A voting age is a minimum age established by law that a person must attain before he or she becomes eligible to vote in public elections. Nigeria, like most democracies in the world practices Universal Adult Suffrage system of voting. In other words, before a person can vote in elections he or she must have attained the statutory and constitutional age of 18 years, which is the full age. The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, Section 29(4)(a) defines “full age” as the age of eighteen (18) years and above. Hence, anybody who is below the age of 18 is not permitted by law to vote in elections. He or she is a minor or child.
According to Child Rights Act (2003), (which is a law that guarantees the right of all children in Nigeria), a child is anyone below the age of 18. The part 111 of it even stipulates that teenage girls in Nigeria should not be married before the age of 18. Surprisingly, the Nigerian Constitution stipulates that upon marriage a girl is to be regarded as an adult regardless of the child’s age when she is married.
The Electoral Act (2022) Section 12(1)(b) ; asserts that, ”A person shall be qualified to be registered as a voter if such a person has attained the age of 18 years”. An under-age voter, in my opinion, therefore, is that person who is below the age of 18 years but lured with some monetary or material inducement by some politicians or their surrogates to register and vote in elections, for their candidates. In other words, this minor has been misled by these political interlopers to pretend to have attained the age of 18, in order to vote for the choice of their candidates without recourse to the consequences therein.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu
A legal icon, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN),as reported in ThisDay Newspapers, wondered why a minor should get involved in voter registration much more queuing at the polling booth to vote in an election. He said; “By the nomenclature of it, under-age voting is unlawful. If you are not old enough to vote, why should you even go and register in the first place. So, it shouldn’t even arise; it shouldn’t happen; why should an under-age person go near the polling station on the Election Day if the process is what it is: the Act is impersonation and the law is very clear on what should happen to whoever is caught doing so”.
What will then happen to a juvenile who impersonates to vote in an election? The Oxford Dictionary defines the word ‘impersonate’ as; ”the act of pretending to be someone else”. The law frowns at impersonation because the aim of the act is to deceive another into believing someone is who he really is not. It is a crime and duly provided for in the Criminal Code Act, chapter 46 Section 484, which states thus: “Any person who, with intent to defraud any person, falsely represents himself to be some other person, living or dead, is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for three years”. In other words, the under-age voters are committing prosecutable and imprisonable offence. They are toying with three years imprisonment without their knowledge.
By the way, what is Age? It is the length of time that a person has lived or thing has existed. Collins English Dictionary defines age as the state of being old or the process of becoming older”. It added: humans grow wiser with age. Psychologists define age as a combination of physical, psychological, biological, and social maturity. They further divided age into four types: Chronological Age – which is the age calculated based on the year of birth; Appearance Age –the way one looks; Biological Age –the age that is measured by the body’s vital organs at a cellular and molecular level; and Psychological Age – this is associated with behavioral and thought processes. The chronological age is apt in the context of this expose; given that it is the type of age that is statutorily required for voting.
But the Appearance Age has become consequential as the sponsors of under-age voters claim that their looks are deceptive. This was well alluded to by the Commissioner of Police in Kano State at the just concluded 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections when he told the press that he could not stop or arrest ‘under-age’ children casting their vote at the polling station because it would be difficult to ascertain whether they were truly under-age by their looks, as some people suffer from stunted growth. In other words, age, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder!
Also, according to www.dictionary.com, Age is “a period of human life, measured by years from birth, usually marked by a certain stage or degree of mental or physical development and involving legal responsibility and capacity.” This obviously, includes the age of voting, consent, discretion, drinking, smoking, marriage, etc.
Stemming from the above definitions therefore, under-age voters lack the mental, legal responsibility, maturity and capacity to make informed choices and critical decisions. Their mentality is not well-developed to study and appreciate political parties and candidates manifestoes, historical trajectories, and political maneuverings, etc. Unfortunately, many a politician and their stakeholders are callously harvesting these innocent juveniles to perpetrate this ungodly act at every election season. And INEC and Law Enforcement Agencies are doing little or nothing to check it.
Vanguard Newspaper Editorial of February, 23, 2023, titled; ‘INEC and the scourge of underage voters’, opined that “Allowing or encouraging juveniles to register and vote is one of the many ways of undermining our electoral system. Unfortunately, electoral officers who are supposed to strictly implement the eligibility criteria fail to do so. They enroll these minors and allow them to vote. Even the security agencies sent to maintain the law at the polling stations allow the juvenile felons to get away with it.”
