By Halimah Olamide
Former Chairman of the then National Electoral Commission (NEC), Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, has passed on.
NPO Reports that Nwosu conducted the botched June 12 presidential election which was won by the late Chief Moshood Abiola.
NPO Reports learnt that he died at an hospital in Virginia, U.S at the age of 83.
The current Independent National Electoral Commission is an offshoot of the NEC headed by Nwosu.
Born on the 2nd of October 1941, he was appointed by President Ibrahim Babangida as NEC Chairman from 1989 to 1993.
The 12 June 1993 election which was seen as the freest and fairest election till date in which Chief Moshood Abiola was presumed to have won.
His commission introduced the novel Option A4 voting system and the Open ballot system.
Meanwhile, NPO reports that since the annulment of the election, Nwosu was mum until a couple of years later which he granted an interview with The News publication in 2018.
He noted that the elections were conducted, however, in the process of collating the results, there was an order to stop announcing the results.
“We felt now that the most important task had been done, what was left was to release the results and that we should challenge the order of the Abuja High Court because we felt it had no business stopping us.
“We went to the Kaduna Court of Appeal for that order to be vacated. And perhaps it would have been vacated. NEC’s Director of Legal Services challenged the order on behalf of the commission and the court directed that there should be accelerated hearing on 25 June. Chief Moshood Abiola, presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, was there.
”His lawyer was represented. Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention NRC, was represented.
“Unfortunately, even though the hearing was scheduled for 25 June, NEC was dissolved on 23 June. It was not a question that one was afraid. What the Appeal Court would have done was allow NEC to conclude its job because no court had the right to stop us.” he said.
“Many people do not really care about the ethnic group of any good leader. They just want a good leader. You could recall when Murtala Muhammed was on the scene, people supported him, especially when he cancelled the controversial 1973 Census that would have favoured people from his own area. He became an instant hero. He was one of the charismatic leaders this nation has produced.
“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. And so in my own view, June 12 was the day Nigerians decided freely for a democratic political order without any hindrance. That day should be Democracy Day. I don’t see anything that makes 29 May, 1999 superior to June 12, 1993. Without June 12, there wouldn’t have been May 29. In my view, it was an offshoot of June 12.” he said.