June 12: Why I kept quiet, by Humphrey Nwosu

Written by Uduma Kalu,Emmanuel Iriogbe & Abayomi Adeshida
Saturday, 31 May 2008


Fifteen long, lean years of keeping mum on annulment of the June 12th 1993 Presidential Elections, former chairman of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Professor Humphrey Nwosu, is now spilling the beans.
He is not only granting interviews and speaking on national televisions, he has put down all that happened during his tenure in the commission in a book.

The memoir is entitled Laying Foundation for Nigeria’s Democracy -My Account of June 12th Presidential Election and Its Annulment. The book will be launched on June 12th 2008 at Sheraton Conference Center. The time is 10am.

However, Nwosu wants the reforms he initiated during his tenure between 1989-93 to be part of the proposed electoral reforms. He also wants only two party system in the country, though a third can be an option for those who feel they cannot be accommodated in the two parties.

Nwosu, a retired professor of Political Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, was appointed chairman of the National Electoral Commission in 1989 after his teacher, Prof.Eme Awa was sacked from the same job.

He held that position till 1993 when the June 12th presidential election, adjuded the freest and fairest ever in the country was annulled by the former president Ibrahim Babangida military regime. NEC was disbanded and Nwosu lost his job.

Nwosu had designed the Option A4 System that produced the results of the Presidential Polls of June 12th 1993, in which the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the late Chief Moshood Abiola was said to have defeated his political opponent, in the National Republican Convention (NRC), Alhaji Bashir Othman Tofa.

It was rumoured that Nwosu was pressurised to stop announcing the results and that he was even beaten up when he refused to do so. But all attempts to get his version of the story failed, as eh refused to talk.

But Nwosu is today talking. In the main, Nwosu, who spoke to a select group of journalists in Abuja last Wednesday said he kept quiet because he did not want to interfere with other commission chairmen’s work, adding that with the call for electorasl reforms, he has decided to speak out for a way forward.

“Just as I have explained, you know there are so many other important intelligent Nigerians. And when you are given a national assignment, in my view, you have to do everything within your reach to make sure that you execute it to the best of your ability.

And when the tenure is over, you quit and do not interfere. It would have been wrong for me to interfere with my fellow academic colleague or interfere with the national commissioner that worked under me, Dagogo-Jack. Iwu was a professor in the same school
even though I am senior to him.”

Nwosu also spoke on his relationship with Babangida saying both of them are not enemies.

“Whatever role any person played in the annulment of June 12 1993 presidential election will be reflected in the book due for launch on June 12 this year. We are not enemies.”


Nwosu went on to point at forces that that influenced the elections during the Babangida period. “Whatever role any person played in the annulment of June 12 1993 presidential election will be reflected in the book due for launch on June 12 this year,

The book will also tell you how the court order gotten by certain individuals on the eve of the election was disobeyed.

The centrifugal forces that combined to influence Babangida’s administration, all the forces, ethnic, religious and how those influenced and indeed what we did will be contained in that book,” he added.

Nwosu called for a two party system in the country, with a third that may serve interest of those that feel they cannot be accommodated in the first two. “I do not think our democratic practice has been stabilized. My message is that we have to first and foremost reform the system. Secondly, I advocate for a two party-structure, a third party may be for those who may feel they cannot accommodate. Democracy depends on us Nigerians,” he said.

Incidentally, Nwosu wants the state electoral commissions disbanded. “I recommend seriously the state electoral commissions be scrapped national- wide.

I made NEC under me a pensionable organisation, as an institution, moved it from Lagos to Abuja, built the recently moved headquarters, built 250 units of houses for junior workers at Kubwa-Abuja,” the former don proclaimed.

Nwosu argued that the reforms his NEC carried out are still important today. For him, “the kind of reforms we carried out between 1989 and 1993 are still relevant today. Nigerians voted as one body.

They didn’t mind ethnic religious or state. They all came out as one body. National consciousness reached the highest level. When you deprive the choices that they have made, it is stolen mandate when you do it and worse than any other criminal act.”

When Former Military President, General Badamosi Babangida appointed Prof. Humphrey Nwosu to take over the saddle as chairman of the National Electoral Commission, (NEC), he was probably shopping for the finest political scientist who would write Nigerian political history by conducting the election that would put an end to military governance in the black world’s most populous country.

Indelibly so, Nwosu lapped up the challenges and faced the uphill task of carving out an acceptable political reform that would be acceptable to the multi-faceted Nigerian society, bogged down by religious, ethnic and class differences.

Believing that his thesis would be infallible, Nwosu, a professor of Political Science came out to serve Nigerians with a smoking electoral system he code-named Open Ballot System; which was soon to be punctured by the political class.

