Ken Nnamani, former president of the Nigerian senate has opened up on Obasanjo’s third term plan, says he sacrificed his senate career in seeing to Obasanjo’s third term bid be disrupted in 2006.
The 72 year-old in his new book, ‘Standing Strong: Legislative Reforms, Third Term and Other Issues of the 5th Senate’, wrote on the matter.
The senate dropped the proposed amendment on May 16, 2006 after a voice vote.
“In my own case, my re-election to the senate was foreclosed because I was marked out as the principal figure among those that ended the infamous project,” Nnamani said.
Before the senate vote, promises were made to many supporters that they would get a straight ticket back to the national assembly.
Huge quantities of money are also claimed to have been offered to MPs in exchange for their support for the third term agenda.
Nnamani, like many others, stated he turned down all offers because “it was the least sacrifice” he could make to guarantee that the constitutional amendment process “wasn’t exploited.”
“We lost the opportunity of continuing with a crop of lawmakers who had gained experience in the culture of legislation but who were brazenly denied their party’s ticket because they stood against autocracy. The political party system as nurtured by Obasanjo was one where the party and the governors were in the pouch of the president and from the comfort of his bedroom he decided who went where,” he wrote.
President Muhammadu Buhari will be special guest of honour at the public presentation of the book on Thursday in Abuja.
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