INMATES TO VOTE IN ELECTION- INEC
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HOTJIST
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announces that it will permit incarcerated individuals to participate in elections.
The Chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, revealed this on Friday during a meeting with the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Correctional Service, Sylvester Nwakuche, at the Commission’s Headquarters in Abuja.
Yakubu affirmed the judgement of the Appeal Court, granting inmates the right to register and vote in any elections.
He referenced a series of meetings the Commission had with the service, to work out modalities for accommodating affected inmates, which include access to facilities, and political parties’ concerns, as well as clarifications for the category of inmates the judgement favour.
The INEC chairman re-echoed the need to seek the intervention of the National Assembly on the matter.
He affirmed the agency’s commitment to permit incarcerated individuals to participate in any election, contingent upon adherence to prevailing regulations.
Yakubu’s remarks came after Nwakuche’s appeal for the electoral authority to broaden certain rights for incarcerated individuals, specifically the voting right.
As stated by him, there are over 81,000 individuals in correctional facilities, with approximately 66 percent of them in pretrial status.
The Comptroller General also cited a recent court ruling that upheld the rights of inmates, especially those who are awaiting trials, to vote in an election.
In 2019, the Court of Appeal sitting in Benin, Edo State, affirmed the right of inmates across the country to vote.
The decision followed an appeal filed by five inmates on behalf of other inmates in Nigerian prisons to direct INEC to include their names in the voter register.
The court, however, refused to grant a request that INEC should liaise with the Nigerian Prisons Service to create registration centres at various prisons across the country.
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