2015: INEC won’t create new senatorial districts, federal constituencies —Jega The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said the electoral agency will not create new senatorial districts and federal constituencies. He said though the commission would embark on delimitation of constituencies, the exercise will not lead to the creation of new districts and constituencies because it is purely a constitutional matter. He also said electronic voting is possible only from 2019 and not 2015 as being agitated by some Nigerians. Jega, who spoke with select newsmen in Abuja, said there is no cause for anxiety over the proposed delimitation of constituencies. He said: “I think we should understand that even the powers that are given to us to delimit constituencies by the constitution and the Electoral Act are limited. For example, senatorial districts are already known. They are three per state, so we cannot create additional senatorial constituencies because these are constitutionally defined, but what we can do is that we can look at the relative sizes in terms of the population of the senatorial district and we can seek to adjust them in order to have this equality of representation or near equality because you cannot have perfect equality of representation. “Similarly, there are 360 federal constituencies. The number is fixed. So, we cannot create additional constituencies. “All we can do is to redraw boundaries of these constituencies in accordance to population quota and other variables. So, it is important for people to understand what we are empowered to do and the delimitations that we have done. “If you want to have more than 360 federal constituencies, that has to be done under constitutional amendment. If you want to have more than 109 senatorial districts, that has to be constitutionally amended. “Our job is to ensure that the sizes of constituencies in terms of population are as nearly equal as possible in order to achieve the ideal representative democracy. “The population commission is not mandated to create constituencies, and as far as I know, it has not created any constituencies. “We have to have the collaboration of the population commission because we have to have accurate official approved population figures. We have to work with the boundaries commission because we need maps and their technical input. We have to work with a number of agencies that can bring additional value to the work that we will do, and in addition to the boundaries commission and the NPC, we have engaged and interacted with many other federal government agencies and as I speak, we are working on the MoU with many of them so that we can partner them and get their technical support.” Responding to a question, Jega said: “The National Population Commission does not have power under the law to delimit constituencies. “The delimitation of constituencies for electoral purposes is the mandate given to the INEC by the constitution, and electoral constituencies are supposed to be delimited in at least 10 years or after each population census. “As I speak with you, the first and only delimitation of constituencies in Nigeria was done in 1996. There was an attempt to delimit constituencies in 2006 before the 2007 election, but it was not completed, and by the time we came in, we found out the uncompleted effort, and we decided that the best thing is to do a fresh exercise. After all, something that was done in 2006 is as good as doing it afresh. “Delimiting electoral constituencies is very important in representative democracy, the kind of which we operate, particularly the so called single member constituency. The principle behind it is that a representative of voters should represent as nearly equal voters as possible. “Really, there is what we call disparity representation and the ideal principle of representation is that a representative should have nearly equal number of voters that he or she is representing. So, a population quota is usually used to determine the size of constituency. “Although in addition to the population quota, many other variables have to also be put into consideration such as geographical location, social cultural affinity and you also have to take physical barriers into consideration like mountains, rivers and so on. ................. -CULLED FROM THE NATION NEWS
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 16:57:39 +0000
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