Cleric advocates return to parliamentary system

The Executive Director of Lux Terra Leadership Foundation, Rev Fr George Ehusani, has advocated the change of Nigeria’s governance system from presidential to parliamentary.

Nigeria practised the British-styled parliamentary system until the collapse of the First Republic on January 15, 1966, when the military took power.

The 1979 Constitution introduced the country to the US-styled presidential system of government.

Delivering a keynote address at the fourth Just Friends Club of Nigeria annual lecture in Abuja, Ehusani said if Nigeria was to be saved from its current quagmire, it must be restructured in a way that reflected its true nature as a federal state and not a unitary system.

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He said, “The 1999 Constitution appears to have vested too much power in the centre and emasculated the federating units. There is a widespread call today that we dust up the 1963 Constitution and amend it for our present-day circumstances.

“This implies that we go back to embrace the parliamentary system, adopt no more than six or seven viable regions or states and grant a good measure of self-determination to those regions, thereby reducing to the barest minimum the items on the exclusive legislative list.”