- Presidency denies House proposed 31 new states, clarifies misreporting.
- House only acknowledged receiving proposals from interest groups.
- Presidential aide urges journalists to report issues accurately.
The presidency has dismissed reports claiming that the House of Representatives proposed the creation of 31 new states across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
Contrary to widespread media reports, the House only acknowledged receiving proposals from various interest and lobby groups advocating for the creation of new states, not that it had initiated such a move.
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EKO HOT BLOG reports that during plenary, the Chairman of the House Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu, read a letter detailing the number of proposals submitted.
According to the committee, the proposals included five from the North Central, four from the North East, five from the North West, five from the South East, four from the South South, and seven from the South West.
The revelation sparked public outrage, with concerns raised over the feasibility and necessity of creating additional states. However, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, took to X (formerly Twitter) to clarify the situation.
Ajayi criticized the misrepresentation of facts by the media, emphasizing that the House had merely made public the requests it had received.
“There was obvious media misreporting of what happened at the House of Representatives yesterday regarding state creation. The House of Representatives didn’t propose the creation of 31 states,” Ajayi wrote.
He urged journalists to uphold accuracy in their reporting, noting that many of those covering the National Assembly had been on the beat for decades and should be well-versed in parliamentary procedures.
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