Humphrey Nwosu: Senate Did Not Surprise Me, By Tonnie Iredia

Late Professor Humphrey Nwosu, the outstanding Nigerian who led the team that conducted the June 12, 1993 presidential election recognized worldwide as the best in Nigerias 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 19hullabaloos 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.