vote for at least 1 year, are above the age of 21, and are British subjects or natives of the Nigerian protectorate are granted suffrage under Macpherson Constitution. 1954: Women of the eastern and southern regions are granted suffrage under the Lyttelton Constitution. 1979: Women of the northern region are granted suffrage under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1979). The voting age is also lowered to 18 and the citizenry is included in presidential elections. Colonial era The right to vote has taken many forms in Nigeria's history. In the period from 1922 to 1950, under which both the Clifford Constitution of 1922 and the Richards Constitution of 1946 were enacted, the right to vote for members of the legislative council was extended exclusively to residents of Lagos and Calabar in the south. Under colonial Governor Hugh Clifford, indigenous Nigerians were first granted the right to elect their own representatives into the Legislative Council of the aforementioned municipalities. This right, termed the elective principle, emphasized that 4 of the 36 members of the Legislative Council must be elected by the native population. Though northerners were still not afforded the right to vote, with the enactment of the Richards Constitution, Nigeria was integrated under one general council with three regional councils in the north, west, and east. Voting rights in Lagos and Calabar were limited by gender, nationality, residency, age, and income requirements. The franchise was granted to those who were male, British subjects or natives of the Nigerian protectorate, residents of the Lagos or Calabar areas for at least a year, at least 21 years old, and generators of an income of at least £100 in the year prior to the election. Under these provisions, only 3,000 of the population of 40,000 were qualified in Lagos, and only 1,000 of the population of 10,000 were qualified in Calabar. Though elections took place in 1923, 1928, 1933, 1938, 1947,1954, and 1959, under British colonial rule, suffrage was only extended to northern Nigerians in 1947. In the period from 1950 to 1958, regionally specific and general voting qualifications of federal elections cohabited the political space due to the inapplicability of many general qualifications. The Macpherson Constitution enacted under colonial Governor John Macpherson in 1951 extended the elective principle of the Clifford Constitution in its provisions for a House of Representatives and Regional House of Assembly for the northern, western,