to be as useless and corrupt as you like.

I wonder why you're are not worried about this attempt to remove one of the few effective checks on a government that is already far too powerful? Perhaps you are one of the few people actually benefiting from government corruption? Or maybe you're just not intelligent enough to understand the consequences of what you're supporting.

wonders shall never cease! When will this man call Jona-dull be EVER responsible for his actions? When its about spending for Independent day celebrations it was Yaradua's Idea to spend 16 billion. . .when he was caught trying to elongate his tenure, then all of sudden it was Uwais's idea?!??. . .so why did he not follow the Uwais report when appointing INEC chairman? I thought thesame report made it clear that the INEC chairman should be appointed by the judiciary? ? ? ?

This mumu is just proving me right about his inability to understand anything governance, Wetin he don see sef? I hope

wesley80:

The ENVISAGED Bill is part of the
Jonathan administration’s transformation agenda
aimed at sanitizing the nation’s politics.

ENVISAGED : verb, To imagine something as a future possibility. To form a mental picture of something.

Honestly, i do not know what you guys are going off about. He just said the original idea was not his and in any case the bill is not ready so what am i missing?

Thanks for lending us the only dictionary in Nigeria

Was Obj looking for 2nd term in 2007 when he declared do-or-die? And what term was Adedibu looking for while causing trouble?
What you are missing is that your hero makes mistakes; if the bill is not ready why publicise it? and even how will the thrust be different when eventually ready? single term of 6 or 7 years
Not his idea but part of his transformational agenda

@kobojunkie, understandable, there would never be a good time for this bill. The earlier the better, if u ask me, this is infact a good time. The bill seeks to reduce the tenure of our politicians from 8years to 6years. O.p, obasanjo's tenure, wasn't as bad as we all claim it to be. This power plants that GEJ is constructing first started or were initiated by OBJ, when yara'adua, came into power, he stopped the projects( 7 power plants in all) we should have moved past this stage by nw. plus the rail way mordenization project OBJ, signed with the chinese. And for his first tenure, we had the massive debts to contend with(this aside). What i think is, we should look at the benefits of this bill, and also look at it's disadvantages. If the disadvantages out-weigh the advantages, by a large chunk, we shelve it. If not, i believe, it's a good step in the right direction, as long as these public officials would loose there immunity, to allow for more scrutiny. What i'm saying is let us look at the bill in all( advantages and disadvantages), b4 we start calling the president, dumb, clueless and all.

@Post. . .Jonathan will make even Yar'Adua look like Einstein, yes the same Albert you know, by the time Nigerians wake up from their perpetual slumber! Just yesterday, my concern about the way things were going is when will Nigerians begin to hold this man accountable and I gave the example of a clueless driver hired to drive for 4 years. Will you go to sleep while your clueless driver rail-roads you to the dungeon where there is no U-turn and the sun never shines again? See: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria?topic=722468.msg8804529#msg8804529.

Jonathan will accomplish exactly the success he recorded since being tapped into politics back in 1999: NOTHING! Even if you wait for another 8 years! When will Nigeria put enough daily pressure on him? I mean pressure from every angle: on the streets of Abuja, Lagos, Umuahia, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Maiduguri, Kafanchan and Kutuwenji? The people of Igbomina, Saki, Nkwerre, Ngbidi, Oke Iho and the remotest hamlets of Bayelsa should get no rest or sleep until this driver gets everyone to the destination we desire as a nation! This is not a 20:2020 pipe dream that has been postponed since the days of Vision 2000 and MDG! Let the pressure increase on him from all the online gladiators, commentators, facebook junkies, twitter, student, market women, employed or not, old and young until this Jonathan begins to do something for this country! Countries don't become advanced by selecting useless leaders without an iota of any idea even if it slammed them upside his head!

Jonathan appointed ministers who will steal, loot, do nothing and yet get salaries like it has been since the days of Obasanjo! Some did well, but that is not enough and we must press them at every turn until a better, egalitarian society is built and sustained. If Jonathan wanted to solve only one problem, let him do it ASAP not long useless stories and cliches that has scammed Nigeria till date! If it is power he wants to fix, let him literally follow his minister and walk to the place where the turnbines will be bought (I hear there are some rotting away at the wharf in Lagos), trek and follow it until it lands on the site, and no one will sleep for every hour until the foundation is laid, turbines are installed, piping, cabling, infrastructure and everything needed from generation, to transmission to distribution is completed and we can actually see light! Then, we will not care about promises of MW or KW and productive and smart Nigerians from every corner can have an environment to create businesses, manufacture things, live a more decent life, sleep at home and wake-up strong and fresh for another day!

