A Nigerian Lawyer and a Public Affairs Analyst, Liborous Oshoma have alleged that the Lawyers of the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party are twisting the constitution to suit their own narrative as regards the results declared by INEC. If you would recall that Mr. Peter Obi petitioned against the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He specified that Tinubu shouldn’t have been declared the winner because he didn’t get 25% in the FCT.
The legal eagle has contended against this viewpoint from the Labour Party. He stated unambiguously that all the votes in the 37 states of the nation are equal. He alleged that the use of words being used by the constitution is that a candidate can be declared winner if he wins the 2/3 in 36 states but not necessarily mandatory for the candidate to get 25% in the FCT. In his words, if a candidate gets 2/3 in 36 states and the candidate fails to get a single vote in the FCT, he still won the election.
He said, ‘For the purpose of the constitution, FCT is said to be a state, so what it means is that in calculating 25%. If you score 25% in FCT, it should be calculated alongside the 25% that you have scored across the Nation. So if the FCT is the last state where you have got the 25% to match 25% in the 2/3 of the 37 states, it is equally good. But you don’t have to say because FCT is FCt, that 25% in the 2/3 should not be reckoned with. I mean, Are Peter Obi’s lawyers saying their client won the election because he got 25% in the FCT?
That is not what Section 134 says. When you come and say that the section says and in the FCT, it then means you must have it, you are wrong. Why don’t you look at it from the fact that the constitution did not say ‘And in the FCT’ If the Constitution had said that, it would have been considered as being mandatory? We are talking about 37 states here, there is no special state.”
