By 9jaeye 
Bola Tinubu the President-elect, has elucidated that a candidate must not score 25 per cent in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to be returned as president in an election.
Tinubu interpreted this in a preliminary objection he filed against the petition by the Labour Party (LP) and her presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja, seeking the discharge of the petition for failing to reveal any cause of action.
It is no longer news, that some political parties, including the Labour Party (LP), has come out to challenge the outcome of the February 25 presidential election, they have argued that the APC and Tinubu did not secure the 25 per cent of the total votes cast in the FCT “as mandatory requirement” in Section 134(2)(b) of the Constitution of Nigeria, and was, therefore, unqualified to be declared.
Responding to the petition, his legal team led by Wole Olanipekun (SAN), Tinubu argued that the Nigerian election is not based on the electoral college as it particularly relates to the FCT, stating that the residents are not superior voters that are conferred with “any privilege or advantage that is not accorded to citizens of Nigeria of other communities, ethnic groups and places of origin.”
He explained how the FCT was created by the adjustment of the boundaries and excising land from surrounding states of Plateau, Kaduna, Kwara and Niger states, etc.
He said, “The petitioners themselves agree in their paragraph 25 that Nigeria is one single constituency for the purpose of the presidential election. Thus, no part of that single constituency is superior to the other or carries a special status requiring a minimum threshold of votes not mandated in others.”
Tinubu further maintained that the order of a United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division in case No 93C-4483, which on October 4, 1993, ordered the forfeiture of the sum of $460,000 in his Heritage Bank account linked to narcotics and money laundering allegations, cannot be enforced in Nigeria as it was not an offence created by an Act of the National Assembly.
“The case of the petitioners, as pleaded, has not disclosed any disqualifying factor as prescribed by Section 137 (1) (d) and (e) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended),” he added.