Micheal Aondoakaa, SAN, a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, has criticised the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to declare Bola Ahmed Tinubu the winner of the 2023 presidential election.
Aondoakaa argued that it was unconstitutional to appoint someone as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria if they did not receive the constitutionally required 25 percent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory.
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The senior advocate of Nigeria stated as much when he appeared on Arise TV over the weekend to discuss the outcome of the presidential and national assembly elections. He also mentioned that in a similar case in 2008, the Supreme Court interpreted the word “And” conjunctively, making it a requirement for anyone aspiring to be President of the Federation.
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According to him, the law has not changed since the case was decided fourteen years ago, and it will be up to the Supreme Court to reinterpret that section of the Constitution. In his words, “according to the doctrine of Stare Decisis, the Supreme Court has the right to overturn or uphold a previous ruling.”
INEC declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the candidate of the APC, the winner of the 2023 presidential election despite the outcry of Nigerians over alleged massive electoral fraud.
According to the former minister of justice, the election official violated its own guidelines by failing to upload election results directly from polling places to its server.
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“The Supreme Court is cognizant of a party’s adherence to its own guidelines, and even more so INEC, whose guidelines have a Constitutional Flavour,” said the learned silk.
“They will have to explain to the tribunals why they deviated from their guidelines, and they will have to demonstrate that the deviation did not invalidate the results,” he said.
He claimed that the electoral referee changed the rules mid-game, insisting that this will be a difficult issue to justify.
