Humphrey Nwosu as compass for electoral reforms

ONE of the major actors in the June 12, 1993 election debacle, Professor Humprey Nwosu, breathed his last on Thursday, October 24, in the United States of America, at the age of 83. He had served as the Chairman of the National Election Commission (NEC), now the Independent National Electoral Commission, between 1989 and 1993, his tenure terminated by the fiendish exchanges occasioned by the savage annulment of the election.

Professor Nwosu was a Professor of Political Science who was named the Chairman of the electoral body by former military leader General Ibrahim Babangida in circumstances similar to how former President Goodluck Jonathan named Professor Attahiru Jega into that same position on June 8, 2020. Both IBB and Jonathan had previously not met with the men they named as the nation’s chief electoral officers. Nwosu served creditably, even though the military denied the nation the fruits of his service as NEC Chairman.

While in office, he was the executor of Babangida’s transition as it galloped from one bumpy end to another. The man was, however, determined to get something out of the assignment. He showed he was in office and in power in his determination to improvise a model into practical life mechanically. He left no one in doubt that he was out to give back to the country of his birth from the pool of the political theories he had read and taught in the university. Working in the shadows of Babangida’s Political Bureau Report, which was the foundation of the regime’s unwinding transition programme, Nwosu applied his theoretical craft and modelled the Option A4 (Open Ballot System) and the Modified Open Ballot System. With IBB’s regime having adopted a two-party system, it seemed a perfect fit for the elections and the results turned in at different intervals to the satisfaction of Nigerians. There was the local government election, state elections and then the National Assembly elections. At a stage, the nation was treated to a Diarchy, with a full-fledged National Assembly making laws for a military ruler. Everything looked set for the June 12, 1993, presidential poll, which was to crown a tedious transition programme that started in 1986. Nwosu was upbeat that the law was on his side, despite the serpentine spirit donned by the infamous Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) of Senator Arthur Nzeribe and Abimbola Davies, lurking. Nwosu was prevented from announcing the presidential election in full, as the regime cited a midnight judgement secured by the ABN. Even at that, the whole nation was merely awaiting the official confirmation of what they already knew, Chief MKO Abiola, candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) had defeated Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC). It was an election globally confirmed as the freest and fairest in the nation’s history but the Babangida junta denied Nwosu the accolades, it denied Chief Abiola the chance to savour his victory and drew back the hands of Nigeria’s democratic clock.

For years, Nwosu kept mute on the circumstances that surrounded the testy period of the annulled election but in June 2008, he spoke to TheNEWS magazine, just ahead of the public presentation of the book that chronicled his public service experience. He first told the magazine that he had a sense of history when the appointment fell on his lap and that he believed there was a need to produce a practical situation from the theories.

He said: “I felt I had to do my best to this nation to also convince the person who appointed me that I could do my best for Nigeria and satisfy my conscience and my constituency-the university community. You know when members of the academic community are given a public assignment; people say they’re just talking theory and that you have to blend theory with practice.”

He described the June 12, 1993 election as a special moment in the nation’s history and said: “So you’ll find that June 12 as a movement was indeed the day Nigerians opted for a democratic political order. They didn’t care and the parties cut across ethnic, state and regional boundaries. And Nigerians were highly mobilized and they expressed their choices freely without interference. There was no stuffing of ballot boxes and there was no manipulation, intimidation or harassment. Nigerians came out as a body, just like people in the United States and Britain, and voted freely. No intimidation, no one lost his life anywhere, it was God-ordained.”

Indeed, the annulment of the election, which was announced by Babangida on June 23, 1993, was like a prison sentence for Nigeria’s democratic process. Alarm bells rang across the nation. There were threats of war. Many died. Many got maimed and countless went missing as protests engulfed the nation. The nation was on tenterhooks for years. With Nigeria on the brink of disintegration, power changed hands quickly. General Sani Abacha replaced the Ernest Shonekan contraption left by a “stepping aside” General Babangida. He initially dangled the carrot before the political class but later unleashed his iron-fisted fangs. He battled the pro-democracy agitators with crude despotism. MKO Abiola, who had declared himself president was arrested, and his wife Kudirat was killed, just as many top pro-democracy campaigners.

No doubt, the aftermath of the annulled June 12 was a broken regime and a fractured nation, culminating in the birth of a wobbling democracy. Democracy in its true form, having been dented with hefty blows in the series of leadership change from Babangida to Shonekan to Sani Abacha, whose death in 1998 paved the way for General Abdusalami Abubakar to midwife the current Republic within eleven months.

As stated by Nwosu, above, most of the kudos for the turnout of the June 12 election were largely due to his modelling efforts. He fashioned out Option A4, which ushered in the freest poll in the annals of Nigeria’s elections.  In the interview published by The NEWS, Nwosu justified the decision by the Babangida administration to adopt a two-party structure and declared that a multi-party system would not yield the desired democratic objectives. He said that mushroom political parties cannot defend democracy as they would not be able to muster the structure across the country.

With what we have seen in recent years, Nwosu was right. Though the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, had fought for the democratisation of the political party registration process, the fact remains that the multiplicity of parties may not necessarily serve the democratic cause. These days, many political parties are there for political jobs. They either withdraw in favour of the highest bidder a few days before the election, or they are the first to address the media to endorse the outcome of elections, all for a fee.

Incidentally, Prof Nwosu had recognised that shenanigans long before his demise and had equally recommended a revisit of his electoral models. He told TheNEWS: “I feel we should revisit the electoral reforms, modified open ballot system and option A4. We should go back to the two-party structure. We may even allow a third party for those who feel they cannot be accommodated in the two. You could see in the days of SDP and NRC that you can have integrated parties that look to value consensus, parties that raise national consciousness, parties that have spread all over the country, and parties that cut across ethnic, and religious groupings. I am seriously addressing this issue because I believe in it and I think that some Nigerians believe in it.

In this era of troubled elections, I believe that Nwosu’s models should be revisited. His Option A4 should serve as our electoral compass going forward. The modified system and all that Nwosu brought to the table needed to be re-examined by the National Assembly, such that they could give the nation an electoral law that would work for all.

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