President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday said the post-election litigation this year had reduced by 80 percent when compared to the 2007 elections, and is expected to further reduce by 95 percent in 2015.
Mr Jonathan claimed the reduction was due to some changes made before the election which, he said pointed to a transformation in Nigeria's electoral process.
He revealed this at the presidential inaugural lecture which was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters in Abuja yesterday.
Mr Jonathan fielded questions from the audience after a lecture by Ladipo Adamolekun, a public administration scholar and former dean of the faculty of Public Administration at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
Mr Jonathan said the change came when he advised the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman to make sure results were counted and distributed to the party agents at the polling units.
He added that this might have informed the drop in the number of post-election litigation.
"I think the implementation of this, from what the legal adviser of PDP told me a week ago when we discussed how many cases were in court, he said the numbers of litigations have dropped compared to 2007 by over 80 per cent. That shows that even in terms of electoral processes we are transforming; we are going somewhere," Mr Jonathan said. "In fact, I remember when I was acting president, the vice-president of South Africa came to visit and I asked her the length of time they allowed after election in court, because I was a bit worried that after election, two years into tenure of four years matters are still in court. She was surprised that somebody should go to court after elections; but in Nigeria; you will be surprised that nobody is going to court after elections."
The president also gave indications that he may not be dissolving his cabinet totally, saying that ministers who performed above a 60 percent average should be allowed to continue.
In another response to a question, he said 60 percent of speculations in the dailies on incoming ministers were wrong. He also spoke on the influence of lobbyists in the ministerial selection process.
"There are people lobbying for ministerial positions for what I term as personal reasons, either for themselves, their wives and then those who love the country," he said. "Those who love the country when they come to you for a particular person, if you analyse it you will see that they have no relationship with that person; they don't have any relationship. They are only lobbying because they feel that that person has the background to do the job. Those are those who love this country. Unfortunately, they are less than 10 per cent."
He also decried the short tenure of ministers stating that if a government comes up with a good policy and leaves immediately, there is a tendency that such a policy would die.
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