Joint NASS Committee pushes absurd ammendment to allow married underage girls to vote

The Chairman, Senate Committee on INEC, Senator Kabiru Gaya, and his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Aisha Dukku, tabled the proposal recommending that INEC should consider allowing married girls who are not up to 18 years as eligible to vote.

They suggested this during the Technical Committee on Electoral Reform last Wednesday.

The technical panel was set up to work on a new Electoral Act being proposed by the National Assembly is made up of lawmakers, INEC officials and civil society.

Gaya and Dukku at the inaugural session of the technical panel which also had in attendance, the INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, said the proposal was a unanimous decision of the joint committee of the National Assembly.

Gaya said, “The joint committee has proposed a review of the section of the Electoral Act that pegged the eligibility age of voters at 18 years.

“The joint committee has proposed that if a lady who is not up to 18 years is married, she should be considered to be mature enough and be eligible to vote.”

Yakubu expressed doubts over the possibility of the proposal sailing through and reminded Gaya that the country has a constitutional age for marriage, which is 18 years.

Yakubu’s response did not go down well with Dukku, who immediately said the INEC boss should not have dismissed the proposal with a wave of the hand because the joint panel had adopted it.

She said, “It was one of the submissions on the day of the public hearing in the last Assembly that a married lady or a girl who is not up to 18 years should be considered as an eligible voter.

“It is already in the Electoral Act amendments submitted in the last Assembly; so it cannot be thrown away just like that. We should look at it and come up with something instead of throwing it away.”