Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, on Wednesday in Abuja said there were wide range of disparities in the various constituencies across the country.
He said this while signing an agreement with the Surveyor-General of the Federation on constituency delimitation.
Jega said that INEC would try to address the issue of disparities in the constituencies.
The chairman said that the exercise would take into cognisance the environmental, population, and geographical issues for all communities to be effectively represented in the programme.
Jega said that the constituency delimitation process had become necessary because there had been demographic shift in some parts of the country occasioned by religious crisis, natural disasters or population explosion.
He said that in accordance to Section 73 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, INEC was empowered to review the constituencies after an interval of no less than 10 years.
Jega said that there were constituencies that their populations were less than 132,000 while some were more than 1.3 million people.
According to him, this disparity has been in existence as a result of population movement or iniquities in the creation of the constituencies.
He said that as a result of this, INEC was mandated to review constituencies so as to bring equity in the weight of representation and the votes of constituent.
Jega said that to ensure clean exercise, the commission was collaborating with various agencies which include office of the Surveyor General of the Federation, Population and Boundary Commissions, National Agency for Space Research and Development.
He said that the partnership was not driven by financial resources but to put heads together and tap the resources that avail to different government agencies.
Jega said that the exercise would be done in phases and the constituted technical and national committees would be the one to continue with the exercise.
The Surveyor-General of the Federation, Prof. Peter Nwilo, said that the collaboration would go a long way to give the exercise a legal backing.
He said that the coming together of his office and INEC to form a synergy would save cost and ensure credibility.
The constituency delimitation had been put on hold for over 10 years.
A similar exercise was conducted five years ago through which 120,000 polling booths were created for the conduct of the 2007 and 2011 general elections.
