The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has justified its declaration of All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Bola Tinubu as president-elect in the 2023 general election.
Tinubu did not need to receive 25% of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to be declared Nigeria’s president-elect, according to the commission.
WITHIN NIGERIA reports that Tinubu’s counterparts in the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, have filed petitions for the position of the electoral umpire in the 2023 general election.
It will be remembered that in the aftermath of the presidential election, both Obi and Atiku claimed in separate suits to the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja that Tinubu should not have been declared president-elect because he did not receive 25% of the votes in the FCT.
While Atiku, who finished second in the presidential election with 15.5% in the FCT, asked the court to either declare him the winner or nullify the election and order a rerun, Obi finished third with 58.85% and Tinubu had 18.99%.
According to reports, in order to be declared the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election, a candidate must also receive 25% of the votes cast in two-thirds of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
However, Tinubu did not meet the 25% requirement in the FCT.
However, INEC in its defense in a preliminary objection to Atiku’s petition argued that there was no basis for the call for “a run-off and/or nullification of the said election.”
According to the commission, the declaration of Tinubu as the president-elect was based on him scoring 25% of the valid votes cast in 29 states,
INEC said Tinubu “Has satisfied the requirement of the constitution to be declared winner of the presidential election thus rendering the requirement of having 25 % of the valid votes cast in Federal Capital Territory unnecessary.”
It was gathered from Premium Times that the commission cited section 134 (2) (b) of the constitution, saying its declaration and return of Tinubu “was not wrongful…having scored one-quarter of valid votes cast in 29 states which is beyond the constitutional threshold for declaration.”
The commission also argued that Nigeria’s constitution confers the status of a state on the FCT (Abuja) “and ought to be recognized as one of the states of the federation,” noting that the FCT “beyond being the Capital of Nigeria has no special status over and above the other 36 states of the federation to require a candidate in the presidential election to obtain at least 25% of the votes cast in the FCT before being declared winner of the presidential election.”
Inferring the intentions of the framers of the Nigerian constitution, INEC said a presidential candidate is expected to have “a national geographical spread and broad acceptability from the Nigerian electorate and not meant to bestow a veto power on the FCT or its electorate over the election of a candidate at a presidential election who has otherwise scored one-quarter of the votes cast in two-thirds of the 36 states except in the FCT.”