New Telegraph

INEC lists constraints in creating new constituencies

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said legal and court judgments are hindering creation of new constituencies in the country. INEC Chairman of Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, said though the commission has constitutional role to create new electoral constituencies, it has to contend with constitutional and legal issues.

He said: “The commission is not oblivious of the importance of balanced constituency delimitation on the democratic and electoral processes. However, there are complicated legal, political and practical issues.” According to him, while the division of the country into electoral constituencies for Senate, House of Representatives and State Houses of Assembly is the responsibility of INEC, subsequent revision of the constituencies and/or adjustment of their boundaries are the joint responsibilities of the Commission and the National Assembly.

He said: “Consequently, any such revision or adjustment must be passed by a resolution of the two houses of the National Assembly, namely the Senate and the House of Representatives.” Okoye said the commission had been in discussion with the relevant committees of the National Assembly to arrange a meeting with the leadership of the assembly to address some of the difficult issues in the division, revision and alteration of electoral constituency boundaries in Nigeria.

He, however, stated that INEC had drawn the attention of the National Assembly to the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which does not place an obligation on INEC to revise or alter the boundaries of constituencies every 10 years. He added: “For the avoidance of doubt, Section 73 (1) of the Constitution provides for that to happen at intervals of ‘not less than 10 years’. “This implies that it can only happen from 10 years and above. Therefore, the commission is not in breach of the Constitution, since the revision could happen in 10 years or more.”

The INEC commissioner added that the constitution also provides that the commission may embark on revision and adjustment after a national census, creation of states or by an Act of the National Assembly [Section 73 (2)]. Okoye further said: “None of these conditions actually exists at the moment. The last population census was conducted in 2006, about fifteen years ago.

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