Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega has stressed the need to review the existing 388 constituencies in line with the provision of the law.
Speaking on Wednesday during the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the office of the Surveyor-General of the Federation in Abuja, he said delimitation is expected to be carried out every ten years.
However, he lamented that the last time it was done was 17 years ago. While admitting wide range disparities, the INEC boss said two committees have been set up to ensure the success of the delimitation exercise.
According to him, “Ideally, the weight of representation should be as nearly equal as possible. For every representative should be as nearly equal the number of the population quota.
“Every Federal constituency should be as nearly equal in size of 388,000. That ensures that weight of a representative in the parliament is as nearly equal with other representatives.
In Nigeria there are wide ranging disparities. There are constituencies that are as small as 122,000 and as large as 1.3million.
“These disparities have existed because of population movement or original inequalities in the creation of constituencies. We are obligated by the constitution to periodically review these constituencies so that we can bring equity in the weight of representations and votes in the constituencies.
“It is very important in deepening democracy and fairness in representations. We are required to do it either after every population census or in at least ten years. The constituencies were created in 1996 and since then they have not been reviewed and every efforts to review them were never successful as they were not concluded. It is about 18 years now and so we really have an obligation to review these constituencies”.