By Peter Onyeri, a Public Affairs analyst for USAfricaonline.com since 2016
The setting was the Nigerian embassy in Washington D.C., the United States of America on that cold evening of March 1, 2025. It was a Service of Songs to celebrate the life and times of late Professor Humphrey N. Nwosu, the electoral umpire in the eventful June 12, 1993 national elections in Nigeria.
He died a few months earlier in Maryland where he had sojourned to spend most of the remaining part of his life,following the post-election fiasco.
At the tribute event, the dirge waltzed in the atmosphere of the hall as it sank deep into the minds of those present. Although I watched it in Nigeria via zoom, it was a sobering confetti for a remarkable life.
One could only imagine the depth of thoughts that might have been going on in the minds of many in that full hall, made up mainly of relations, close friends and distinguished personalities from the Black community in the United States.
It wasvery probable that many picked out the humph of a hippopotamus in the solemn music while a lot others were hearing the kek of a falcon.
It is possible that the humph of that evening in Washington D.C. came as a consolidated communication of these emotions, as arising from the annulment of the June 12 elections.
However Anthony Brown, the respected Attorney General of the State of Maryland, did put things in a summary when he said of the late Professor, in his tribute:
“He was a humble man with an amazing intellect for economic development policies and democratic processes.”
To observers of the life and times of the distinguished scholar of Political Science and Public Administration from Nigeria, it was a befitting event.
To many unbiased and discerning minds, he was the real hero of the watershed election of June 12, 1993 in Nigeria.
In some ways, Humphrey’s spirit was on that night in Washington D.C., an embodiment of a falcon. The falcon is a revered mystic bird that denotes power, elegance, royalty, confidence, freedom and transcendence. This particular falcon is sky bound, heading to Mother Africa, to Nigeria — headed East.
He’s one of her greatest sons who deployed his cerebral prowess to serve her in very challenging circumstances. He gave much of it to the academia, local government administration and electioneering in his country. He created an innovative political philosophy that neutralized what he termed a “wuru-wuru” political culture that had held his country down for a long time. He thus freed the political space of such disruptive machinations as “the politics of godfather” for what he called the “A Little to the Right and A Little to the Left” framework that facilitated a novel “Option A4 Open-Closed” Voting Model that brought a highly desired transparency into the Nigerian political system.
This pragmatic method was effective and hailed globally as an authentic approach, in the face of the typically chaotic and obscure politics of Nigeria and Africa.
Body and spirit of ‘Falcon’ Humphrey is billed to be received and honored in Abuja and Enugu by critical stakeholders in Nigeria’s political evolution and progress, in the last days of March 2025. The University of Nigeria Nsukka, that great citadel of learning where the world class Professor incubated and taught several political theories, may very well set in motion the processes for the study of the ideals in “Option A4”, for its value potentials to society in the areas of democracy and development.
As the curtain falls on an odyssean life that started on October 2, 1941, for dust to dust at his ancestral home at Ajalli
in Anambra State, society will remember that there was a man who left indelible footprints on the political sands of his country.
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