NGO writes Senate over prison inmates vote

A criminal justice organisation has written to the Senate Committee on INEC over the right of prison inmates to vote in national elections. The Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE) said it has written to draw the attention of INEC, through its chairman, Prof Mahmoud Yakubu, and the Senate Committee on the need […]

A criminal justice organisation has written to the Senate Committee on INEC over the right of prison inmates to vote in national elections.
The Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE) said it has written to draw the attention of INEC, through its chairman, Prof Mahmoud Yakubu, and the Senate Committee on the need to comply with an order of a Federal High Court in Benin in December, 2014 permitting inmates to vote.
The letter, signed by its executive secretary, Dr Sylvester Terhemen Uhaa, stated that no measures have been put in place to comply with the order of the court while requesting the Senate President “to ask the INEC chairman to do the needful.”
Uhaa had in the letters explained that inmates’ vote has tremendous rehabilitative and re-entry value as practiced in other countries of the world.
Justice Mohammed Liman had in December, 2014, declared the exclusion of inmates in elections conducted in Nigeria by INEC as unconstitutional, illegal, irregular, unlawful, null and void and of no effect whatsoever.
CURE had on July 27, 2015 and July 11, 2016 written to INEC over the 2014 judgment but regretted that no action had been taken.