Paving Way for Entrenching the Diaspora’s Voting Rights under the Nigerian Laws: Legal Prospects, Challenges and Potential Solutions

Diaspora overseas or external voting (hereinafter referred to as diaspora voting), which hinges on the citizen’s universal right to vote, has become popular among modern democracies all over the world. Over a hundred nations have so far adopted overseas or (hereinafter referred to as diaspora voting) with varying scope and/or restriction, if any. Among these countries are nearly thirty African countries that also include all of Nigeria’s immediate neighbours except Cameroun.Currently, the Nigerian laws, including the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and the Electoral Act (2010), do not provide for the right of Nigerians overseas to participate in elections unless they personally present themselves for registration and voting at designated centres in Nigeria.Since Nigeria’s return to democratic government in 1999, there have been persistent calls among Nigerians in the diaspora for law reforms to enable them to exercise their universal right to vote during elections. Since then, various administrations of the Nigerian government have, accordingly, yielded to those calls by setting up an independent dedicated body (Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM)) that is saddled with the responsibility of engaging and mobilising Nigerians in the diaspora as equal partners in national development.Political pundits continue to debate on and attempt to strike a balance between, its desirability and the potential logistical and operational challenges that may result therefrom. However, the overwhelming argument is that, in view of their contribution to Nigerian national development, and the contemporary international trend in the globalised modern democracies, Nigerians in diaspora, as equal citizens, should be allowed to exercise their right to vote just like their peers in similar climes.This article reviewed and found that there are some legal hurdles that have to be tackled along the way, and proffers some constitutional amendments and other legal reforms that are necessary for bringing this lofty concept into fruition.

Extension of Voting Rights to Emigrants

Emigrant voting rights can be broadly defined as the right to vote in elections granted to citizens who reside outside their country of citizenship. States offer different ways for emigrants to cast their vote, such as voting via post, in person in diplomatic missions, or upon physical return to the country. That said, research on emigrant enfranchisement has mainly focused on the voting practices that allow citizens to cast their ballot from abroad. Voting from abroad is not a new phenomenon. Several countries had already granted external voting rights by the beginning of the 20th century. However, these countries tended to restrict such voting rights to temporarily absent citizens with specific professions, such as diplomatic staff, soldiers, or seafarers. Only after the 1950s, states began to develop a more inclusive approach toward granting electoral rights to their nonresident citizens. Currently, more than two-thirds of all countries in the world allow voting from abroad. The majority of these countries have adopted external voting only during the last thirty years. Since the early/mid-2000s, the issue of external voting has attracted more intense scholarly attention. From a theoretical perspective, external voting rights challenge the traditional link between citizenship and territoriality and raise questions about how the relationship between states and nonresident citizens changes in times of mass migration and globalization. Today, the research on emigrant voting rights is a research field in its own right and informs related lines of scholarly inquiry on sending state policies, the political behavior of mobile citizens, the impact of the extraterritorial vote on domestic politics, and the cross-border outreach of political parties. In this article, the main contributions to the field of emigrant enfranchisement are divided into four main sections based on the chief four waves of research. It begins with the normative debate, followed by studies of why states grant emigrant voting rights. Third, studies on the creation of special emigrant representation systems are presented. Finally, works that move beyond the state as the main unit of analysis are reviewed by unpacking the role political parties play in the enfranchisement process. Overall, studies have drawn most prominently on the concepts of citizenship and transnationalism for theory building and their research designs. The rapidly growing literature on the consequences of emigrant enfranchisement, notably emigrant electoral participation and its impact on homeland politics, has not been included here.

Indonesian Voting from Abroad: Highly Educated Citizen Participation in the 2019 Election at Tokyo Polling Station

The political rights of Indonesian citizens living abroad have been guaranteed by law since 1953 and implemented by a joint committee between the General Election Commission and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As a developing country with increasing democracy, Indonesia’s external voting needs to be studied. Using the qualitative analysis of macro data and questionnaire survey in Tokyo, this study addresses the following questions: How is the implementation of external voting by the Indonesian government? How is the voter? How does the registration, administration, voting facilitation, and voting method influence voter participation in home country elections? The findings suggest that the government provides many resources to facilitate external voting. Nevertheless, survey results revealed that some facilitation was inadequate compare to the number of voters. Although highly educated citizens tend to have a high awareness of home country elections, problems in voting facilitation might prevent them from voting.

Political Regimes and External Voting Rights: A Cross-National Comparison

In this article, we analyze the nexus between political regimes and external voting rights. Using a global longitudinal dataset, we report that higher levels of inclusion and contestation bring higher probabilities that a state adopts and implements emigrant enfranchisement. Taking outliers from our quantitative assessment, we then further examine two liberal democracies, Ireland and Uruguay, and two electoral autocracies, Turkey and Venezuela. These country cases reveal three mechanisms that shed light on the strategic role of political elites in explaining the relation between political regime type and emigrant enfranchisement. First, the democracies under study show us that in certain contexts with a relatively large diaspora size and in which part of the political spectrum is hesitant about the political orientation of nonresident citizens, emigrant enfranchisement is neither necessarily promulgated nor implemented. Second, the autocracies illustrate that when the diaspora favors (or is perceived to favor) the incumbency, then external voting rights are extended; otherwise, third, they are withheld or limited for nonresident citizens.

Diaspora Voting In Kenya: A Promise Denied

In 2010, Kenya extended voting rights to its estimated 3,000,000 citizens living abroad, thus joining a growing number of countries in Africa and around the world to recognize emigrant voting rights. Yet despite a politically engaged diaspora, intensive government outreach to emigrants, and high-stakes electoral competition, fewer than 3,000 Kenyans were permitted to vote from abroad in the 2013 and 2017 presidential elections. What explains the failure of the Kenyan government to implement diaspora voting on a broader scale? Drawing on original interviews and archival documents, this article analyses the tumultuous battle over the adoption and implementation of external voting in Kenya, focusing especially on legal, logistical, and political challenges. We argue that uncertainty about the number of Kenyan emigrants and their political preferences, paired with a highly competitive electoral climate, meant there was little political will to push for more widespread implementation of diaspora voting. Our analysis of external voting in Kenya has implications for diaspora participation in other competitive electoral contexts across the continent and beyond.