We have to urgently rework or restructure our country in whole, if Nigeria is ever going to attain the fullness of its potentials. This process must correct this ugly anomaly, which does not allow Nigerian citizens resident abroad to vote in elections.
In March this year, the opportunity of a simple act of parliament to onboard no fewer than 17 million Diasporan Nigerians, whose contributions to the economy are not in doubt, into the voting bloc of the 2023 general election was lost when the members of the National Assembly voted against the bill proposing to allow Nigerians resident abroad, for professional and personal reasons, have a say in who presides over the government of the country whose passports they hold.
The March abortion of the push to have citizens resident abroad exercise their voting rights as Nigerians was truncated a second time for very silly reasons by some federal lawmakers who are obviously threatened by the significant impact the votes from the Diaspora could make in elections.
The first bid for Diasporan voting was in 2012 when Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, who was representing the Ikorodu Federal Constituency of Lagos State and as Chair of the House Committee on Nigerians in the Diaspora at the time, led five other members of the Federal House of Representatives to sponsor a legislative bill that sought to amend the laws to grant Nigerians in the Diaspora the right to vote.
The six members did not get enough support to carry the bill beyond its presentation to the House and, consequently, it went under and was never brought up for consideration.
Due to the fact that Dabiri-Erewa and her then colleagues were seeking a formal change to the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution, they were required to follow a process that is even more stringent than the requirements necessary for enacting ordinary legislation. A constitutional bill will require the approval of the National Assembly and State Assemblies to become law.
The second attempt to craft a bill to conditionally constitutionally allow Diaspora voting was shut down by both houses of the National Assembly at the Constitutional Amendment Review Session and the Bill could not progress to the third reading. This second bill – “Bill for an Act to alter the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 to provide for Diaspora Voting, and for related Matters” – proposed that two sections of the 1999 Constitution (as Amended), viz sections 77 (2) and 117 (2), be amended to allow Nigerians 18 years and above, and resident within and outside Nigeria to vote. For citizens abroad, the amendments required that they must hold a valid Nigerian international passport and must have lived in Nigeria for a period of at least five (5) years from a minimum age of ten (10) years old.
Persons living abroad must also be legally resident in the foreign country from which the person seeks to vote for at least 12 months. This was to scale over the only legal hurdle keeping Nigerians in the Diaspora from exercising their voting rights.
However, for the excuses of capacity and logistics, in the March seating of the National Assembly, the bill was overwhelmingly rejected when it was put to vote during a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives. Only 87 members of the National Assembly (29 Senators and 58 members of the House of Representatives) voted in favour of the amendment out of the 390 federal lawmakers present at the plenary thus denying diasporan citizens the opportunity to participate in next year’s general elections.
It was as though the members of the country’s parliament have a disdain for our countrymen and women resident abroad and did not believe that they had a say in the governance of Nigeria despite their unquantifiable contribution to the country. This was exemplified in the utterances of the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Idris Was, who, while as an acting speaker two years ago, posed the rhetorical but head-scratching query about Nigerians in the Diaspora: “What is their business (with Nigeria)? They can’t sit in their comfort zones and know what is happening in Nigeria.” What a dumb assumption from an equally dumb and uninformed fellow!
If anything, I can say for a fact that Nigerians living abroad are as enthusiastic as those residing in the country seeking a better nation where basic social needs are available for all. I would like to state emphatically that the majority of our people, including myself, resident abroad were forced out of the country because we were looking for a better life for ourselves, children and relatives.
Nigerians in the Diaspora are naturally very proud, patriotic and purposeful. There is indisputable evidence that points to the very active roles they continue to play, in several aspects of the country’s socio-economic, political and civic realities.
At different fora, Dabiri-Erewa, who is now in charge of the Nigerian Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), has credited the more than 17 million Nigerians across the various countries that they have settled in as remitting in excess of USD25 billion annually to the Nigerian economy.
This remittance is the highest in sub-Saharan Africa and second only to Egypt on the continent as a whole. The bulk of these remittances go to relatives and families for their upkeep because they know that times are hard. The average citizen in the Diaspora is as up-to-date with the news back home and plays his or her role in contributing to the welfare of their people and the progress of their societies as any average citizen in Nigeria.
Aside the fact of their remittances, their political awareness cannot be further disputed when the reality of two recent movements are factored into the discourse. The 2020 ENDSARS Movement, more than any other before it, demonstrated how much the Nigerian in the Diaspora felt involved in events taking place across the political space at home.
From their pockets through crowdfunding, from their time through protesting abroad and at the country’s embassies, from their resources through various other means, including social media activism, they contributed immensely to help the fight against the brutal antics of the Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and supported the demonstrations that demanded for the police unit to be proscribed.
Although they were far removed from the brutality that their compatriots witnessed daily and which was the driving force of the protests, they largely supported the protests and contributed to the lengths it went to register the grievances of the youths with the unit.
More recently, Nigerians in the Diaspora have entered into the fray of the campaign for the 2023 presidential election. Across the world, several groups of Nigerians, who are awake to their civic duties have sought to invite and query the intentions of candidates desiring to contest elections, especially at the Presidential level, to not only get answers to cogent questions on burning national issues, such as the economy, security, food availability, power generation, youth representation and responsible and responsive leadership, but to also get assurances from these candidates and to imprint their relevance in the process on the minds of these candidates and the general voting population of Nigeria.
Some have typically even invested in certain candidates with the promise to provide financial backing as the case may be. This is not possible without the mindset of knowing that one is a stakeholder and has a responsibility to ensure accountable governance. Why should they therefore be denied the power to join their countrymen in deciding their leaders and representatives?
The objection that Nigeria, which is still battling with associated in-country issues around voting that have made most previous elections to be characterised as neither free nor fair, cannot then assume that it can handle the logistics of voting from abroad with all its attendant issues is a lazy argument of those who want a retention of this status quo.
As Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission himself assured, the only hurdle to the rolling out of Diasporan voting was the amendment of the Electoral Act or the relevant section of the Nigerian Constitution to empower the Commission to begin to register voters from abroad, confirm their statuses, verify their details and accept their votes at the general polls, according to the enabling legislation.
He thought the amendment of the Electoral Act signed this year was going to address section 77(2), which dealt with the residency issue but it was not the case.
The strawman argument of Nigeria not being prepared for Diasporan voting falls on the evidence that many advances made in telecommunications and fintech were not considered possible in Nigeria for many reasons until they were done and today we are advancing steadily and making incremental progress to the point where telecom providers have been granted banking licences by the Godwin Emefiele-led Central Bank of Nigeria. If we waited for the perfect conditions to start, we would not have come this far.
Besides, if countries on the continent, such as Benin Republic, Ghana, Angola, Kenya and South Africa, already operate diaspora voting in their elections, it is inconceivable that there are some within our representatives that have not woken up to the entrenched need for Nigerians abroad to join the voting bloc. They cannot be disenfranchised at home and also be unable to vote in the countries where they are currently resident simply because the will to right this wrong is lacking on the part of the National Assembly. Their constitutional right to vote and be voted for cannot be removed for the sake of their current residential geolocation as some are even abroad on professional and career responsibilities, while some others are representing Nigeria in foreign missions.
Nigerians resident abroad are very important stakeholders in the Nigerian project, hence it is not unusual to see politicians seeking elective office travel from country to country to engage them and solicit their support.
I would therefore expect this all-important amendment to the constitution to be made as soon as the next government settles in while we find an agreeable process to completely restructure the country in such a way that it encourages productivity and economic growth.
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