A CRITIQUE OF SECTION 141 OF THE ELECTORAL ACT, 2010(AS AMENDED) AND THE SUPREME COURT DECISION IN THE CASE OF ROTIMI AMAECHI V INEC & ORS (2008) 5 NWLR (Pt. 1080) 227

Abstract

Before the Electoral Act, 2006, it was believed that the decision of a political party as to what persons to sponsor as candidates at elections is entirely the internal affairs of the parties and not justiciable. The political parties abused this position of the law tremendously as they substituted candidates in elections with the speed of lightning. Section 34 of the Electoral Act, 2006 sought to bring sanity into the system by imposing a requirement that a political party seeking to substitute its nominated candidate in an election must proffer a cogent and verifiable reason for doing so. The parties continued in their acts as if Section 34 of the Electoral Act, 2006 did not exist. The courts demonstrated its capacity to afford justice to the oppressed in landmark decisions, shooting down illegal substitutions, and in declaring the said substitutions null and void, declared the candidates illegally substituted to be candidates of their parties for whom the parties campaigned and secured votes and victory rather than the persons brought in illegally as substitutes. Section 33 of the Electoral Act, 2010(as amended) forbids substitution of candidates by political parties save for reasons of death or withdrawal from the election. The Electoral Act,2010 provides also in Section 141 that a court or tribunal should never under any circumstances declare as winner of an election, a person who did not participate in all the stages of an election. Whether the provisions of the Act seals the chances of a person who was illegally substituted or stopped from contesting election (but whose party eventually won the election) or not lies on the interpretation the courts will give to the said provisions. In this work, the author juxtaposes the provisions of the Electoral Act 2010(as amended)under consideration with the decisions of the Supreme Court in the cases of Amaechi v INEC, Odedo v INEC etc in an attempt to determine the current position of the law on this all important subject matter.