Nigeria on Wednesday proposed a raft of electoral changes aimed at enhancing the credibility of future polls in the continent’s largest democracy, Information Minister Dora Akunyili said.
Akunyili said cabinet considered recommendations by an electoral reform panel and agreed that the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) needed to be revamped.
She said the “government has taken some…decisions which it believes will give much greater credibility and acceptability to future elections in the country”.
The INEC will now include representatives of labour, lawyers, the media and civil society groups.
Nigeria’s last elections in April 2007 vote were generally flawed and overally condemned by local and foreign observers, including the European Union, as falling short of international standards.
Since then around a third of the country’s 36 state governors have had their elections annulled due to poll irregularities while many vote-related cases are still pending in the courts.
President Umaru Yar’Adua, whose election was also contested, kept his job in December after the Supreme Court while acknowledging there had been some problems, dismissed a case brought by two rival candidates.
Admitting the electoral shortcomings shaped by the 1999 constitution adopted after decades of military rule, has vowed to clean up the electoral system.
The cabinet has also endorsed the recommendation that independent candidates be allowed in future elections.
Electoral changes requiring administrative action would be effected immediately, while those needing constitutional or legal amendments, would be forwarded to the national assembly, the minister told reporters.