Why Nigeria needs five-year, one-term presidency – Peter Obi

Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has urged Nigeria to adopt a single, five-year presidential term, similar to South Korea’s system, where leaders are barred from seeking re-election.

Obi argued that the change would compel any president to focus fully on governance rather than political survival.

“If I have the opportunity, we should stop having a second tenure for presidents. It should be five years,” Obi said during a visit to Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed at the Government House on Friday. “That is what is in South Korea, so people come in and know that they have a job to do.”

The former Anambra State governor criticised the current culture where leaders spend their first year in office governing and the rest preparing for the next election.

“What people do now is to be president for one year and use the rest of the year thinking about the next tenure. Let’s stop it, let’s face the real job,” he said.

This is not the first time Obi has advocated for a single term. On August 3, he reiterated his vow to serve only four years if elected president, a pledge he first made during a June X Space session titled #PeterObiOnParallelFacts, which drew thousands of listeners.

“In my political life, my word is my bond…My vow to serve only one term of four years is a solemn commitment, rooted in my conviction that purposeful, transparent leadership does not require an eternity,” he wrote on X.

He maintained that prolonged stays in power often lead to corruption, citing Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Nelson Mandela as examples of leaders who left lasting legacies without clinging to office.

However, not everyone agrees with Obi’s stance. Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State recently dismissed the idea of a self-imposed single term, saying any politician making such a vow “needs psychiatric examination.”