The Modified Open Ballot System was soon to be churned out by the persevering academician who was dogged in his resolve to be the Nigerian political Messiah.

Not done yet, he capped his political artistry with a design of the Option A4 System that produced the results of the Presidential Polls of June 12th 1993, in which the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the late Chief Moshood Abiola was adjudged to have defeated his political opponent, in the National Republican Convention (NRC), Alhaji Bashir Othman Tofa.

Soon as the results were being released to Nigerians, some forces mobilized against the complete announcement of the outcome of the political experiment and on the 23rd of June that same year, the federal government announced the annulment of the election in which Nigerians generously forgot their differences to give their mandate to one of the two equally loved political parties.

Fifteen years after the annulment of that election, the principal actor in the political script has suddenly decided to damn the consequences and publish a book entitled, Laying Foundation for Nigeria’s Democrary-My Account of June 12th Presidential Election and Its Annulment.

At the Top View Hotel, Wuse, Abuja last Tuesday, the erstwhile helmsman at the National Electoral Commission parleyed with some select senior media practitioners who included Vanguard’s Emmanuel Iriogbe & Abayomi Adeshida. Excerpts:

This year makes it exactly 15 years since I left as chairman National Electoral Commission after conducting June 12th 1993 Presidential Election and since I left office, there have been other successors, and presently Prof. Iwu from the same university with me .

Since I left, I decided to keep off, not to interfere with the work of those who succeeded me. I went back to the university as professor of political science and retired as professor after so many years in the university.

Since then I have been putting my experiences down and within the period, passion, sentiments, feelings, prejudices have all died down, and I think it is appropriate for Nigerians to know exactly what happened, how the election was conducted, preparations towards the conduct of the election, the result, collation of the result, the evaluation of the result and the annulment that took place on June 23, 1993.

All these experiences and more, also, other details like my work at the commission, the electoral reforms we put in place, like open ballot, modified open ballot, option A4 which Nigerians still talk about, the nurturing of two integrated two political parties, NRC and the SDP, how it came to be, why government was involved in creation of the two political parties after political bureau report that recommended that there should be two parties.

There was a reason why government was involved. Before then efforts was made to allow political associations to be formed, to have national spread all over Nigeria, to be integrative national mechanism for bringing all Nigerians together, but none of them that we recommended to government- six political associations met the requirements hence government got involved, all these details will be included in the forth coming book.

The title of the book is Laying Foundation for Nigeria’s Democrary-My Account of June 12th Presidential Election and Its Annulment. It will be launched on June 12th 2008; the venue is here in Abuja, Sheraton Conference Center, the time is 10am.

All members of the press and guests that will be in attendance are supposed to be seated between 9.30 and 10.30am.

So I have been outside the mainstream of political activities, elections and so on, and you may ask the question why now?

It is important to stress the fact that since the present administration came into being he set up a panel, Electoral Reform Committee, he also made a statement before he set up the panel, that something was wrong in the electoral system.

You read in the papers about option A4, modified open ballot, you see people argue about two party structure and so on, and I consider it necessary that it is important that my experiences while I was in office, could be very relevant to what is going on.

I had already, submitted a comprehensive memo to the Electoral Reform Committee, we all are Nigerians, we have to treat our problems.

More importantly, it is necessary and I owe it as a legacy, to you my countrymen, to posterity to put my experiences together and that’s why the book.

How I wish our democracy has stabilized. But I think it is still tottering, and that’s why I decided that once more one cannot keep quiet. We must help in various ways to make this country great. We don’t have any other country beside this country.

Most Nigerians have been asking me when the book will come out. So I am going to pay my debt to the Nigeria public. And it will contain everything you may wish to know and I don’t want to tell the detail of what happened, who played what role, get a copy and I want to be held accountable for every statement in the book.

I know it will generate a lot of discourse all over Nigeria. So people may not share my views. Any person who has superior facts of what happened, I am ready to accept correction, otherwise. I sat at the seat.

I didn’t work alone. But I take responsibility. I was chairman of the electoral body, a management body, made up of eight men, one woman and a secretary. So the buck stops with me as far as activities in that commission was concerned.

Wherever I go, most people ask me, are you brother to Humphrey Nwosu? Where is Humphrey Nwosu? What about the book? Will the book be made public?

Why did you keep silent for such a long time?

Just as I have explained, you know there are so many other important intelligent Nigerians. And when you are given a national assignment, in my view, you have to do everything within your reach to make sure that you execute it to the best of your ability.

And when the tenure is over, you quit and do not interfere. It would have been wrong for me to interfere with my fellow academic colleague or interfere with the national commissioner that worked under me, Dagogo-Jack . Iwu was a professor in the same school even though I am senior to him.

