The current Nigerian National Assembly delegation from Plateau consists of three Senators representing Plateau North, Plateau Central and Plateau South Senatorial Districts and eight Representatives representing Barkin Ladi/Riyom, Jos North/Bassa, Jos South/Jos East, Langtang North/Langtang South, Mangu/Bokkos, Mikang/Shendam/Qua'an-Pan, Pankshin/Kanke/Kanam and Wase constituencies. Prior to the evolution of the Fourth Nigerian Republic, (based on the 4th republican constitution [1999] as amended) there existed the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Republics.
The present-day Plateau State was in the First Nigerian Republic part of a much larger political entity that was an agglomeration of the present-day northern states as part of the entirety of the Northern Region of Nigeria. The Republic was a Federal Parliamentary Republic based on the Westminster system bequeathed Nigeria by Great Britain. Thus including it in this article will make it cumbersome and confusing for the reader. Successive dispensations however adopted a replica of the American federal presidential system where parliament was replaced by a National Assembly starting on 1st October 1963.
Unsurprisingly, the Nigerian legislature was still coined parliament in the Second Nigerian Republic despite already being a presidential republic largely due to the then transitional nature of Nigerian democracy. There were 19 states at the time represented by 5 senators each and 449 representatives not evenly distributed amongst the states i.e a minimum of 10 and maximum of 46 represented a state at the time depending on their populations. Plateau had a total of 16 representatives spread across the state with a whopping 13 bearing the flag of the NPP.
In the Third Nigerian Republic, there were the senatorial districts of Plateau North, Plateau East and Plateau West. The House of Representatives constituencies consisted of the individual Local Government Areas of the state qualified at that time as Federal constituencies.
Following the chaos of the botched IBBâÂÂShonekan transition and the eventual usurping of power by Sani Abacha the Plateau political map was to undergo the following changes on 1 October 1996: