Judgment
EMMANUEL AKOMAYE AGIM, J.S.C. (Delivering the Leading Judgment): The legislative power of the National Assembly (NASS) to make laws concerning the internal affairs of a political party is limited by Section 228(a) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (the 1999 Constitution) to the making of a law to provide guidelines and rules to ensure internal democracy within political parties including making laws for the conduct of party primaries, party congress and party conventions, etc.
In the purported exercise of this power, the Electoral Act 2022 was enacted and commenced on 25-2-2022 in accordance with Section 58 of the 1999 Constitution which requires in Subsection (4) that the President assents or withholds assent to a Bill, and provides in Subsection (5) that if he withholds assent, the Bill can become law if passed by 2/3 of majority of each of the two Houses of the National Assembly and the President’s assent would not be required.
In our present case, upon the presentation of the Electoral Bill 2022 to the President (1st Plaintiff herein) he assented to it and it became law, to wit, the Electoral Act 2022.
After participating in making the Electoral Act 2022, the 1st plaintiff sought to have Section 84(12) of the Act removed or deleted on the ground that while giving his assent, he had entered a caveat expressing reservations about the constitutionality and desirability of the said Section 84(12) and followed same by writing a letter to the National Assembly (1st defendant) requesting it to cause the Electoral Act 2022 to be amended to delete the said Subsection (12) of Section 84 of the Electoral Act.
Following the refusal of the 1st defendant to grant the request, the plaintiffs commenced Suit No SC/CV/504/2022 in this Court, invoking the original jurisdiction of this Court to determine as follows – “1.
Whether having regard to separate and/or the combined provisions of Sections 65, 66, 106, 107, 131, 137, 177, and 182 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, (as amended), the provision of Section 84 (12) of the Electoral Act, 2022 which ignores Section 84(3) of the same Act has not expanded the scope of the qualifying and disqualifying factors for the National Assembly, House of Assembly, Governorship and Presidential election asenshrined in the provisions of the Constitution thereby rendering the said provision inconsistent with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) and therefore unconstitutional, unlawful, null and void? 2.
