Continued from yesterday
It is not generally known that chief Ani re￾tired prematurely from the Federal Civil
Service in 1965 to accept the challenge of the
late Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa, for him to be appointed the chair￾man of the Federal Electoral Commission. I
was one of the people he consulted and I ad￾vised against the move. But Ani decided to ac￾cept the appointment for two reasons: first,
as a good civil servant he felt obliged to re￾spect the Prime Minister’s wishes and, sec￾ond, he was anxious to demonstrate that
Nigeria’s election could be conducted fairly
and justly without fear or favour. Before he
could demonstrate this, the military seized
power on 15 January 1966 and Ani suddenly
became unemployed pensioner at the ten￾der age of 49 years, judging by the standards
of those days! But an act of providence, when
the Obasanjo administration was in 1976,
conducting the search for a suitable person
to head the Federal Electoral Commission to
supervise the elections for the return to civil
rule in 1979, I was the Secretary to the Federal Military Government and Head of Service.

When consulted, I advised that the man the
late Prime Minister appointed in December
1965, never functioned and was untainted.
But I told General Obasanjo, that the late
Chief as a good civil servant, might not be
sufficiently independent of the Government
to be seen to conduct the elections fairly and
that the FMG might be seen to have a preference for one of the Presidential candidates.
The General, to my surprise, replied, “that is
the man we want.”

When Ani was approached, he came to my
house to seek my opinion once again as a
trusted friend. I told him candidly what tran￾spired between General Obasanjo and me
and once again, I advised him against accepting the reappointment as Chairman of
FEDECO but he still saw it as challenge and an
opportunity to establish that Nigerians
could conduct an impartial and fair democratic election. The rest of the story is better left to the verdict of history but I believe the chief did his best in the difficult circumstances of the countervailing powers and conflicting instructions on the 1979 elections”.

Ani was not the first Chairman of the electoral body and neither was he the first in￾digenous to hold the post. The first Chairman of the electoral body then known as the Electoral Commission of Nigeria was Mr. Ronald Edward Wraith who conducted the 1958 and 1959 general elections. He was born in 1908. He was a British Scholar on public and colonial administration.

Wraith was born in Derbyshire; his father
worked for the Midland Railway. He studied
economics at University of Birmingham. He
spent two years in Australia and New Zealand
before becoming the warden at a Tyneside
community center managed by the Tyneside
Council of Social Services when the worst of the Great Depression was over. In 1938, he joined the Education Department of the Borough of Southampton as the Secretary of Youth Services and served in the position through World War II. In 1945, he was the head of the London School of Economics’ department involved in colonial studies, also known as the Colonial So￾cial Science Certificate Course that was previ￾ously headed by Audrey Richards. In 1946, he visited Africa and worked with the Housing and Social Services Department of Gold Coast.

In 1947, he was placed in charge of another
course, the Post War Devonshire Courses for
colonial and West African administrators. Wraith later published a book on local government, comparing the West African and the Eng￾lish local government systems and expressing doubt about the transferability of the English model to West Africa. He was a researcher with the University of Ibadan before his appointment as the only expatriate Chairman in the Nigerian Electoral Commission. Mr Wraith went on to write several books on corruption, local government and public administration in developing countries. One of the books is titled “Corruption In Developing Countries” which he published in 1963. The book has 211 pages. In 1964, the then Prime Minister Alhaji Tafawa Balewa appointed Chief Eyo Ita Esua (14 January 1901-1973), as the chairman of the Federal Electoral Commission. Esua was a school master and a founder member of the Nigerian Union of Teachers. He was the first full-time General Secretary of the union from 1943 until his retirement in 1964. The Esua-led commis￾sion organized the December 1964 election, which was mired in controversy. Two members of the commission notably, Sir Kofoworola Adekunle Abayomi (1896-1979) disagreed with the chairman and resigned from the commis￾sion. Chief Esua also conducted the 1965 West￾ern Region election, which was violent and was disputed by the opposition United Party Grand Alliance. A few days before these elections, Esua acknowledged that his organisation could not guarantee a free and fair poll.
General Yakubu Gowon did not appoint any
Chairman of any electoral commission in his
nine years in power.

