Is 25% FCT Votes Necessary to Win Presidency? Find Out

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) informed the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) that a presidential candidate is not required to obtain 25% of the votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, to be declared the winner of the election.

The electoral commission also stated that the Electoral Act and its guidelines do not consider electronic collation of results, transmission, and uploading of electronic results as a condition for declaring the winner of the election. The commission declared that the election of Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was based on manual collation of the total number of valid votes cast.

INEC filed a notice of preliminary objection against the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and the party’s petition challenging the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the poll. INEC urged the tribunal to dismiss the petition by Atiku and the PDP because the FCT is not considered to have any special status in the Nigerian constitution. The commission added that the FCT is regarded as the 37th state of the federation, and thus, a presidential candidate needs to score 25% of the valid votes cast in at least two-thirds of the 37 states to be declared the winner of the presidential election.

INEC argued that Tinubu met all the legal requirements to be declared the winner of the election. The PDP candidate had requested the tribunal to nullify Tinubu’s victory and withdraw the certificate of return issued to him. However, INEC submitted that the election results reflected the will of the people and that the February 25 presidential election was one of the best elections conducted since the return of democracy in 1999.

The commission relied on the judgment of the Abuja division of the Federal High Court in Labour Party Vs INEC, which stated that “It is only mandated to collate and transfer election results and the number of accredited voters in a way or manner deemed fit by it.” INEC contended that “there is no where it is mandated to only use and electronic means in collating or transferring of election results.”