The House of Representatives Tuesday approved the sum of N346.513 billion budgetary proposal for the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC in 2019 fiscal year.
The approval was sequel to the consideration of the budget proposal by the Committee of the Whole of the House at plenary, following a motion by Nicholas Mutu, Chairman of the Committee on Niger Delta Affairs.
Out of the amount, N19,521,650,000.00 is for personnel costs while the sum of N12,737,350,000,00 is for overhead Expenditure.
Internal capital expenditure will gulp N2,883,046,220.00 just as N311,371, 000,000.00 was earmarked for development projects.
The House also approved the establishment of two new constituencies for Benue State House of Assembly when it granted a request from the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC to create two additional constituencies namely Guma and Agasha out of the existing Guma state constituency.
The new Guma constituency now consists of Mbabai 03 : Mbadwem 04: Mbawa 05: Mbayer/ Yandev 06: Nyiev 07 and Uvir 10 while Agasha state constituency has Abisni 01, Kaambe 02, Nzorov 08 and Saghev 09 wards.
Granting approval in the motion titled, “the Need for the National Assembly to Approve the Proposal by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to create Two State Constituencies from Guma State Constituency of Benue State”, sponsored by Edward Pwajok (PDP, Plateau), the House noted that there is a subsisting judgement of the Supreme Court on the matter titled “INEC Vs. Guma local Government, suit No. ( SC/195/2016).
In his contribution, Pwajok argued that beyond the Supreme court judgement, it was incumbent on the Electoral Commission in line with section 114 of the 1999 Constitution that provides that “the Independent Electoral Commission shall review the division of every state into constituencies at intervals of not less than ten years, and may alter such constituencies in accordance with the provisions of this section to such extent as it may consider desirable in the light of the review” to make such a request from the Parliament for approval.
He added that sections 91 ,113 and 112 of the constitution also provided that: “subject to the provisions of sections 91and 113, the INEC shall divide every state in the federation into such number of state constituencies as is equal to three or four times the number of federal constituencies within that state”.
Pwajok submitted that Benue was due for additional constituencies, saying that the state currently has 11 federal constituencies and 29 state constituencies.
James Kwen, Abuja
