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Former Senate President Ken Nnamani has noted that Nigeria would have become politically unstable like fellow West African countries Guinea and Mali if he and his colleagues in the fifth Senate did not muster the courage to stop the third term presidential ambition of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006.
“If we didn’t do what we did, we would have become like Guinea. If our set did not do what God gave us the courage to do, we would have become like Mali. We wanted to show that it is important for our people to stand by the Constitution. If we keep growing strong men who tinker with the Constitution, the men in khaki will strike. If we can maintain due process, we’ll avoid trouble,” Senator Nnamani said during a media chat in Lagos on Tuesday held as part of efforts to promote his just-published 514-page memoir, “Standing Strong: Legislative Reforms, Third Term and Other Issues of the 5th Senate”.
The former Senate President described the book as insightful and easy to read. “It is my own effort to document what happened during our time, although third term defined it. We did a lot of things and ‘Standing Strong’ captures what we did.
“It is simplified. You don’t need to keep a dictionary by your side to check the meaning of a word while reading the book,” he said.
Asked if he has any regrets as his refusal to work for the actualisation of the third term plot cost him and other senators elected on the platform of the then-ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) automatic tickets in the 2007 elections, Senator Nnamani said: “I have no regrets whatsoever. The only regret is not what I lost as a person but that those senators who would have continued because they had been trained and would still have been in the Senate were not allowed to return. I have no personal regret but only general regret. If I have the opportunity again I will do the same thing – even harder.”
“Standing Strong: Legislative Reforms, Third Term and Other Issues of the 5th Senate” is due to be presented to the public on Thursday, October 21, 2021 in Abuja.
