Communications specialist, Fred Chukwuelobe, celebrates Prof Humphrey Nwosu, the unsung hero of Nigeria’s June-12 presidential election in 1993.
What’s your memory of June 12?
Mine is that it took me to Dutse, Jigawa State, for the first time in my life. And because there were no good hotels in the city, I had to lodge in Kano and go from there to Dutse, the capital, to cover the election. I was also visiting Kano for the first time in my life.
I was reporting for the then high-flying Champion Newspapers. I was sent to Jigawa State as we had no reporter there.
I was allowed access to a meeting at the government house, Kano, where the decision to back Chief MKO Abiola, instead of Alhaji Bashir Tofa, who hailed from Kano, was taken. It was Alhaji Salisu Mohammed, then of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), who facilitated my entry into Kano State government house. This date, 12 June 1993, was the day that Nigerians voted to send the military back to the barracks. Nigerians did not mind that the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) on which platform the late Abiola ran had a Muslim-Muslim ticket and that its opponent, the National Republican Convention (NRC) didn’t. NRC had Hausa/Fulani-Igbo combination, a Muslim-Christian ticket. SDP’s MKO Abiola and Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, his running mate, were Muslims while late Bashir Tofa, a Kanuri Muslim, picked Dr. Sylvester Ugoh, an Igbo Christian, as running mate.
Anyways, Nigerians, including Ndigbo, voted freely and fairly. But that opportunity to change things was denied through the subsequent annulment. The rest is history.
My memory also takes me back to a man called Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, the unsung hero of Option A4, which was used for that election and was adjudged very successful.
Sadly today, many people do not give Nwosu credit for the superb election that he organized. Under him, the electoral commission known today as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was an impartial referee both in name and in deed. And hope was rekindled in Nigeria.
That hope has since been dashed, gone with the winds, leaving us today hoping against hope.
I like to give honour to whom it’s due, which is why, on this day, I choose to celebrate Prof. Humphrey Nwosu as well.
The cerebral Humphrey Nwosu will celebrate his 82nd birthday in three months (he was born on 2 October 1941). I first met him in the late 1980s when, as a student on industrial attachment, I was sent to the Government House, Enugu, to cover the beat. He was working among a team of champions, assembled by Air Commodore Sampson Emeka Omeruah who was the military governor of the old Anambra State. Nwosu served as Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Matters. And boy, was he outstanding commissioner! Together with other stars and Professors like Mrs. Grace Obayi (nee Nwodo) in Education and ABC Nwosu in Health, Anambra had competent and performing commissioners. And we were hopeful despite the dichotomy that was ravaging the state then.
None of us were therefore surprised that Prof. Nwosu excelled as chairman of the National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON). President Ibrahim Babangida appointed him to this position that he served from 1989 to 1993. After him, the agency was subsequently renamed National Electoral Commission (NEC). It has also answered other names, until its current title of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Unlike Nwosu’s NECON, today’s INEC is independent in name only; over time the agency has proved to be anything but independent.
For those born after the 1993 watershed year, history records that Prof. Nwosu “conducted the 12 June 1993 election, which was seen as the freest and fairest election to date, in which Chief Moshood Abiola was presumed to have won. Nwosu’s commission introduced the novel Option A4 voting system and the open ballot system. Nwosu had released many of the election results when he was ordered to stop further announcement by the military regime. In 2008, he published a book in which he claimed that Babangida was not to blame for annulling the election. The book was severely criticized for failing to accurately account for what happened.”
So, as we mark another June 12 this year 2023, renamed Democracy Day by former President Muhammadu Buhari, I celebrate all the men and women who put their lives on the line in defence of our democracy. Top on the list is Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, the man who showed what an independent electoral umpire should be by biting the bullet to call an election in favour of the one that the people chose.
It is your call whether to celebrate him or not. I choose to celebrate Prof Humphrey Nwosu, today and always.
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