A former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Micheal Aondoakaa (SAN) has labeled the declaration of Bola Tinubu as President-elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as illegal.
Daily Report Nigeria recalls that Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) emerged winner of the 2023 presidential election after polling over eight million votes.
However, speaking on Arise TV, Aondoakaa said it was illegal to declare a person President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria when such a person failed to meet the constitutionally required 25% of votes in the Federal Capital Territory.
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The former minister recalled that in a similar case in 2008, the Supreme Court interpreted the word “And” conjunctively making it a mandatory requirement for anyone aspiring to be the President of the Federation.
He said the law has not changed since fourteen years ago when the case was decided.
According to the Senior Advocate of Nigeria, it will be incumbent on the apex court to re-interpret that section of the Constitution again.
He said:
“The Supreme Court has a right to defeat their previous decision or stand by it according to the doctrine of Stare Decisis.”
Speaking further, Aondoakaa accused INEC of violating its guidelines by refusing to upload the results of the election from the polling units directly to its server.
He said:
“The Supreme Court is conscious about a party following its own guidelines and how much more INEC whose guidelines have a Constitutional Flavour.
“They will need to have a good reason to be told to the tribunals why they deviated from their guidelines and they must justify that deviating from those guidelines did not invalidate the results.”
