Why Nigeria Needs Parliamentary System Of Govt – Peter Obi

Peter Obi

Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, in the 2023 elections has stated that Nigeria should operate a parliamentary system of government so that the president can interact with citizens at least once a month.

Obi advocated for a parliamentary government system in Nigeria during a lecture at Harvard Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.

He pointed out that the presidential system in Nigeria is dysfunctional, allowing leaders to evade accountability during their four-year terms.

Obi said: “What happens is, because of the presidential system that has no president in Nigeria today, we have a bad leader and he stays there for four years. When we have a parliamentary system, we can move a motion of no confidence within two or three years.

“If we are in a parliamentary system, a president will be a member of parliament.

“Today, if you elect me as president of Nigeria or governor, I can remove myself entirely from being answerable to the people, just hire a gang of lunatics, talking rubbish every day.

“While, if it is a parliamentary system, during the president’s question time, he has to answer. He doesn’t have to hire anybody to speak for him.

“A president in Nigeria can decide not to talk to anybody for one year, and nobody cares because he has hired all these people to do the talking. If you say anything, they call you names; they do this.

“So, we need a parliamentary system where the president will be a member of parliament and will at least, even if it is once a month, answer the people who elected him; because we didn’t elect all these gangsters. We elected somebody, and we want the person to talk to us.”

Recall that some members of the House of Representatives had pushed for constitutional reforms to restore Nigeria’s parliamentary system of government.

The lawmakers, numbering not less than sixty, proposed a bill to alter the 1999 constitution to return the country to parliamentary democracy as practised in the first republic.