Acting Presidents, Governors should contest only one term – Deputy Speaker

Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Lasun Yusuf, has suggested that whoever acts as a president or governor for a period of two years would only be eligible to contest another four-year term instead of two terms of four years.
Honourable Yusuf is the chairman of the special Ad hoc Committee on the review of the 1999 constitution in the House.


Speaking through his Chief Press Secretary, Mr Wole Oladimeji, he said he was sponsoring a Bill that “no person who had held office of president or governor of a state or acting as president or governor of a state for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president or governor, shall be elected to the office of president or governor of a state more than once.”


The new bill, which he said had scaled the first reading on the floor of the House, was to give constitutional protection to the two terms tradition.

The statement added that “by virtue of the combine provisions of sections 137(1)(b) and 182(1)(b) of the constitution, the president of Nigeria and governor of a state shall serve in those capacities for a maximum period of eight years.

“However, the constitution equally envisaged circumstances where a person can be chosen to act as president or governor. These include when the president or a governor resign dies or is impeached”.