Jonathan’s Tenure Elongation Memo Floods Confab

A document prepared by one of the delegates from the South-South has been distributed to the delegates seen as loyal to the president on the need to postpone 2015 general elections by 18 months.

The document, prepared by Mr Okon Osung, was distributed to the delegates last week. Osung, who spoke with journalists in Abuja on Friday evening, confirmed that he distributed the controversial document.

He said, “This calls for the postponement or deferment of the scheduled 2015 elections by at least 18 months, while retaining all the democratic institutions at all levels of governance and across the entire spectrum of the country’s political divide, without any bias to the statutory termination dates of such democratic institutions. 

“This implies the retention of the presidency, offices of governors in the states, the National Assembly (Senate and House of Representatives), state Houses of Assembly, local government chairmen, the Independent National Electoral Commission and the respective state Independent Electoral Commissions...

“It is imperatively necessary to speedily put the proposed politico-administrative moratorium into effect, and Nigeria would not be lacking in terms of historical precedent of having to rise to a difficult and unforeseen contingency or occasion for which the country’s constitution had not made adequate provision.”

He said there is need for the President or National Assembly declaring a “politico-administrative moratorium or cooling-off period” before the conduct of the elections scheduled for February 2015.

He said the extension of tenure to be occasioned with the postponement would be based on the invocation of what he called the “the doctrine of necessity” by the National Assembly.

For now, Mr Osung is claiming that he solely prepared the document, which he entitled, “Preserve Nigeria’s democracy: Postpone the 2015 election now.”