The INEC’s National Commissioner for information and voter education, Mr. Festus Okoye, in an interview with Arise News, claimed that INEC had called all of its staff in regions where under-age registrations (towards 2023 elections) had occurred to remedy the problem. He said, ”They will appear before a special panel of the Commission and it is ongoing. We have also made it very clear that any visibly under-age person should not on any account, approach any of our polling units on election day because if the person does, the person will be arrested”. And he added, “The parents will also be arrested for aiding and abetting such venture”.
The Guardian Newspapers, in 2019, reported that the Director of Publicity and Voter Education, Mr. Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, announced that “INEC registered minors because its agents were threatened by members of the communities in those states”. Quite shocking! This captures the impunity with which the perpetrators of this perennial electoral violation hold sway. Politicians and their allies are liable. Hardly any parents encourage their children to indulge in such immoral act. Those juveniles stray to the polling stations at the behest of their unconscionable sponsors. Hence, the call for the arrest of the parents, by Mr. Festus Okoye is unfounded. It is all about the politicians. INEC and Security Agencies should rise to the assigned task; garner enough political and constitutional will, to deal with the sponsors of this national tragedy.
The fact is that, the call by INEC and Security Agencies to arrest the juvenile voters including their parents seems like playing the ostrich. Do they want to disinform Nigerians that it is the parents and their under-age children that orchestrate this electoral fraud? Keeping under cover the political high and mighty and their staff, who have been grossly alleged as the hatchers of the rotten egg. Let no one misinterpret or misunderstand the Holy Book quoted above, in the use of ‘fathers’, to mean biological parents only. It encompasses the political leaders, religious leaders, community leaders, academic leaders, executive leaders, legislative leaders, judicial leaders, economic leaders, elders, guardians, and any responsible adult that can differentiate good from evil. And no amount of threat or law will stop the menace unless the leaders at all levels resolve to quench it. They should go after those (known) politicians and their stakeholders and make a public show of them as stipulated by law.
To be sure, these children, by the constitution, are termed minors. And as such, do not have the capacity to make informed decisions and choices, particularly, the Northern Nigeria children in the category of the Almajiris, who are predominantly homeless, hungry, uneducated, hopeless and hapless. This set of children cannot read nor understand what the law says. They do not even have access to the media channels that disseminate voter information. Who has ever taken this voter education issue to them in small and medium groups in the language and culture they understand, teaching them the odious implications of under-age voting? They really need help!
Nigeria is not the only country in the world that has adopted the age of 18 years as constitutional eligibility for electoral franchise. United States of America, Canada, most countries in Europe and Africa, practice Universal Adult Suffrage and this odious stench of under-age voting does not ooze out from their elections. Brazil, Cuba, Argentina, etc., pegged theirs between 16 and 17 years. Historically, the British colonial governments of Hugh Clifford, (Clifford constitution 1922), granted only Nigerian men of age 21 and above the right to vote, provided they were British subjects or natives of British Protectorates, had earned 100 pounds and residing in Calabar and Lagos. It remained so for 28 years until 1951 when Sir John Macpherson (Macpherson constitution 1951) came and granted full adult male suffrage. Oliver Lyttleton 1954 (Lyttleton Constitution 1954) enlarged the specter to include women but only to the Eastern and Southern extraction. Then come, 1979 Constitution that reduced the voting age to 18 years.
To strategically snatch Nigerian children from the temptation of this illegal voting, aggressive sensitization is sacrosanct. Community leaders, religious leaders (churches and mosques), Advocacy Groups, etc., should form Election Counseling Channels, on under-age voting, particularly in the North where the menace is prevalent. They should identify some of the children that have taken part in the unlawful behavior and use them as Change Ambassadors to speak to others. It should be a collaborative project with INEC, National Orientation Agency, Ministry of Information, the EU, AU, etc, who will serve as sponsors of money, materials, logistics, monitoring and advisory.
If INEC and the Nigerian leadership want this national embarrassment to stop, it will, like a vapor. It is roundly a construct of the system and can be deconstructed forthwith. The operators of the system should urgently set the children free from this unsavory, irritating and sour electoral publicity.
LAST LINE: INEC, should include the presentation of Birth Certificate or Declaration of Age as a requirement for the registration of young people that have attained the age of 18 years or claimed to have attained. This at least, will be a hurdle and cast a moral burden on the claimants or deponents.
By Sam Otuonye
