Because he did not receive 25% of the valid votes cast in the federal capital territory (FCT), President Bola Tinubu has requested that the electoral tribunal dismiss the appeal that seeks to invalidate his election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) proclaimed Tinubu the victor of the election. Tinubu ran for president on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on February 28.
With a total of 8,794,726 votes, Tinubu defeated Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who received 6,984,520 votes for second place, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), who received 6,101,533 votes for third place.
However, Atiku and Obi went to the tribunal to get Tinubu’s victory overturned.
Among other things, the petitioners claimed that Tinubu did not receive at least 25% of the votes cast in the FCT.
In a final written response to the tribunal opposing the petition, Tinubu said that the FCT should be regarded as the 37th state for election purposes since any other reading would “lead to absurdity, chaos, anarchy, and alteration of the very intention of the legislature.”
Olanipekun claimed that the petition was unfamiliar with the nation’s electoral laws and was therefore new.
The petition at issue in this address is “very novel in that it is not a petition strictly senso, familiar to our electoral jurisprudence, as the petitioners are not, this time around, complaining about election rigging, ballot box snatching, ballot box stuffing, violence, thuggery, vote buying, voters’ intimidation, disenfranchisement, interference by the military or police, and such other electoral vices,” the judge said.
“25% NOT REQUIRED BY LAW”
According to Tinubu’s legal representative, section 3(1) of the constitution specifies the states by their separate names and classifies the FCT “in the same manner and to the same extent,” therefore the FCT is exempt from the legal requirement that 25% of the votes be cast there.
“May we direct the court’s attention to the lack of punctuation (comma) throughout section 134(2)(b) of the constitution, in particular, right after the word “States” and the word “and” that follows it, which connects the Federal Capital Territory with the States? In essence, the Constitution requires a conjunctive reading of the subsection rather than a disjunctive one. Further compelled by this constitutional requirement, section 299 of the Constitution treats Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, “as if” it were the 37th State.
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