After Ani resigned, President Shehu Usman
Aliyu Shagari, GCFR, appointed Mr. Justice
Victor Erereko Ovie-Whiskey (6 April 1923-July
18, 2012) as the chairman of the Federal Elec￾toral Commission, FEDECO. On July 21, 1980, the Senate approved the appointment of Jus￾tice Ovie-whiskey along with members of the commission. They are Chief J.B.C. Anyegbuna (Anambra), Mrs Ethel Onwu (Anambra), Alhaji Ahmed Kari (Bauchi), Mr. O.I. Afe (Bendel), Brigadier L.N. Obeya (Benue), Alhaji Mustapha Umara (Borno), Mr.R.F. Uko (Cross River), Mr. A.N. Adumanu (Imo), Alhaji Liman Umaru (Kwara), Mrs. Husa Iro Luko (Kaduna), Alhaji Aminu Salihu (Kaduna), Al￾haji Mohamadu Mashabaru (Kano), Alhaji Zubairu Danbatta (Kano), Dr. (Mrs) Mabadeje
(Lagos), Alhaji Umaru Audi (Niger), Dr. Lateef
O. Aremu (Oyo), Alhaji M.B. Ibrahim (Plateau), Mrs E.A. Pam (Plateau), Chief P.G. Warmate (Rivers) and Alhaji Garba Jabo (Sokoto).

According to Wikipaedia, Ovie-Whiskey at￾tended King’s College Lagos, Yaba Higher College and University College, Ibadan (now University of Ibadan). He worked as a clerk, and for a short period as a teacher, before be￾ing admitted to study law at the University of London. He was called to the bar in 1952.

He practiced as a lawyer until 1960 when he
became a magistrate in Western Region. In
1963 he was appointed chief magistrate of
the newly formed Mid-Western Region, renamed Bendel State in 1976.

At the time of Ovie-Whisky’s 1980 appoint￾ment as head of FEDECO he was the Chief Judge of Bendel State, and was seen as upright and non-partisan. However, the general elections of 1983 were marred by widespread irregularities and the electoral officials were accused of rigging the results in favor of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). Ovie-Whisky declared that he was largely satisfied with the electoral process in 1983, but said: “We did not expect to be perfect”. He denied wrongdoing, and when questioned by reporters on whether “water passed under the bridge” in the elections, he said that he would faint if he saw N1 million cash.

In April 2009, the Ijaw Monitoring Group
said Ovie-Whisky was in poor health and his
condition required urgent attention from
the Delta State government.

When Major General Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, took over on December 31st, 1983 till he was toppled on August 27, 1985, he did not appoint any electoral chairman; neither did he conduct any election. On July 15, 1987, General Ibrahim Babangida then appointed Professor Eme Ewa as the chairman of the electoral commission. He was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

He conducted the September 4 1987 local gov￾ernment election. There were irregularities
during the election. On December 24, 1987,
the National Electoral Commission under
Professor Awa ordered fresh elections in 312
wards for the December 12 local government
election. On March 20 1988 another election
was conducted by the electoral commission.
At that time, it became apparent that Professor Awa, who is from Ohafia, could not con￾duct a credible election that would be accepted by all. He was sacked thereafter. On February 28, 1989, General Ibrahim Babangida appointed Professor Humphrey Nwosu, a commissioner for Rural Development and Chieftaincy Affairs under Governor Samson Emeka Omeruah as Chairman of Electoral Commission. Incidentally, Professor Nwosu was a student of Professor Awa at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Before the appointment, Professor Nwosu was a member
of the committee on the review of the local
system in 1984 led by the late Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki.

Nwosu was born into the family of the late
Chief Nwosu Nwafor, the Eze V of Ajalli and
Grace Uzoaku Nwafor in Ajalli on October 2,
1941. Both the poor and the rich value education highly in their community. In 1948, he was admitted into the Government Primary
School, Ajalli before being transferred to Saint Michael School Enugu, where he lived with
his senior brother in Abakaliki in 1952. Professor Nwosu worked briefly at Shell BP. He was the head of the Department of Political Sci￾ence at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, be￾fore his appointment as the Chairman of the
National Electoral Commission. It was his
commission that conducted the controver￾sial June 12, 1993 Presidential election, which
was later annulled by President Ibrahim Babangida. Observers are still pressing that National Honours be bestowed on Nwosu.

It is up to Buhari to make a choice on who
heads the electoral commission. We are waiting.

Teniola, a former director at the Presidency,
wrote from Lagos.