An Umuahia division of the Federal High Court has declared invalid and unconstitutional section 84(12) of the amended Electoral Act.

In her ruling, Justice Evelyn Anyadike ordered the Attorney General of the Federation to delete the said section from the amended electoral act.

Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act provides that, “No political appointee at any level shall be a voting delegate or be voted for at the convention or congress of any political party for the purpose of the nomination of candidates for any election.”

What the court ruled

The court which ordered that the section be struck out held that Sections 66(1)(f), 107(1)(f), 137(1)(f) and 182(1)(f) of the 1999 Constitution already stipulated that government appointees seeking to contest elections are only to resign at least 30 days before the election.

The court, therefore, held that any other law that mandates such appointees to resign or leave office at any time before that was unconstitutional, invalid, illegal and void to the extent of its inconsistency to the clear provisions of the Constitution.

Justice Anyadike, therefore, ordered Abubakar Malami to delete the contended section 84(12) from the constitution.

What you should know

With this judgement, the National Assembly will not make any amendments to the section as the judge has ordered its deletion.
President Buhari after signing the bill, directed the National Assembly to expunge the said section from the electoral act.
Nairametrics reported that FHC in Abuja restrained the President, the AGF and the senate president, from tampering with the 2022 Electoral Act recently signed into law.
The court made the order following an ex-parte application by PDP challenging the directive given to the National Assembly by the president to remove section 84 (12) of the Electoral Act.
PDP had sought an order of the court restraining the National Assembly from effecting President Buhari’s request to remove section 84 (12) from the Electoral Act.

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