Apply the same principle to power. If you must sell the refineries, do it already with hard targets that MUST be accomplished so only tried and tested companies with records of success gets to buy and manage such infrastructure and must be sold at a very competitive price not give it away at a token! In parallel, devolve power so that FAT useless federal government can stop holding everyone down into a true federalism for states to govern. Delete that incompetent NPF and create state police and let the states compete on every ground and control their resources. That useless Federal Character is one the most useless things that ever happened to Nigeria, delete it and let people travel anywhere they wish to reside and get residency there without the useless state of origin and quota system. If northerners, any one wants to be free and educated, let him be free to travel to the south to get education and not be tied down with useless ignorance. If any southerners have competitive incentives to work or school in a school in the north, let him be able to go there and make a difference in his community and Nigeria. By the time you have done only these few things, Nigeria at least will be on a different path of destiny and not all this useless speeches of U-turn, buck-passing, blame-gaming and lootocratic governance.

Finally, I wish Nigerians will wake up and do something fast! I wish I could but can not give any details of what things people are doing here, I mean that I am doing here! At the rate Nigeria is going, it will take 10 centuries (1000 years) before anything like it will get to Nigeria. If it eventually does, where will be the manpower to teach, research and develop it? Where are the knowledgeable people in Nigeria who can be employed? Oyinbo is not waiting and while we sell oil and wait for them to give money for some "development" project in Africa, these people are going so fast now, you'd think they were last! Goodluck, now you have shoes and more so no excuses, start acting fast because I (like a lot of other Nigerians) am VERY tired and sick of all this useless nonsense!!

Henry120:

@kobojunkie, understandable, there would never be a good time for this bill. The earlier the better, if u ask me, this is infact a good time. The bill seeks to reduce the tenure of our politicians from 8years to 6years. O.p, obasanjo's tenure, wasn't as bad as we all claim it to be.

HUH? I am speaking with water in my mouth or something?? Did you even read anything I typed??

Again, let me ask you , when exactly do you think would be a good time for a BILL that ENABLES CORRUPTION, INACTION and WASTE? When? I am not following you at all. Please answer the question.

The bill seeks to reduce the tenure of our politicians from 8 years to 6 years? Where?? How?? By the way, the tenure is 4 years, not 8 years. You only get 8 years if you are re-elected. Why do I get the sense you are desperately trying to twist this so you justify what probably does not make sense, even to you??

Henry120:

This power plants that GEJ is constructing first started or were initiated by OBJ, when yara'adua, came into power, he stopped the projects( 7 power plants in all) we should have moved past this stage by nw. plus the rail way mordenization project OBJ, signed with the chinese.

GEJ is NOT constructing any power plants that were STOPPED. Cut the bull please!!! A
nd it does not take 6 straight years to construct a power plant. Reasonably, you can get a good power plant up and running in 2 years or less(if you hire the right hands).

The railway modernization project? Jonathan has nothing to do with that STILL . . .  the contract for what we see today were signed during the yar adua administration and the NRC is, I must say, doing a great job continuing on the project even with the changes in Government since then. Yes, Yar adua truncated the actual modernization project, but if he hadn't, it would have been completed in less than 4 years . . . . these things don't take time anymore to complete. So, lets stop PRETENDING it has TO TAKE FOREVER To get things DONE or working, even in NIGERIA.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/tianjin/e/2009-07/29/content_8488585.htm

Henry120:

And for his first tenure, we had the massive debts to contend with(this aside). What i think is, we should look at the benefits of this bill, and also look at it's disadvantages. If the disadvantages out-weigh the advantages, by a large chunk, we shelve it. If not, i believe, it's a good step in the right direction, as long as these public officials would loose there immunity, to allow for more scrutiny. What i'm saying is let us look at the bill in all( advantages and disadvantages), b4 we start calling the president, dumb, clueless and all.

What are the so-called benefits of this bill? I am still asking that question. When are we going to get actual responses to this particular question?

What benefit can come out of Reetardeen bill