By Reuben Yunana, State House Correspondent

Speaking during the monthly presidential media chat yesterday, Obasanjo said “no two presidential systems in the world are the same.”
He said it was wrong for people to say that premiers in the first republic had more powers than state governors now have, adding: “the governors today are more powerful than the premiers of those days who had gove-rnors in addition to their own premiership. Today the power of governor and premier subsists in one person. There is nothing a premier could do that a governor cannot do today.”
He said it was wrong for Nigerians to compare the Nigerian federation and pres-idential system of gover-nment with that of America because of what he called differences in historical perspectives.
“In America, the states were in existence before they agreed to come together. In Nigeria, the country was in existence, we decided to break up. You must bear that in mind,” Obasanjo said and likened the position of Nigeria with that of India.
He said it was wrong for people to castigate him for supporting presidential system of government for Nigeria. “I talked about presidentialism and some people went to war.
Look, there is no two presidential types of govern-ment in the world that are exactly the same,” Obasanjo said.
Once Nigerians decided they want a presidential sys-tem, then they must decide on what type they want, he said.
“Ghana is a presidential system and picks his mini-sters from the parliament. The ministers have the right to go and address the parliament at will. South Africa is a presidential system. The president is elected by the parliament and he is a member of the parliament. The French and American systems are also different. So we must decide what is good for ourselves,” President Obasanjo emphasised.
He said Nigerians had devised, “a particular system for ourselves to be able to meet with our peculiarities,” he emphasised.
On the issue of the low representation of women in the list of conference delegates, President Obasanjo blamed state governors for the anomaly.
“I sympathise with the position of the women. The governors must say if the non inclusion of women among their delegates was an oversight. They owe the women an apology,” he said.
On the forthcoming national census, President Obasanjo said he was distressed that “while you are trying to blunt the edge of religion and ethnicity so that we sharpen the edge of Nigerianess, the same people who want us to blunt this edge for population census are the ones who are sharpening it for representation.”
Describing the situation as unfortunate and contradictory, Obasanjo pointed out: “when you go out of here (Nigeria) the thing they ask you is where are you from? And you reply I am a Nigerian. They don’t ask you if you are Ibo or Yoruba.”