A Federal High Court sitting in Umaihia, Abia State, South East Nigeria has declared invalid and unconstitutional section 84(12) of the amended Electoral Act.
Gatekeepers News reports that the Presiding Judge, Justice Evelyn Anyadike in her ruling ordered the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami 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.”
The court also 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.
