A bill seeking to amend the Constitution to provide for diaspora voting passed Second Reading in the House of Representatives on November 20, 2024. The bill seeks to provide for the rights of Nigerians living outside Nigeria to vote in Nigerian elections. It seeks to amend section 77(2) and 117 (2) \u00a0of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution, to provide as follows: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
77 (2) Every citizen of Nigeria,\nwho has attained the age of eighteen years, residing within or outside<\/em><\/strong> Nigeria at the time of the registration of voters for\npurposes of election to a legislative house, shall be entitled to be registered\nas a voter for that election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 117 (2) Every citizen of Nigeria,\nwho has attained the age of eighteen years, residing within or outside<\/em><\/strong> Nigeria at the time of the registration of voters for\npurposes of election to any legislative House, shall be entitled to be\nregistered as a voter for that election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This bill\nsimply seeks to enshrine the rights of Nigerians residing outside Nigeria to\nregister as voters and vote at elections conducted in Nigeria, in the\nConstitution. However, to make this operational, it may be important for the\nConstitution to be altered to also give the Independent National Electoral\nCommission (INEC) power to conduct elections, covering diaspora voting. In\naddition, the Electoral Act will require an amendment to make specific\nprovisions for diaspora voting and the Regulations and Guidelines revised to\nspecify the procedures for voting by Nigerians in the diaspora. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It will be\nrecalled that a similar bill on diaspora voting failed to pass in the 9th<\/sup>\nNational Assembly. In recent years, there have been calls from advocacy groups, civil\nsociety organisations,\nand members of the Nigerian diaspora for the government to provide\nfor diaspora\nvoting. The issue\nof diaspora voting has been a recurring topic in conversations on electoral reform, with Nigerians in diaspora\nseriously canvassing for this. While diaspora voting may enjoy popular support,\nespecially among Nigerians in diaspora, a lot more needs to be done beyond\namending the Constitution to effectively implement diaspora voting in Nigeria.\nWith Nigerians spread across virtually every country in the world, the criteria\nfor identifying Nigerians in diaspora in\nevery country who can participate in elections in Nigeria will require clear\ndefinition. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A bill seeking to amend the Constitution to provide for diaspora voting passed Second Reading in the House of Representatives on November 20, 2024. The bill seeks to provide for the rights of Nigerians living outside Nigeria to vote in Nigerian elections. It seeks to amend section 77(2) and 117 (2) \u00a0of the 1999 Nigerian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3698,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692\/revisions\/3698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}