TINUBU-SHETTIMA, THE APC AND THEIR LAWYERS HAVE FINALLY SUBMITTED THAT THEY FAILED TO MEET THE CONDITIONS TO BE DECLARED WINNERS OF THE FEBRUARY 25TH, 2023 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Written by KEMKA S. IBEJI

It is interesting to read lawyers who are not blessed with the ordinary knowledge of logic. Logic is the science of reasoning which helps its users and practitioners to separate good reasoning from bad one. By this we have analysed the final address of the legal teams of Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, mallam Kashim Shettima and APC using the guides provided by logic. It is lucid to reasonable consciousness therefore that these lawyers of Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu are simply ignorant and not knowledgeable about the rules of logical statements. In fact, Chief Wole Olanipeku (SAN) is purely overrated.

Like I wrote earlier somewhere, this section of the Constitution in contention is not within the authority of either lawyers or linguists to define or clarify. The actual authorities that will clarify the statement are logicians.

And as agreed to by the lawyers of Tinubu-Shettima and the APC, this section of the Constitution is clearly a conjunction. This is, in fact, a point where all the legal teams of both the petitioners (Mr. Peter Obi and the Labour Party) and respondents (Tinubu, Shettima and APC) converge in agreement.

Here is the agreement of Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu;

There is no punctuation (comma) in the entire Section 134(2)(b) of the Constitution, particularly, immediately after the ‘states’ and the succeeding ‘and’ connecting the Federal Capital Territory with the states. In essence, the reading of the subsection has to be conjunctive and not disjunctive, as the Constitution clearly makes it so.

In succinct explanation, a conjunction or conjunctive statement is a logical statement that has worldwide accepted rule of validity. Conjunction is a declarative statement which is only true when both conjucts are true.

Conjucts are the statements before and after the logical connector "and". In this case, 36 states "and" the FCT are the conjucts on both sides of the logical operator or connector "and". So for the compound statement bound by the logical connector and housing both conjucts to be true, Tinubu MUST poll and acquire 25% of the total votes cast in ⅔ of the 36 states of Nigeria as well as 25% of the total votes cast in the FCT.

So if Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) and his inglorious team of lawyers have asserted and affirmed that the troubled section of the Constitution is a conjunction and not a disjunction, he simply is arguing in agreement with Mr. Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP) that for Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC to be declared winner of the February 25th, 2023 Presidential Election, he ought to have garnered both the 25% of the total votes cast in the ⅔ of the 36 and "again" the 25% of the total votes cast in the FCT.

Using the valid and substantiated authority of logic to drive home the foregoing point, let us take a look at the most primary aspect of symbolic or predicate logic. The schematic expression of the logical rules for the validity or true truth-value of conjunction statement is;

T . T = T

T . F = F

F . T = F

F . F = F

Where "." is a logical symbol that represents "and" as a logical connector in a conjunction.

While T means TRUE, F means FALSE, and = is a symbol of identity.

In the internationally acknowledged and accepted schematic presentation of the rules of conjunction or conjunctive statement as reenacted above, one could clearly witness that the only instance at which the identity of conjunction is True is when both conjucts are True, otherwise, it is False. 

It therefore follows that the lawyers of Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, mallam Kashim Shettima, the APC and INEC have not disputed the essence of the section of the Constitution but have attempted to stand logical rules on their head. They have also advertised their inability to discern the patterns of good reasoning and are, to this extent, so ignorant of what the logical statement (conjunction) which they have alluded to means and implies. In the last analysis therefore, and by the submissions of their lawyers, Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, mallam Kashim Shettima, the APC and INEC have agreed, capitulated and surrendered to the fact of the case that Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not procure the necessary and sufficient requirements to be declared winner of the February 25th, 2023 Presidential Election. To this end, the judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) is simplified and made direct. The PEPT should therefore, very honestly, honourably and respectfully declare that Certificate of Return issued by INEC to Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu is null, void and of no effect.