It is obvious that states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja were lumped together as a group by Subsection (2) (b) above. What differentiates the constituents of the group is their names and nothing more. One of them is called Federal Capital Territory and the rest called states of the Federation. Subsection (2) (b) clearly refers to two thirds of all the constituents of the group enumerated therein as the minimum number from each of which a candidate must have one-quarter of the votes cast therein. There is nothing in Subsection (2)(b) that requires or suggests that it will not apply to the areas listed therein as a group. The argument of Learned SAN that the provision by using the word “and” to conclude the listing of the areas to which it applies has created two groups to which it applies differently is, with due respects, a very imaginative and ingenious proposition that the wordings of that provision cannot by any stretch accommodate or reasonably bear. If S. 134(2) of the 1999 Constitution intended that the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja should be distinct from states of the Federation as a distinct group it would not have listed it together with states of the Federation in (b). Also, if S. 134(2) had intended having one-quarter of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory Abuja as a 4 separate requirement additional to the ones enumerated therein, it would have clearly stated so in a separate paragraph numbered (c). It is glaring that S.134(2) prescribed two requirements that must be cumulatively satisfied by a Presidential candidate in an election contested by not less than two candidates, before he or she can be deemed duly elected President. It prescribed the first requirement in (a) and the second one in (b). It did not impose a third requirement and so there is no (c) therein … Such meaning would result a Presidential candidate that has the highest votes cast in the election and not less than one-quarter of the votes cast in not less than two-thirds of 36 states of the Federation or in all the states of the Federation cannot be deemed duly elected as President because he did not have one-quarter of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. This certainly violates the egalitarian principle of equality of persons, votes and the constituent territories of Nigeria, a fundamental principle and purpose of our Constitution. Such a meaning is unconstitutional. I think that his said proposition is the result of reading those provisions in isolated patches instead of reading them as a whole and in relation to other parts of the Constitution. Reading and interpreting the relevant provision as a whole and together with other parts of the Constitution as a whole is an interpretation that best reveals the legislative intention in the relevant provision.
— Agim JSC. Peter Obi & Anor. v. INEC & Ors. (SC/CV/937/2023, Thursday the 26th day of October 2023)
