The Electoral Reform Committee (ERC) was constituted by President Umaru Musa Yar'adua in August 2007, three months after a general election widely condemned as the worst in Nigeria's post-independence history. It was chaired by former Chief Justice of Nigeria Muhammadu Uwais, and comprised twenty-two members drawn from academia, civil society, legal practice, media, and the private sector. The mandate was to review Nigeria's entire electoral framework—legislation, institutions, processes, and conduct—and propose reforms to restore credibility to the electoral process.
The Committee conducted extensive national consultations over seventeen months, holding town halls in all thirty-six states and the FCT, commissioning research papers, and receiving submissions from political parties, professional bodies, civil society organisations, and the international community. Its final report, submitted to the President in December 2008 in four volumes, was immediately published on the Yar'adua government's website and later hosted by Nairametrics and PLACE. The report's executive summary characterised the 85-year history of Nigerian elections (from 1922) as one of 'progressive degeneration,' declaring the 2007 elections the worst since the first polls held under colonialism.
The ERC's key recommendations included: full financial and operational independence for INEC from executive interference; the creation of an Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal with powers to prosecute electoral fraud; adoption of electronic voter registration and accreditation; strict regulation of political party finances and campaign spending; open-list proportional representation as an option; and independent candidacy rights. It also recommended that INEC's budget be charged to the Consolidated Revenue Fund rather than passing through the executive.
Yar'adua's government accepted INEC's budget reform and a few procedural changes but rejected the most structural recommendations, including the Electoral Offences Tribunal and proportional representation. President Jonathan's amendments to the Electoral Act in 2010 adopted independent INEC funding—one core Uwais recommendation—and introduced biometric voter registration. However, the Electoral Offences Commission was never established as of the time of writing, and party finance regulation remained toothless. The Uwais Report is consistently invoked in Nigerian electoral reform discourse as the benchmark unreached standard, with analysts lamenting that its core architecture was sacrificed to incumbency interests.