Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu, has revealed that all proposals for the 30 new states failed constitutional requirements.
This was as former Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, strongly opposed the creation of 31 new states in Nigeria, as proposed by the House of Representatives.
Jega asserted that decentralising power from the federal government to the individual states of the country was a key solution to achieving sustainable progress.
But Kalu urged the applicants to comply with the constitutional procedures outlined in Section 8, Sub-sections 1 to 3 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
The Deputy Speaker in a statement issued yesterday by his media office also clarified that the proposal was for 30 new states and not 31 as erroneously reported in the media.
He explained that to create a new state, the constitution requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate, the House of Representatives, State Houses of Assembly, and local governments.
Kalu said that parliament was committed to following the procedure and is inviting the applicants to resubmit their proposals once they’ve complied with the constitutional guidelines.
He said: “We are the people’s parliament. We are not taking any position on the issue of creation of states. We have heard a lot of people giving different narratives to the letter that was read.
“Let me clear the dust. During the Ninth Assembly, we received more requests for state creation and some of them came through private member bills.
“Some came from the memoranda we called for and in this Tenth Assembly, we have received 30, not 31. I think, on that list, they repeated Ibadan State twice. It is 30 that we have received.
“But having received that, in the last assembly, people did not know why their request for state creation did not go through.
“In this Tenth Assembly, we decided to let the people know that granted, we have received all the applications for new states to be created either through member bills or the memoranda but not conceding that all of them are good enough to be created.
“There are constitutional procedures in section 8 subsection 1 to 3 on how this application should be made. As we speak, none of these 30 proposals have met the requirements of Section 8 and that was why we decided to bring it to the notice of Nigerians that your application before us is ineffective.
“Therefore, you need to comply with Section 8 so that when we don’t consider the state creation request, you will know where it emanated from. So, the notice to the public is that you have between now and March 5 to enable you cure the gaps in your application for state creation.”
Meanwhile, Jega made these remarks yesterday during a live interview on Arise Television.
According to him, “I have been engaged on the issue of constitutional reforms to address what we can call not only the imperfections of our federal system but to improve upon the structure and the operations of our federal system. And while I would say that many things would require a constitutional review, to be honest, to my mind, the creation of states is not one of them.
“We seem to already have too many states. And if we continue in the direction of every request that comes, then you create a state. We are moving in the direction of what one would call the atomisation of the Nigerian federation.
