Democracy!
The Nigerian Canadian actor, Emmanuel Igboke has shared his thought on why prisoners should be allowed to vote.
The actor who made the impression while addressing the fear of many Nigerian youths in the forthcoming election on his talk-show. He stated, this is a word that has stuck with me since I was a kid. Not because it is the only form of government that is stuck in my head but, the fact that it is the only form I can relate to. It is the only form of government that relates to humanity, how lives change, how organisms morph, and how the continuous shift and adjusting of the country follows a mechanism that upholds the value of the people.
The year 2023 is hurrying in faster than any of us can predict and it keeps coming forth with a hurricane of questions but the major one that ticks on the heart of every Nigerian in this excruciating society is: Who will be the set of bodies that will lead this great nation for another four years?
No one has an answer to this question and no one will until the result is announced and our destiny is again laid before us for another four years.
Screams of getting your PVC fills the air, people encouraging people to vote but, no one is aware of the wasteland of some citizens, cast away as an outcast in the society, limited to nothing. The people called prisoners!
This is a subject that has not been put to the fore and it has called for the attention of INEC who has specified that registered prisoners should be allowed to vote during the coming election however, when you say registered prisoners should be allowed to vote and no means is created for them to be registered, of what use is the word said?
They were once free, with dreams and aspirations, and then, something happened; their world fell. Each of them on their own, broken. No one knows who is innocent among them, no one knows who is worthy of redemption or who should be put to death. The law has slammed the gravel, shackles have been placed on once freed wrists and now, they are men reduced to one single instinct – survive.
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From the year 2000 to 2020, the estimated number of inmates in the Nigerian prison falls between 40,000 and 73, 631. If you look at it from the lens of an electoral process, these are the number of hands, and the number of thumbs, cut off from an electoral process.
That means, the range of the numbers above, year after year is considered unworthy of societal participation.
Now, this begs the fundamental question, if a person is serving a sentence, should his right to vote be taken from him or her? Should some policies like people serving from two years to 8 years still be allowed to vote and maybe others, be left to rot? The number is just too much to be cast aside and not used; their numbers can go a long way in dictating the next governor sit.
On what premise is democracy based? Is it not about the voters selecting the politician or the politicians selecting who they consider liable to vote?
I say, voting is not a privilege, it is not a totem handed or a baton passed or a will to be starved under the dictate of the governing; voting is the fundamental right of every citizen that has attained the age. This is why the government must allow the prisoners to vote, because there is nothing that should prohibit them from doing so.
I know this may look like a stretch of the notion but, if we are to stress the rule of law which states that; no one is above the law. Inmates should not be cast aside because they have committed a crime instead; they should be allowed to freely express their voting right instead of just being alienated from societal activities.
