Saturday’s election and the military

Without ambiguity, the role of the military is defined in Section 217(2) (a-d) of the 1999 Constitution. The statutory role of the armed forces is enabled always by an Act of the National Assembly. Even though Section 218 (1) spells out the power of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces which includes “power to determine the operational use of the armed forces of the federation”, Section 218(4)(a) correspondingly deposits in the National Assembly power to make laws for the regulation of “the powers exercisable by the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federation…”