Nigeria in the throes of underage voting

...Despite INEC's claim of 'cleaning up register'

Nosa Igbinadolor Mar 19, 2023

Thuggery, vote buying, faulty card readers as well as child voting in Nigeria had, over the years, been identified as major factors fueling electoral fraud

Nigerian elections tend to be enduringly characterised by unmistakeable breaches of civilised rules and regulations.

While election violence tends to be predominantly a southern phenomenon, underage voting; an undying constant in the country’s elections, is largely a northern marvel; a persistent, yet, unchecked abnormality especially in the Sahelian north.

The 2015 general election, widely greeted as free and fair by election monitors and observers, was itself highly characterised by underage voting.

In February 2016, Godwin Kwanga, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of INEC in Plateau state, said that the state was replete with underage voters in possession of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs).

“Our experience in Quan’Pan showed that a lot of underage voters were having the PVCs and this led to a lot of cancellations. One of the underage voters, who had PVC bearing his image and the age of 36 years, confessed to INEC officials that he was only 16 years old. We looked the other way even when in the same elections, our tags were photocopied and massively reproduced by agents of political parties,’’ he said.

In February 2018, Observers, including the Centre for Information Technology And Development, CITAD, and Action Aid International Nigeria, said they witnessed voting by underage citizens during the local government elections in Kano state.

A 2021 news report by a national daily noted that during the January 6, 2021 Local Government elections, “Children between the ages of 9 and 15 were seen voting in some of the voting centres in Kano. Pictures and in some cases video clips were circulated on the social media and this got people expressing outrage…Kano has become notorious for child voting, arguably more than other Nigerian states. This is rampant especially where the election is conducted by the state, like the recent local government election in Kano”.

Nigeria implements the Universal adult suffrage system of voting. This means that, before a person can vote or exercise his franchise, he or she must have first attained “full age”.

The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended recognizes the full age status of every Nigerian. Section 29(4)(a) defines “full age” to mean, the age of eighteen (18) years and above.

Nigeria’s election manager, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in November 2022, vowed that citizens who had yet to attain the legal voting age of 18 will not be allowed to participate in the 2023 elections.

INEC assured that the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) would help identify these underaged voters on election day.

“I assure you that the register will be cleaned up completely and no underage voter will vote in 2023. After we finish with the claims and objections on Friday, we will be taking in again for further claims based on the complaints of the people,” INEC’s Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Victor Aluko assured Nigerians.

“That is why it is important that persons who noticed any issue at all with the register should complain through the right channels where they can be documented,” he added.

In January, INEC further boasted that it was cleaning underage voters’ details in the registered voters’ record. Festus Okoye, the Commissioner for Information and Voter Education of the commission, asserted, “On the issue of the underage voters, this commission published the entire registered voters in Nigeria in various local government areas and all the registration areas. People have made their objections, complaints and claims. The commission is presently cleaning up the voter register. The cleaning up is an ongoing exercise and we are going to try our best to make sure that we go into the 2023 general election with a voter register Nigerians will be proud of.

“In terms of non-Nigerians voting, only validly registered voters will be in the position to vote in the 2023 general election. Any time Immigration Service sees any non-Nigerian with a voter’s card and claims to be a Nigeria, they should arrest him and make the card available to INEC and we cancel those registrations.

“Therefore, Nigerians should be on the lookout. If any non-Nigerian approaches any of the polling unit, they should alert security agencies”.

INEC failed as usual to deliver on its bluster of underage free voting during the February presidential elections.

Underage voters not only littered the voters register, there were widespread reports of underage voting in Northern Nigeria during the elections.

The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) stated in its election monitoring report that its observers confirmed cases of underage girls being made to vote in Saturday’s general elections in Kaduna and Kwara states.

In a preliminary report signed by Mrs Amina Agbaje, the FIDA National President, the cases of female underage voting were confirmed in “polling unit 003, Ward 1, Zaria LGA” and “polling unit 006, Ijabo ward, Oyun LGA, Kwara State.

“In polling unit 003, Ward 1, Zaria LGA, young girls were observed clearly below the stipulated age voting. In polling unit 006, Ijabo ward, Oyun LGA, Kwara State, a similar occurrence occurred,” the report observed.

The nature of Nigeria’s transactional politics ensures that politicians and political parties who would otherwise not have won elections use juvenile voters to gain illicit victories in return for monetary considerations.

To do this, state authorities and politicians transact with INEC staff to warrant the registration of callow voters who are then placed on the voters roll.

In November 2022, Mike Igini, a former Akwa Ibom State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for INEC, accused some staff of the electoral body of registering underage voters.

“Those who have done this are staff of INEC, I can tell you. If you register as a registration officer, you register with your personal ID (identity card), all of them can be traced…Anyone who undermines the confidence of public institutions must be brought to book”.

“Unfortunately,” noted Twitter use, @DanUbangiji, “those that are to prosecute cases like this will claim that the genetic make-up of those in Northern Nigeria makes it difficult to decipher their age.”

During the February 25, 2023 presidential elections in Kano, the state’s police commissioner, Muhammed Yakubu, defended underage voting in the state when he insisted that most of the alleged underage voters seen in viral videos during the election in Kano State might be suffering from stunted growth.

“It is very difficult to determine by appearance who is a minor or not, most of the ones you are seeing their growth rate might be impaired,” Yakubu theorised.

Our of the most impactful outcomes of underage voting in Nigeria, notes content writer Nonyelum Ossai, is the election of bad, incompetent leaders.

“Since the purpose of using underage voters is to rig elections and inflate numbers to give the impression of a “massive turnout” of voters, the result is unsuitable people will be voted into prominent positions to oppress the people. For instance, northern Nigeria has arguably recorded the highest numbers of underage voters and the region is the least developed in Nigeria. This is because of the massive rigging of elections using underage voters, who then elect incompetent leaders to the helms of affairs.”

In January this year, the INEC said that it was cleaning underage voters’ details in the registered voters’ record.

The Commissioner for Information and Voter Education of the commission, Festus Okoye, stated this during an interview on Channels TV.

Okoye, who was asked what the Commission was doing with regard to underage voters and non-Nigerians, said, “On the issue of the underage voters, this Commission published the entire registered voters in Nigeria in various local government areas and all the registration areas.

“People have made their objections, complaints and claims. The commission is presently cleaning up the voter register. The cleaning up is an ongoing exercise and we are going to try our best to make sure that we go into the 2023 general election with a voter register Nigerians will be proud of.

“Therefore, Nigerians should be on the lookout. If any non-Nigerian approaches any of the polling unit, they should alert security agencies.”