Nigeria first voted in presidential elections just over 43 years ago in October 1979. The introduction to this form of government was not very auspicious. Four years into the experience, in December 1983, Muhammadu Buhari, then a Major-General in the Nigerian Army, overthrew the system. Soldiers thereafter ran the barn for another 14 and a half years.
In 1979, soldiers supervised the election. To govern it, they promulgated the Electoral Decree, No. 73 of 1977, which required that the winner would be the candidate who scored the highest votes and also achieved a minimum of 25% of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the states in Nigeria. There were 19 states then; 10 in the North and nine in the South. Two-thirds of nineteen was not a whole number.
The failure to advert to this piece of elementary arithmetic would prove consequential. By the time the voting was done, it turned out that the candidate with the highest number of votes, Shehu Shagari, of the National Party of Nigeria, scored 25% in 12 of Nigeria’s 19 states. In the 13th state, Kano, he scored about 20%. The Federal Electoral Commission nevertheless, declared him winner. Two-thirds of 19 is 12-two-thirds.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria who came second in the ballot on the ticket of the Unity Party of Nigeria, challenged the declared outcome before the election petition tribunal. If he succeeded, the country would have conducted a second round to decide the winner.
