PEDAGOGICAL NOTES ON THE DOCTRINE OF POWER ROTATION

The struggle for relevance has been a major characteristic of the politics among constituent units of States and electoral constituencies within Nigeria. This gave rise to the emergence of the doctrine of Power rotation, a doctrine of necessity.

Power rotation takes into consideration the complex political character of Nigeria and the various constituencies across the country. Unity is a key challenge in many parts of our federations. It is a key challenge in Nigeria with major divisions along clans, linguistic, religious and ethnic lines. In this case, a sense of belonging or inclusion is vital to political survival.

The practice has the capacity for maintaining a peaceful political order. It is also a strategy to negotiate participation in the political process by the various subsets that make up a constituency.

The idea of political turn-taking exemplifies a social mechanism to engender a sense of belonging and engender peaceful political coexistence among members of a multiethnic State and constituency.

When reduced to other levels of governance, it also involves members of multi-local government areas and multi-clan constituencies.

Within the scope of this practice, it becomes immoral for one individual from one subset within a constituency to seek reelection more than once, especially as representation engenders both development and empowerment.

Without doubt fairness and equity demands that other members of other subsets within an electoral constituency should also have their member elected, to feel a sense of belonging.