Debating Diaspora voting

It should be recalled that President Jonathan, while in Gabon in August 2010 during the celebration of the country’s 50 years of independence, assured Nigerians in the Diaspora that they would be able to exercise their franchise from the 2015 elections in the country. The President was quoted as  promising that: “while it may not […]

It should be recalled that President Jonathan, while in Gabon in August 2010 during the celebration of the country’s 50 years of independence, assured Nigerians in the Diaspora that they would be able to exercise their franchise from the 2015 elections in the country. The President was quoted as  promising that: “while it may not be feasible for Nigerians in the Diaspora to vote in the forthcoming 2011 polls, trends in modern technology like the electronic voting system have simplified the voting process and assured that Government will ensure that they exercise their franchise in subsequent elections”(The Nigerian Voice 19 August 2010).
Despite the promise, in 2012, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Senator Andy Uba, declared that the hope of Nigerians abroad participating in elections in Nigeria would have to wait due to consular problems and non-availability of data of Nigerians at Nigerian embassies and missions abroad. In what would appear to be a major fillip to the campaign for Diaspora voting, the just concluded National Conference supported voting rights for Nigerians living abroad.
The issue of Diaspora voting (or ‘external voting’ as it is called elsewhere) is without doubt a controversial one.  Those who are opposed to the idea argue that it will distort the votes of ‘those on the ground’, who are assumed to have a better grasp of the issues at stake.  It is also argued that given the peculiar character of Nigerian politics and its embedded distrust, allowing external voting will amount to introducing another complexity in the conundrum that is Nigerian elections. The argument here is: if parties routinely bicker on the outcome of elections conducted on Nigerian soil, why will they be expected to agree on one conducted outside the shores of the country?  There are equally arguments about the logistics of such an exercise: will all the Diaspora Nigerians living in a particular country be made to travel to the country’s embassy or consul (usually located in a country’s capital) to register or will there be polling booths across different parts of each country? Who will be the polling agents and returning officers? How do you determine who are bona fide Nigerians who are eligible to vote in a given country? In cases of legal challenge over Diaspora voting, which court will have the jurisdiction – Nigerian election tribunals in Nigeria or the courts in the countries where the Nigerians are domiciled? And who will pick the tab?
The above concerns are obviously well-founded and must not be wished away.  But supporters of Diaspora voting have their own contrarian arguments. For them, Nigerians in the Diaspora, estimated at some 15 million (depending on which figure you choose to believe), just by their sheer number, ought to be respected as a potent electoral force, if not treated as the 37th state of the country. They argue that disenfranchising such a huge number of Nigerians would be akin to disenfranchising more than one State in the country during any election.
It is also argued that democracy and its infrastructure of the inherent rights of eligible adults to exercise their franchise is a sufficient argument to allow Nigerians in the Diaspora to vote.  With nearly 100 other countries in the world including smaller African countries like Cape Verde, Angola and Senegal allowing external voting by their nationals, proponents of Diaspora voting argue that by constantly procrastinating and dilly-dallying on the issue, the Nigerian government is not helping its democracy to mature.
There is equally a psychological angle to the debate.  The argument here is that one’s Nigerian identity is at its fullest bloom when one is living outside the shores of the country, and for that reason, that it is psychologically hurting to be denied a say in deciding how the country is to be governed at a time one privileges one’s Nigerian identity over the mosaic of other identities one bears.  Supporters  of Diaspora  also contest the argument that  their votes will distort the votes of those ‘on the ground’ by arguing that rather than their votes being a distortion,  they will on the contrary bring a new perspective to elections, especially given that most of them live in countries that really work.
Most supporters of Diaspora voting almost always throw economic spin to their arguments. Borrowing from the sentimental slogan of ‘No Taxation without representation’ (a primary grievance that triggered the American War of Independence from Britain between 1765 and 1783), campaigners often draw attention to the role of Diaspora Nigerians in the remittance economy. For instance in 2013, the World Bank ranked Nigeria as the fifth among the top recipients of diaspora remittances, with estimated remittances (i.e. ‘internally generated revenue’ from its ‘37th State’) of $21bn (N3.28trillion) during the fiscal year. This is besides the huge investments of  several Nigerians in the Diaspora  in the country including buying into the special bonds that specifically target them (on January 21, 2014, for instance  the presidency sought the authorization of the National Assembly to increase the $100 million Diaspora Bond it earlier approved to $300 million).  From an economic perspective, the argument is that if you are interested in the money from Diaspora Nigerians, you must also allow them to have a say on who will govern the country.
From the brief review of the arguments of both the opponents and proponents of Diaspora voting above, it is obvious that the points of divergence are not on its desirability but on the potential problems it could create.  However since any new initiative is bound to present challenges, my personal opinion is that the fear of such challenges should no longer be a tenable excuse for procrastination on the issue. We all know that most elections in the country since independence have been contentious but such has not made us to jettison the idea of holding elections. Even mature democracies still have episodic challenges with their elections. In the UK for instance, some 1,500 votes were deemed illegally cast in the elections in western central area of Birmingham in 2004, resulting in the voiding of six Labour seats, with the presiding judge saying the level of rigging “would disgrace a banana republic”. In the US, many of us still remember the highly contentious 2000 presidential elections in the US between then Vice President Al Gore and George W. Bush  when the US Supreme Court had to stop a vote recount in the state of Florida, enabling   George W Bush to win narrowly by only 537 votes out of almost 6 million cast. The point is that even without a new initiative such as postal, electronic or Diaspora voting, there is no guarantee that elections will not be contentious. We can make adjustments along the way because the democratic space is very elastic. This is why democracy is a journey rather than a destination.
More importantly is that with so many countries in the world embracing external voting, we have enough templates to learn from. For instance in South Africa, months before the country’s  May 2014 elections, South Africans abroad  who were interested in voting during the election were required to register at their country’s embassy in their country of domicile  over four weeks. In 2013, Kenya decided to experiment with external voting and limited the exercise to the neighbouring countries of Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda – where there were substantial Kenyan populations. In Mozambique’s 2004 general elections, external voting was allowed only in countries where there was a minimum of 1,000 legally-settled citizens. Again during Senegal’s 2000 presidential elections, external voting was restricted only to countries where there were at least 500 Senegalese expats who had signified a willingness to vote
The point is that at a time smaller African countries are already allocating parliamentary seats to its Diaspora (Cape Verde allots six out of its 72 parliamentary seats to its Diaspora; Algeria reserves eight of its own 389 parliamentary seats to its Diaspora nationals while Angola allots allocates 3 out of 220 seats), the continent’s largest economy and a self-proclaimed ‘giant of Africa’ is too afraid to even play catch-up.