But now that everyone knows that something is wrong with the electoral system, people are clamouring for electoral reform, and I thought it necessary that the reform we instituted
between 1989 and 1993 are today still relevant. I am advocating that the reforms we instituted in 1989 and 1993- remember it was not only the presidential election we conducted, there were other elections.

All the elections we conducted that period, were adjudged to be free and fair by both international and national observers. There is no one country that has all the attributes of democratic political order.

Americans have their own brand. It is not exactly like that of Britain but there are certain standards you have free and fair election is something that is universally accepted. If it is not free, credible, most people will not consider the resulting government as legitimate.

So Nigeria has faced a peculiar problem. You would recall that during the first republic 1960-66, firstly the election we conducted ‘59, people abused the voting system so also that of ‘64. A nation moves forward with its past and if you still don’t remedy the problems and errors of the past, the problems will continue.

And the October election, of Western House of Assembly of 1965, there were different results gotten here and there because of the abuses of the secret ballot system.

The election conducted in 1983 was thoroughly abused. There was writing of results even before elections were concluded. There was stuffing of ballot boxes with fake ballot papers, exactly what people complained of in recent time.

And that is why we were mandated, when I took office March 7 1989-you and your commission, find credible electoral reform that will be a solution to our own national problem. It is the basis the reform we undertook, peculiar to Nigeria which other African countries can copy. That is why we came up with the open ballot system, to restore confidence. Just as you have apathy now, people had apathy because the electoral system was abused in 1983.

So the first election we conducted Dec.8, 1990, we used open ballot. That’s a system of electorates queuing behind candidates. During the process, voters were encouraged to count, then there was no mago mago, no manipulation, no intimidation.

But people complained after a while, that the choice of the voter is not protected; that people should be able to vote without identifying who he voted for, so that they would not be intimidated thereafter.

How do you modify the open ballot system so that the choices made by the electorate can be protected? Yet the system should be transparent. That was why we resorted to modified open ballot system.

I could recollect the last election, registration process was on for five months. People still complain today. Show me the register bearing the names of those who are qualified to vote. Rigging of elections starts with voters’ register.

The parties contesting the elections must before the election have copies of voters registers. During my period there were 110,000 voting centres spread all over Nigeria and each voter register contained 500 names and each party had their copy of it so that you can cross check whether people coming for accreditation were indeed entitled to vote or not to vote.

During my period, I can quote the total number of people registered all over Nigeria-39, 942,000voters. When printing ballot papers it must not exceed this and they were serially numbered.

In my system then, there were specific periods allotted for accreditation.

That means people who were entitled to vote must come to the voting centre at a given period and usually on Saturdays.

What I am saying is that the kind of reforms we carried out between 1989 and 1993 are still relevant today. Nigerians voted as one body. They didn’t mind ethnic religious or state. They all came out as one body.

National consciousness reached the highest level. When you deprive the choices that they have made, it is stolen mandate when you do it and worse than any other criminal act.

People now say there are no elections these days, especially the recently concluded local government elections all over the federation.

Have you seen a state where the other party won even a seat in the local government election?

Something is wrong. It wasn’t so when we were there. When you have two party structure you can see SDP win 14 and NRC 12 in a council that has 26 seats and there was vibrancy, there was dialogue.

I recommend seriously the state electoral commissionsbe scrapped national- wide. I made NEC under me a pensionable organisation, as an institution, moved it from Lagos to Abuja, built the recently moved headquarters, built 250 units of houses for junior
workers at Kubwa-Abuja.

What was your relationship with IBB?

Whatever role any person played in the annulment of June 12 1993 presidential election will be reflected in the book due for launch on June 12 this year. We are not enemies.

All I want to say is that all Nigerians must put their heads together and solve this problem. Those things that worked in the past should be revisited and be entrenched in our constitution.

The book will also tell you how the court order gotten by certain individuals on the eve of the election was disobeyed.

The centrifugal forces that combined to influence Babangida’s administration, all the forces, ethnic, religious and how those influenced and indeed what we did will be contained in that book.
Would you have acted differently in this dispensation?

There is only a Humphrey Nwosu and a Maurice Iwu. Each individual has his unique talents and possibilities. I can’t be Iwu, and Iwu can’t be Humphrey, and each work in different circumstances.

But you have to use your talent and help situations better. I thought to the
best of my ability, I helped improve the electoral situation as adjudged not by me, by the world and observers as the freest, fairest most credible. The job is sensitive.

I do not think our democratic practice has been stabilized. My message is that we have to first and foremost reform the system. Secondly, I advocate for a two party-structure, a third party may be for those who may feel they cannot accommodate. Democracy depends on us Nigerians.


fiften long years of deep sleep,today he is waking up,419 man

This man seems to be more interested in selling a book than in giving out factual information.

I wont be suprised if most of what he will write therein has been vetted by the horrible Babangida