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By Okechukwu Onuegbu
Claim
News headlines reported by journalist01, Thisdaylive and Gazattengr and others suggested that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria threatened Tribunal that removing him as the President of Nigeria over failure to score 25% in Abuja could lead to anarchy and breakdown of law and order. The report which is currently trending has two various claims;
1. Headlines of most of the online reports president the claim as a threat from President Tinubu.
2. The second claim in the report is that removing a sitting president could lead to anarchy.
Verifying the claim:
For claim 1, Factcheckng.com found out that the comment was not actually a threat. Besides, no one is above the law be him or her a president, governor or whatever; none could threaten a court of competent jurisdiction like the Supreme Court, election petition tribunal, Magistrate, High Court, Court of Appeal, Sharia or Customary court, or Industrial court.
Again, it was found that President Bola Tinubu did not actually utter the word by himself as suggested by the headlines or as readers of the headlines might be made to believe. The headline was probably aimed at gaining more viewership or readership online.
The headline was drafted and over brown out of proportion, from a final written address to the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, submitted by counsels to the President led by Mr Wole Olanipekun. In the report, Tinubu through his counsels, admitted his failure to score 25 per cent of votes cast in the Federal capital Territory, FCT Abuja but added that it was not enough to overturn his declaration as winner as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The counsel cited many reasons in their address included the provisions in the 2023 Electoral Act and the 1999 constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria (as amended).
Read an excerpt from the report;
“Any other interpretation different from this will lead to absurdity, chaos, anarchy and alteration of the very intention of the legislature,” Mr Tinubu’s lawyers led by Wole Olanipekun said in their final defence statement to the court.
“…assuming without conceding that the FCT is independent of the other States of the federation, the percentage of 18.99% of votes scored by the 2nd respondent at FCT, only falls short of 25% by 6.01.”
“Our courts have always adopted the purposeful approach to the interpretation of our Constitution, as exemplified in a host of decisions,
“Even if there was no election in one State (including the FCT), or even if the election of a State/States (including the FCT) is/are voided, the entire election cannot be voided or canceled.
“In concluding our arguments on this issue, we urge the court to hold that any election where the electorate exercise their plebiscite, there is neither a ‘royal’ ballot nor ‘royal’ voter; and that residents of the FCT do not have any special voting right over residents of any other State of the federation, in a manner similar to the concepts of preferential shareholding in Company Law.
“We urge this court to resolve this issue against the petitioners and in favour of the respondent."
Claim two was if removing the President can lead to anarchy or breakdown of law and order. First, only the court of competent jurisdiction, in this regard, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal and Supreme Court can give better and proper interpretation to this. This is because the case in question is currently awaiting for their responses.
It was, however, discovered that the counsel to Tinubu did present some reasons behind their statements in the address provided. Some of the reasons are provisions in section 134 and section 3 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and sections 299 of the 2023 Nigeria electoral act.
Verdict
The news headlines seemed to be misleading but content of the story explains the intent and actual speaker. Hence, more reasons to click and read the main content of a story, conduct further research (if need be) before taking any action.