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Prisoners to vote in 2019 – INEC

Published

7 years ago

October 25, 2017

In a dialogue session with the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room Dialogue – a coalition of over 70 civil society organisations in Nigeria, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday announced that it is making arrangements with prison authorities to ensure that prison inmates exercise their franchise in the 2019 general elections.

The electoral body Chairman, Professor Yakubu Mahmood, said the commission was looking at the possibility of creating polling units in Nigerian prisons, as he further revealed that certain categories of prisoners would not be allowed to vote depending on the nature of the crimes they committed.

“We have already engaged the Comptroller General of Prisons and we have statistics on the number of prisoners nationwide and the number of inmates that are registered. .

We are looking at the possibility of creating polling units in the prisons and to enable some categories of prisoners vote. Ghana does it but there are some categories of prisoners who by the nature of crimes committed, lose the right to vote.

Whatever we can do to open up the process to ensure that as much as possible Nigerians are given the opportunity to vote, we will do so,” Yakubu stated.