Thread by @RaymondNkannebe

The suggestion that former Pres. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) is disqualified from contesting the 2023 presidential election on the strength of Section 137(3) of the CFRN is totally wrong and misleading with due respect to the Human Rights Activist, Femi Falana, SAN.

#Thread 🧵

At the very least, GEJ is only precluded from occupying the office of the Nigerian President for two straight terms having first taken the oath of office between 2011 & 2015.

The point being made is that he is eligible to contest, but if he wins, cannot contest again in 2027.

The point must be made that the oath taken by GEJ upon the demise of late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua in 2010, is inconsequential in the context of the number of times he could take the oath under Nigerian Law, since that oath, was no more than a 'constitutional emergency'.

Under our Constitution, the Oath of Office has a four-year life span which cannot be broken for the purposes of determining the number of times, an individual can take the oath for elective purposes.

I will explain with events in my home-state of Anambra and elsewhere.

In 2003, Dr. Chris Ngige was sworn in as the Gov. of Anambra State after the controversial general election of 2003. It was not until 2006, that the Court of Appeal returned Mr. Peter Obi as the duly elected Gov of the State, whereupon he took the oath of office & was sworn in.

By 2007, @inecnigeria was getting ready to conduct the 2007 General election and earmarked Anambra State as one of the states where gubernatorial election was to take place amongst other states of the Federation.

Governor Peter Obi was aggrieved, contending that his term of office only began on 17 March 2006 when he first took the oath of office & that his 4-year tenure was to be reckoned from that date; and not Ngige's.

A seemingly constitutional crisis was kindled.

Matters came to a head, & it took the intervention of the SC in OBI v INEC (2007) LPELR 24347 (SC) to uphold Mr. Obi's arguments.For the uninitiated, this was how Anambra's election cycle came to be truncated. Obi would sit in office until 2014, having won a re-election in 2010

Let us go to Oyo State where the dynamics of the constitutional oath of office received the attention of the #SC in another illuminating context.
By some subterranean means, then Governor Rashidi Ladoja was impeached from office by members of the State House of Assembly in 2005.

A dogged fighter, Ladoja challenged his impeachment in Court, & in the popular case of Inakoju v Adeleke, won against the conspiratorial House of Assembly & was restored to office by the #SC in 2007.

By this time, he had sat out of office for some 11 months. What to do?

Again, INEC was preparing to conduct the 2007 general election and had earmarked Oyo State as one of the States where the exercise was to take place.

In order to make up for the 11 months he sat out his purported impeachment, Ladoja approached the courts for protection. He was essentially seeking an extension of his term in office to compensate for the 11 months he was out of office challenging his traducers.

Unlike Mr. Peter Obi, he was not in luck. In disagreeing with the embattled Governor, the Supreme Court in Ladoja v INEC (2007)LPELR-1738 (SC) held that the constitutional oath of office was sacrosanct for a 4-year period from when it was first taken and that...

... there was no remedy within the four corners of the Constitution for persons who found themselves in the circumstances as the then Governor was. He lost. And left office afterwards.

Again, for the uninitiated, this was how Oyo State's election cycle survived truncation.

Bsck to GEJ. The principle is therefore clear from a jurisprudential construct of the above cases: the constitutional oath of office when first taken at the commencement of a new democratic dispensation survives unbroken, for a 4-year period but cannot be taken more than twice.

The material question then, is whether the oath taken by former president Goodluck Jonathan upon the demise of his former principal in 2010 suffices in this context to disqualify him in 2023?

I'm more inclined to determine the poser in the negative for a number of reasons.

First, the oath was a consequence of the provisions of Section 146 of the Constitution which operates to fix the Vice President in the shoes of the demised president in order to avert a power vacuum and to revive that democratic dispensation.

Therefore that oath, was no more than a continuation of Umar Yar'Adua's in the eye of the Law.

This is the reason why it terminated on the midnight of 28th May, 2011 to signal the end of the President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's democratic dispensation, and did not continue for a four year period as we saw in the example of Governor Peter Obi in Anambra and elsewhere.

Secondly, and as a corollary to the above, president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan did not 'take the oath' in 2010 as a democratically elected president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria since no presidential election was held for the Nation in 2010. This is a necessary context IMO.

It is our thesis therefore, that to all intents and purposes, President GEJ first took the oath of office for the purposes of reckoning the number of times he may seek election as a Nigerian president on the 29th of May, 2011.

That oath, of course ran its course for four years, and expired on the midnight of 28th May, 2015 consequent upon which President Muhammadu Buhari took over the reins of office.

By the spirit and letters of the CFRN therefore, it is our view, contrary to the views canvassed in some quarters, that he is eligible to contest in 2023, but however cannot seek re-election in 2027 assuming he contests and wins the 2023 presidential election.

At the risk of foreclosing all other arguments, this is one interpretation that accords with the intention of the draftsman of the Constitution; the objective of any interpretative undertaking and which also aligns with the elaborate pronouncements of our courts on the point.

Surely, there is also the trite position that the provisions of Section 137(3) of the CFRN as altered by the 4th Alteration Act cannot apply retroactively to prevent the former President from contesting in 2023 since it became part of our jurisprudence after he had left office.

One would think that lawyers; particularly senior lawyers whose views are often quoted in the media would be more objective in their analysis & interpretation of the law for the benefit of the Nigerian masses who do not know, & may be inclined to agree with their legal exegesis.