Why the Courts Treated the FCT Like a State in Nigeria’s Presidential Election

The courts did not give the Federal Capital Territory a special or mysterious status in the 2023 presidential election case. The dispute arose from how Section 134(2) of the Constitution should be read. Petitioners argued that a candidate must secure at least 25% of votes in the FCT, in addition to meeting the two-thirds-of-states requirement. Both the Presidential Election Petition Court and the Supreme Court rejected that argument. Section 134(2) requires the candidate with the highest number of votes to also win at least 25% of votes in two-thirds of the states and the FCT. Read alongside Section 299, which applies constitutional provisions to the FCT as if it were a state, the FCT is included in the calculation but does not have veto power over the other states. Two-thirds of 37 units is 25, meaning a candidate needs 25% in 25 states, with or without the FCT. Making 25% in the FCT compulsory would create an unintended superiority for Abuja. A candidate could meet the threshold in all 36 states but still lose because of the FCT alone. That result would make the FCT more powerful than the states combined, which is not what the Constitution intended. The courts were right to reject that interpretation.

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