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Nigeria's new President Goodluck Jonathan has vowed to ensure free and fair elections for next April and has called for the passage of electoral reforms by the end of the year.

In a televised speech to the nation to mark Democracy Day, which celebrates the end of military rule just over a decade ago, Jonathan said the challenge for Africa's most populous nation was to hold elections in which every vote counted.

"That is why the consummation of the process of electoral reform is a collective task that must be done this year," Reuters quoted the Nigerian president as saying on Saturday.

"Let me once again assure all Nigerians that this time, under my watch, all votes will count," he further stressed.

Electoral reform legislation has been before parliament for months but time is quickly running out for meaningful changes to be implemented ahead of the next polls, due by April 2011.

An unwritten agreement in the ruling People's Democratic Party states that the office of president should rotate between the Muslim North and Christian South every two terms.

Late President Umaru Yar'Adua, Jonathan's predecessor, who died at the start of May, was a northerner in his first term, which meant that the ruling party nominee should have been another northerner who could complete at least the second term.