Quote from Quwamdeen Durojaiye on March 10, 2023, 4:52 pm

CONDITIONS FOR VICTORY IN THE 1979 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

 

1. The candidates should score the highest number of votes in the election.

2. The candidates should have at least one-quarter of the votes cast on each of at least two-thirds of the states of the federation.

Recall that in 1979, there were 19 States in Nigeria.

Considerations:

1. Shagari met the first condition. He got the highest number of votes (of all 5 candidates in the election). Then we had NPN (Shagari), NPP (Zik), PRP (Aminu Kano), UPN (Awo), and GNPP (Waziri Ibrahim). Dr. Tunji Braitwaite's NAP was yet to come on stream.

2. He needed to score at least one-quarter of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the states of the federation (then 19).

Condition Number Two could be reviewed thus:

He needed to get one-quarter of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the number of states of the federation, 19 as it were then. This means he needed at least one-quarter of the votes cast in 2/3 of 19 states Which is = 12 and 2/3 States. He didn't need to get a quarter in the 13th state but only one quarter in two-thirds of the 13th state.

And One-quarter of two-thirds = (1/4) x (2/3) = 1/6. Which means all he needed was one-sixth ( not a quarter) of the votes in the 13th state. One-sixth is: 1/6 = 16.666667 %

He needed just one-sixth (i.e about 16.6666667%) of the votes in the 13th state. And in the 13th State, (Kano) he got 19%, a fraction which is greater than 1/6.

Hence, he was more than qualified and eligible to be declared the winner of that election.

I, therefore, go with the Judgment of the Supreme Court of Nigeria based on this explanation which was put forward by Chief Richard Akinjide and his team of legal and mathematical experts.

This is the judgment widely known as Twelve Two-thirds.

This judgment is correct because two-thirds of 19 is not 13 but 'twelve and two-thirds'.