A bill to amend Nigeria’s Electoral Act to allow Nigerians abroad to vote passed it’s second reading in the House of Representatives yesterday.
The case for voting rights for Nigerians abroad is quite strong. They are significant “stakeholders” in the country despite their sojourn elsewhere. This is because remittances from Nigerians in the diaspora are estimated at over $22bn a year and represent Nigeria’s highest foreign exchange earner – higher than income from oil or Foreign Direct Investment. Such an inflow of capital from Nigerians abroad contributes to the welfare, education, housing, etc for relatives and friends in Nigeria. Many Nigerians abroad also have significant investments in the country.
It can also be argued that securing voting rights for Nigerians abroad, many of whom have risen to the top in various fields, could act as a spur for those Nigerians to play a more active role in nation-building. Additionally, most advanced countries have systems in place for their expats to vote.
It all sounds like a good idea on paper until you bring in what is known in local parlance as “the Nigerian factor”. For starters, Nigeria and its electoral commission, INEC, in particular, has a chronic problem with electoral integrity. If INEC can’t conduct credible elections within the borders of Nigeria, there’s little chance of them registering and conducting elections for Nigerians scattered all over the globe.
The idea of diaspora voting is quite popular in social media discussions among Nigerians in Europe and America. These tend to educated southern Nigerians. But the Nigerian diaspora also extends to the Sahel in West Africa. Northern Nigerians take advantage of porous borders and kinship to move around neighbouring countries like Chad, Niger, Mali and even as far as Sudan. Who is going to register voters there and certify that they are Nigerian?
Many non-Nigerians, including the underage, from those countries are alleged to be bused into Nigeria, fed and kept in warehouses, and deployed for industrial scale ballot paper thumbprinting during elections in Nigeria. Diaspora voting may increase the scale of this phenomenon.
Then there is the issue of the mechanics of voting from abroad. A British citizen overseas usually votes by postal ballot. How would INEC pull this off? Surely not by the Nigerian Postal Service (Nipost). The ballot paper is unlikely to arrive before the winning candidate is due to be sworn in, assuming it even arrives. INEC would have to engage a courier service for this, perhaps at a cost to the voter.
Another consideration is that there are major issues with the credibility of electoral registers in Nigeria. If they can’t keep track of registered voters in the country, it’s near impossible when there is little knowledge of the number of Nigerians abroad.
The bill should be shelved and the House of Representatives should focus on the more critical issue of improving the integrity of the vote within the country and minimising electoral fraud, instead of opening up a whole new opportunity for dodgy elections via diaspora voting.
