by Tonnie Iredia

Late Professor Humphrey Nwosu, the outstanding Nigerian who led the team that conducted the June 12, 1993presidential election recognized worldwide as the best in Nigeria’s history was buried last week. He was aged 83. AsDirector of Public Affairs and spokesperson of the Nwosu-led electoral commission, I am pained that I was unable to play my anticipated roles in the burial ceremoniesdue to my absence from the country. 

In absentia however, I monitored events and offered suggestions and indeed sent recorded messages and tributes. I am grateful to my other former colleagues who kept the flag flying. But I have remained miserable that no one dissuaded South East senators and a few others from seeking the support of the senate for the immortalization of the most successful chief electoral officer Nigeria ever had. The effort was superfluous.

Behold, even the South East Senators failed to recognize that many legislators are hardly well disposed to any person who stands or ever stood for free and fair elections. The major reason Nigeria has had a subsisting plethora of electoral malpractices is because our political class lacks faith in credible elections hence, they fought desperately against the bill on electronic transmission of election results because it could stop rigging.

Indeed, some two decades back during a debate on an electoral reforms’ bill, Senator Tsuari reminded his colleagues that many of them got into the senate through electoral malpractices. Although the senate harassed him and Senator Nuhu Aliyu who said he recognised many crooks in the senate that he had dealt with before retiring as Deputy Inspector General of Police, such insider testimonies were instructive. 

Thus, it is redundant for anyone to lose sleep simply because the senate refused to honour a man whose performance attracted international applause and commendation. Someday, many good-hearted Nigerians will honour Humphrey Nwosu because researchers will establish that elections before and after his time were a sham. For example, our first major election in 1959 witnessed the pouring of acid into ballot boxes to distort results. The next one in 1964 saw electoral officials declining to register opposition politicians thereby returning several candidates of the ruling party unopposed. In the case of the 1979 election, the ‘twelve two-third of 19’hullabaloos portrayed the declared winner as holding-on to a stolen presidency. The 1983 election on its part produced results for polling units where voting did not even hold. That was the last election before the era of Humphrey Nwosu.

After Nwosu, the next election was in 1999, with former American President, Jimmy Carter who led international election observers stating that the number of voters at the polling booths did not match the results announced. In 2003 and 2007, the observers were unanimous that Nigerian elections were far below the global benchmark. The 2011 election ended in violence across parts of the country with many deaths. In 2015, half of the country compulsorily used the newly introduced Card Reader while the other half relied on ordinary register and incident forms. In 2019, many people believed that the electoral body deployed a manipulated technology to rob the main opposition of victory just as the 2023 election suffered from an inexplicable glitch. Did any of these anomalies happen under Nwosu? 

The senators who blocked Nwosu immortalization relied on a few incoherent arguments. One said if Nwosu had declared the winner, his brother would not have died in the crisis that ensued. A second said he knew M.K.O Abiola and that when the latter visited Kano he rode in his car. A third senator said by not declaring the results Nwosu lacked the courage to die in active service. These legislators were probably victims of selective hearing who heard only what they wanted to hear about June 12. They didn’t hear that Nwosu tabled the results before a court as soon the government of the day became ambivalent about the contest. They also didn’t hear former President Babangida in a book launch declaring the real enemy of June 12. Unlike our current senators who recently refused to obey a court order stopping them from investigating a subject, it was only superior legal arguments that convinced Nwosu to justifiably disregard the last-minute order of Justice Bassey Ikpeme stopping the June 12, 1993 election.

In other words, Nwosu’s seeming disobedience of the said order had nothing to do with irrational courage. He rightly disobeyed because Section 19(1) of the Presidential Election Decree No. 13 of 1993 ousted any court from making Ikpeme’s type of order. Second, the legendary Justice George Oguntade had earlier ruled that the electoral body did not even need to appeal such illegal orders. Third, the above facts were presented to government which reluctantly gave a go-ahead for the election to continue. Midway into the election, another court presided over by Justice Dahiru Salleh did not only stop further announcement of results but went on to issue a warrant of arrest on Nwosu and his principal officers. The then Attorney General, Clement Akpamgbo who earlier rationalized the disobedience of the first order was now the one who served Justice Salleh’s warrant on Nwosu.

Other things which most people did not know included the following: a) Nwosu still proceeded to the Court of Appeal Kaduna Division against Salleh’s order; b) part of the documents he presented to the court was an attachment of results of the election showing that Abiola won; c) government then suspended the electoral body leaving Nwosu and his commissioners with no platform to hold-on to; d) as the court was preparing to make a ruling, the June 12 election result was annulled; e) those who say Nwosu should have announced the result even if he had to die, did not know that Nwosu was really not the one to make the announcement but another national commissioner, Professor Felix Ideriah who was in fact the chief retuning officer for the election. Nwosu could not have usurped the position of Ideriah as Yunus Ari Hudu the then Adamawa REC illegally did with the 2023 Adamawa governorship election results.

The premium placed on courage by the senate appears misplaced because for fear of suspension, there are no substantive dissenting voices in our senate. Besides, some activists in the senate who often lay claim to courage don’t appear to know that the public was aware of credible behind the scene stories of how they contrived to start national strikes that usually ended abruptly with insignificant gains to workers. The only one Nigerian activist among labour leaders who showed ample courage concerning June 12, was Frank Ovie Kokori former General Secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers NUPENG. When he died in 2024, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu an activist,who should know,described Kokori as “a man of proven integrity and foremost nationalist of uncommon courage who fought against the dreaded military regime.”

Although many see President Tinubu as a politician on the same page with federal legislators, the reactions of both groups to the life and times of Humphrey Nwosu of the June 12 fame are not the same. Whereas the senate denied recognition to Nwosu, President Tinubu had in a tribute described the former visionary election boss as “a bold and courageous administrator as well as a patriot and national asset.”The President did not forget to charge our current electoral umpires to behave like Humphrey Nwosu as a champion of democracy by upholding “credible, transparent, and democratic elections that embody the people’s right to choose their leaders.” We can only hope that Tinubu would match his words with action by appropriately honouring the late Nwosu.

Of course, because the senate did not do well in its jaundiced assessment of Nwosu,many Nigerians could not endorse their posture and position. Prof Nwosu-led electoral commission was mandated to conduct 4 elections namely: Local government elections which was successfully handled in 1990.The governorship/houses of Assembly elections in 1991 and the National Assembly election in 1992 which were similarly successful.  It is therefore uncharitable to reject a man who efficaciously conducted 3 out of 4 elections only because the government of the day and their visibly ‘known gunmen’ stood between him and the end of the 4th election. 

It would have been great if the senate had listened to the persuasive contributions of senators such as Abdullahi Yahaya (Kebbi, North). But the pain caused some opposition senators by rejecting their motion on Nwosu was deserved – being a lesson on what happens to unprincipled legislators who because of fear of material losses, are ever so frightened to vote according to the wishes of their constituents and political parties.

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