The Chairman of the Independent National
Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said the electoral agency
will not create new senatorial districts and federal constituencies. Read more
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.
“So, in the case of Nigeria, because of
population dynamics, even the last census that was done in 2006, there
are now remarkable inequalities in terms of the size of constituencies.
So, it is important, therefore, that electoral constituencies are
delimited.”
Jega expressed concern that delimitation of constituencies has been politicized in the country.
He added: “Unfortunately in Nigeria,
delimiting constituencies has been politically volatile and
controversial because it is confused with administrative boundaries.
“Administrative boundaries are used for
resource allocation and for political or even traditional authorities.
Anytime you are trying to delimit electoral boundaries, the traditional
authorities confuse it with delimiting administrative boundaries. They
think that you are taking their people from one place to another and it
becomes very controversial.
“So, what we are trying to do is to do
massive public enlightenment for people to understand the difference
between administrative boundaries delimitation and electoral
constituency delimitation which is for the purposes representation and
election of representatives into parliament.”
On electronic voting, Jega said it is impracticable in Nigeria till 2019.
He said: “Many countries are moving in
the direction of electronic voting and in Nigeria, we cannot be an
island. We also have to work towards that, but as I speak with you, the
constitution prohibits electronic voting, and unless that prohibition is
lifted, there is nothing we can do to even begin to experiment to pilot
electronic voting.
“So, really that is the major handicap
we have and one of the recommendations we have made to the National
Assembly for the review of the constitution is lifting of the
prohibition on electronic voting.
“Our hope is that if the prohibition is
lifted, we will begin to pay a lot of attention to the best models of
electronic machines we have around and how we can begin to procure them
and then deploy plans on how we can start using them.
“Under the circumstances, I think it is
doubtable whether we can use electronic voting in 2015, but certainly it
is something we have to work towards to ensure that not in distant
future, maybe by 2019, we will be able to deploy electronic voting in
some form, if not nationally in Nigeria.”
He assured that the INEC would improve on electronic transmission of results in 2015.
He added: “On electronic voting, like
Ghana and Zimbabwe, what they are doing is electronic tabulation of
results and we have also been experimenting with that since 2011, but we
will keep on trying and we have not done badly in terms of declaration
of results.”
Culled from The Nation newspaper
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