- 25% vote win in Abuja, is constitutional requirement to become Nigeria’s president
- Tinubu did not secure 25% vote in FCT Abuja
- Allegedly Tinubu has not moved into Asorok since his controversial win as Nigeria,s president
The Nigerian atmosphere as well as the internet space has been filled with diverse reactions emerging from the submission made at the Election petition tribunal by the legal team of president Bola Tinubu
The statement suggesting that the removal of the president based on the inability to score 25% vote cast in the federal capital territory FCT Abuja would cause chaos, has generated a lot of mixed feelings among Nigerians.
Oppositions have frowned at the bullying words which appears to threaten the peaceful existence of the Nigeria. Tinubu’s legal team maintained before the court that the FCT should be considered same as other states of the country’without any preferential treatment. The legal team maintained that the votes and voters in Abuja are no more superior than the votes and voters of other state.
Meanwhile the major petitioners Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi claimed that INEC breached Section 134 of the Constitution when INEC announced Bola Tinubu who did not score up to 25% of votes cast in the FCT in line with the law.
Section 134(2)(b) of the Constitution provides that:“A candidate for an election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected where there being more than two candidates for the election- (a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election; and (b) he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.” According to the INEC results Tinubu was only able to garner 19% of votes in the FCT.
The legal team of president Tinubu faulted the above claims on the grounds of “grammatical misconceptions” stating thus in their address presented to the court:
“May we draw the attention of the court to the fact that there is no punctuation (comma) in the entire section 134(2)(b) of the Constitution, particularly, immediately after the ‘States’ and the succeeding ‘and’ connecting the Federal Capital Territory with the States. In essence, the reading of the subsection has to be conjunctive and not disjunctive, as the Constitution clearly makes it so. Pressed further, by this constitutional imperative, the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, is taken ‘as if’ it is the 37th State, under and by virtue of section 299 of the Constitution. “With much respect, any other interpretation different from this will lead to absurdity, chaos, anarchy and alteration of the very intention of the legislature..
Tinubu’s lawyers describe it as injustice and would amount to chaos if their client is disqualified by a vote count from only FCT while arguing that if vote is void in another state of the country, it will not render the entire general election invalid thus vote count from the FCT is not worthy to nullify the entire electoral process.
As Nigerians beam hyper focus on the 25% vote win status accorded Abuja hoping the judiciary would not push the masses to revolt, observers are wondering if the imported foreign model of selecting Nigeria’s president was overdue for phasing out, with a bold step taken to go back to the ancient ways of rulers selection by reactivating Ancient African spirituality
Source: The Cable, ioinews, online
Photo Credit: Financial Times
