Still On The 25 Percent Requirement In The FCT

ULOKA CHIBUIKE 

I have read many reactions to my publication of yesterday, where I argued that the claim of 25 percent votes in Abuja’s capital territory is mandatory for anyone to be declared the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Few of those reactions queried my understanding of the law, while others insisted that my knowledge of English is poor.

All in all, it was a case of for and against.

Let me buttress my stand further and still provide that this argument is merely an academic exercise and not in any attempt to preempt their Lordships and Honorable Justices of the Presidential Election Petition Court ongoing at the Court of Appeal.

1. The sections of the constitution are all equal to each other; hence, the constitution cannot approve and reprobate at the same time.

2. Section 299 of the 1999 constitution as amended is unambiguous; it states that all the legislative powers, the executive powers, and the judicial powers vested in the House of Assembly, the Governor of a State, and in the courts of a State shall, respectively, vest in the National Assembly, the President of the Federation, and in the courts, which by virtue of the foregoing provisions are courts established for the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. This simply explains how the FCT retains the condition of a state in the constitution.

3. Section 134 (2) cannot invalidate Section 299 as all sections of the constitution are deemed to be equal.

4. The alleged controversy in Section 134 (2), which states the requirements for one to be declared a President of the Federal Republic, cannot be said to be contradictory. The fact that many Presidents in the past have practiced the culture of getting 25 percent in the FCT does not make it a tradition of our constitution.

5. The bone of contention here is the statue of “AND” in Section 134 (2) of the Constitution; is it Conjunctive or Disjunctive?

5 ii. The word “AND” is Conjunctive, which means that it combines things or words. The law of Conjunctive states that It is an obligation in which several objects are connected by “AND”, hence the And in Section 134 (2) cannot be Disjunctive since Section 299 does not separate the FCT as a State.

5 iii. The “AND” in section 134 (2) can only be read or interpreted Disjuctively, when the sections of the constitution are no longer equal.

PS: This is my personal view and interpretations.

— Uloka Chibuike