The death a few days ago of Professor Humphrey Nwosu, the outstanding Nigerian who supervised the famous June 12 1993 presidential election no doubt reminded many Nigerians of how best to organize an election. Although the winner of that election was never formally declared, everyone knew who it was and across the globe, the contest was unanimously accepted as the best Nigerian election in history. The accolade is yet to change.

Those who knew Nwosu’s strength of character especially those of us who worked with him on the elections must have been elated for the first time hearing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in a tribute describing Humphrey Nwosu as “as a bold and courageous administrator as well as a patriot and national asset,” who played a major role in shaping Nigeria’s democratic journey. The description was simply apt.

Before Tinubu, all our respective first citizens pretended that the 1993 election deserved no recognition because it was supposedly not concluded and as such had no winner. The nearest the nation heard about the election was President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision in 2018 to bestow on Moshood Abiola, the winner of the election, the highest national award – the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic GCFR reserved for only the nation’s presidents. Those who packaged the award by Buhari must have had their own hidden agenda which portrayed an assumption that there was no need to also honour Humphrey Nwosu for his great performance. Whereas the addition of the legendary Gani Fawehinmi to those honoured along with Abiola was popular and laudable, it was disheartening to see that a few politicians who colluded with the military to jettison June 12 were also honoured.

It is hoped that President Tinubu would find time to offer Nwosu a befitting national honour as well as to name after him a national monument or edifice. Humphrey Nwosu was not just an ordinary chairman of an electoral body; he visibly did a marvellous and persuasive job by applying all his strength and capacity to embrace innovations for achieving his goal. As chairman of the defunct National Electoral Commission from 1989-1993, he successfully conducted nationwide local government elections in 1990, governorship elections in 1991, national assembly elections in 1992 and the presidential election in 1993. The problem that was imposed on his last election in 1993 had nothing to do with electoral logistics or processes and procedures; rather, it was a set of military officers along with some politicians and a few traditional authorities that colluded for personal reasons to stop the declaration and swearing in of the winner.

The electoral body headed by Nwosu did more than the conduct of elections as it was also mandated to midwife the entire transition to civil rule political programme. To this end, Nwosu’s team is entitled to taking full credit for the rigorous guidelines it evolved for the emergence of 13 political associations out of which two, the Social Democratic Party SDP and the National Republican Convention NRC were formally given the green light to function as political parties. Unlike what we see today, the electoral commission of the time neither breached its own guidelines nor did it give room for politicians to derail its arrangements. If Nwosu introduced any electoral device it was made available everywhere and diligently implemented nationwide without allowing local prejudices to affect the process – a sharp contrast to devices like Card Reader or INEC IREV that were deliberately configured to be temperamental.

The prevailing circumstances during each election were always taken into consideration in determining electoral guidelines for use each time. For example, the credibility problems created at the beginning of the transition programme as a result of the nation’s long military rule, made Nwosu to introduce the Open ballot system which made it easy for people to accept the simple, credible and on-the-spot results. In due course, with complaints by political analysts that some people were scared of openly voting against their spouses, landlords or teachers etc, the Open-Secret ballot was introduced to ensure that although the casting of ballot was done in the open, each voter was given an opportunity to mark his/her ballot in an enclosed compartment provided by the commission. To ensure the emergence of truly national leaders, what was known as Option A4 was introduced to make winners emerge through several stages from local to national levels.

Different societal institutions such as the judiciary and security agencies assisted the electoral body in our days but none of them was allowed to take over the process. For instance, only the electoral body could postpone an election unlike now when for security reasons unknown to even INEC, election could be postponed. It should also be pointed out that no electoral offender could be apprehended by the police without the consent of the relevant electoral officer thereby keeping the electoral body in charge. In like manner, the judiciary had powers to review our decisions but had no power to stop the commission from performing its duties. Accordingly, when Justice Bassey Ikpeme attempted to stop the June 12 1993 elections a few hours to voting, the fake order was ignored because it was clearly in breach of Section 19(1) of the relevant Decree 13 of 1993.

During Nwosu’s time, the judiciary was allowed to nullify an election which failed the integrity test but no court at whatever level was empowered to determine winners of elections. Unlike what happens these days, the courts were not allowed to use ‘judiciary-mathematics’ to add up figures which ended up producing winners that scored more votes than voters. Instead, where an election was nullified, a repeat election was held to ensure that winners were determined by voters and not by judges. One can predict with ease that we are likely to return to the same situation someday if nothing is done to stop the judicial activity of conflicting orders between state and federal courts. Luckily, Nwosu’s team was not challenged by this practice of using the judiciary to win elections. 

Another advantage which Nwosu’s electoral commission enjoyed was that its members were made up of men and women of transparent integrity in line with international standards which require every umpire to be truly impartial and above board. Today, majority of our electoral commissioners are agents or card carrying members of the ruling parties making it obvious that the expectation of free and fair elections is a tall order. Again, those recruited during Nwosu’s days as ad hoc staff such as returning officers were well known in society for their self-respect, dignity, track record and personal discipline and were thus fit for the job. Today, our returning officers who are top academics announce fake results and argue that they only read what was given to them. No one can say if the same returning officers are not the architects of examination malpractices in our higher institutions.

Against this backdrop, the charge by President Tinubu to our 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” is a challenge they can hardly meet if we do not return to the golden days when elections were organized as a game played by its rules. Most importantly, the reference to Humphrey Nwosu by President Tinubu as a bold and courageous administrator would remain eternally remarkable. Until his commission was suspended and later dissolved, Nwosu challenged every wrong step taken by the authorities to intimidate his team. He went to the Court of Appeal to challenge the plan to scuttle his work but had to give up only when the election was instructively annulled a few hours before judgment.

History would no doubt be kind to Nwosu who ran a patently independent electoral commission even though his commission was never formally empowered to act as independent. Indeed, his was an electoral body set by the military and run with decrees. It is hoped that although the president of the day, Ibrahim Babangida took vicarious liability for the unfortunate annulment of the June 12 1993 election, memoirs and books would emerge sooner or later to expose all those who played ignoble roles in the development. Adieu Humphrey, exceedingly brilliant first-class political scientist and innovator who left his name in gold in the history of elections in Nigeria. May his soul rest in peace.