Nigeria’s presidential election of 11 August 1979 was more than a contest between political parties. It was the great test of a country trying to return to civilian government after years of military rule. The transition raised hopes across the federation, but it also placed enormous weight on the new constitutional order. Every part of the process, the voting, the declaration of results, and the legal rules for electing a president, carried national importance.
When the Federal Electoral Commission, FEDECO, declared Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria winner on 16 August 1979, the announcement did not settle the matter. Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the Unity Party of Nigeria challenged the return, not because Shagari lacked the highest number of votes nationwide, but because he argued that Shagari had failed to satisfy the constitutional spread required for a valid presidential victory. That challenge would quickly move beyond ordinary politics and become one of the most famous constitutional disputes in Nigerian history.
At the centre of the legal storm stood Chief Richard Akinjide, already a formidable figure at the Bar, and later Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. His role in defending Shagari would attach his name permanently to the most memorable phrase to emerge from the case, “twelve two-thirds”.
The Constitutional Question at the Heart of the Dispute
The case turned on a deceptively simple phrase in the electoral law. To be validly elected president, a candidate had to win the highest number of votes cast and also secure not less than one quarter of the votes in at least two-thirds of all the states in the federation.
Nigeria then had 19 states. The difficulty came from converting that constitutional formula into a practical legal result. Two-thirds of 19 did not produce a whole number. It produced 12 and two-thirds. Awolowo’s position was that this requirement had to mean 13 whole states. In his view, a candidate could not rely on a fraction of a state to meet the spread requirement. Since Shagari had not obtained the full 25 per cent in 13 states, Awolowo argued that the declaration should not stand.
The defence answered with a different interpretation. It argued that the constitution did not require 13 whole states, but two-thirds of the states, and that the requirement could therefore be measured by applying the fraction to the votes in the relevant state. The controversy focused particularly on Kano State, where the calculation became decisive.
This was the legal battlefield on which the case would be fought. What looked like arithmetic to the public was, in truth, a profound argument about constitutional language, electoral legitimacy, and the limits of judicial interpretation.
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Richard Akinjide’s Place in the Battle
Richard Akinjide did not become famous because he was merely present in the case. He became famous because he gave the defence its most memorable legal language. A brilliant and combative advocate, he helped frame the interpretation that Shagari’s supporters needed if the declared result was to survive judicial scrutiny.
By 1979, Akinjide was already known as an influential lawyer and public figure. He had served in the Federal Parliament, held ministerial office in the First Republic, participated in the 1977 Constituent Assembly, and stood among the country’s most prominent legal minds. His later service as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice from 1979 to 1983 would deepen his public stature, but the election petition gave him a unique place in national memory.
The phrase “twelve two-thirds” became attached to him because it condensed a complex argument into language that ordinary Nigerians could remember. Admirers saw it as brilliant constitutional advocacy. Critics saw it as a strained interpretation that rescued a disputed mandate. Either way, the phrase outlived the case itself and ensured that Akinjide’s name would remain tied to one of the most contested judicial outcomes in modern Nigeria.
From FEDECO to the Supreme Court
Awolowo first challenged Shagari’s return before the Presidential Election Tribunal. There, the defence position prevailed. The tribunal accepted the interpretation that the constitutional requirement could be satisfied without success in 13 complete states. That judgment set the stage for the final appeal.
When the matter reached the Supreme Court, it drew national attention of the highest order. Nigeria was on the edge of a civilian transfer of power, and the court’s ruling would determine whether the announced president-elect could be sworn in under the new republic. The stakes were therefore not abstract. They involved the legitimacy of the incoming government and the credibility of the constitutional transition itself.
On 26 September 1979, the Supreme Court dismissed Awolowo’s appeal and upheld Shagari’s election. The judgment did not end public argument, but it ended the legal contest. Shagari remained president-elect, and Nigeria entered the Second Republic under the shadow of a ruling that many accepted as final, but not all accepted as convincing.
Why the Judgment Endured in Public Memory
The decision endured because it touched a deeper question than electoral procedure. It asked how far a court may go when the text of the law is uncertain, politically explosive, and tied to a national transition. In that sense, the case was not just about one candidate or one election. It became a lesson in how fragile constitutional language can be when national power depends on its interpretation.
For many Nigerians, the ruling suggested that law and politics were inseparable in moments of state transition. For others, it demonstrated the court’s power to resolve ambiguity and preserve continuity in a tense political environment. The case therefore survived in public memory not only because of its facts, but because of what it came to symbolise, a judiciary standing at the crossroads of legality and legitimacy.
That is why later generations continued to revisit the case in law reports, political commentary, newspaper retrospectives, and public debate. It became one of those rare legal disputes whose language entered the national vocabulary.
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Akinjide’s Larger Career Beyond the Case
It would be too narrow to reduce Richard Akinjide’s entire public life to one courtroom argument. He was a lawyer of wide reach, a former Minister of Education, a participant in constitution-making, a senior advocate of long standing, and later the chief law officer of the federation. His legal and political career stretched far beyond 1979.
Yet history often remembers public figures through a single defining moment. For Akinjide, that moment was the Shagari petition. It was the case that gave him a distinct place in Nigerian legal folklore, not because it captured the whole of his career, but because it placed him at the centre of a constitutional crisis that tested the meaning of democratic rule in a new republic.
The Legacy of the “Twelve Two-Thirds” Case
The Awolowo v. Shagari dispute remains one of the landmarks of Nigerian election law because it showed how a presidency could rise or fall on judicial interpretation. Its significance lies not only in who won, but in the precedent it set for how election thresholds, constitutional drafting, and judicial reasoning could shape political outcomes.
Richard Akinjide’s role in that story remains central. He did not act alone, and the final judgment belonged to the court, but he became the advocate most closely identified with the defence that prevailed. His place in the history of the case is therefore secure, as a principal legal actor in the contest that preserved Shagari’s path to office and gave Nigeria one of its most enduring constitutional controversies.
Author’s Note
The 1979 election petition still matters because it reminds readers that power in a democracy is not decided only at the ballot box, but also in the meaning attached to the law after the votes are counted. Richard Akinjide’s place in that history was earned through advocacy, but the deeper lesson lies in the case itself, how a young republic, a disputed mandate, and a single constitutional phrase combined to produce a judgment that Nigeria has never entirely stopped discussing.
References
Supreme Court of Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo v. Alhaji Shehu Shagari & 2 Others, decided 26 September 1979.
Akinjide & Co., Our Founder.
M. O. Adediran, Awolowo v. Shagari, A Case of Compromise.
TheCable, obituary on Richard Akinjide and the “12 two-thirds” case.Compulaw legal case summary, Awolowo v. Shagari.
