He will continue to be remembered in public conversation for Option A4 and for the conduct of the 1993 Elections and also for standing up for his celebrated stewardship of that exercise, but Prof. Humphrey Nwosu is a hero for much more. He could teach. Not so many can.
October of 1973 was my matriculation year at the University of Nigeria. When I arrived my peculiar goal was to spend a year growing up and then to leave and go to Flying School. My career goal back then was to be an Airline Pilot. My clever father thought I should spend a year in the University to make friends, become more mature, than my then 16 years, allowed. So I arrived UNN to study Mass Communication, or better still, to play around for a year.
My luck brought as roommate a third year Political Science Student, Chike Anigbo who would become Dr Chike Anigbo, a career diplomat who became Nigeria’s first Ambassador to Singapore.
I looked at the list of courses he was registering and chose three third year political sciences courses Anigbo was offering as my electives. These were International Relations, History of Political Thought, and Public Administration which had as Lecturer this freshly minted PhD called Humphrey Nwosu.
One effect of the passion Nwosu had for his subject, the diligence with which he prosecuted his teaching and the fun in how he ‘danced’ his Illustration of the examples captured my imagination. I knew then that making impact in how to organize for better living standards for millions far outweighed Landings and Take-offs. It began my quick shift of gears in the direction of the policy sciences. When four years and a bit after NYSC I returned from graduate studies a mint fresh PhD as he was when he was my teacher. Then I was quickly appointed into the Shagari government to replace his old UNN Political Science department colleague, Professor Godwin Odenigwe. Few felt as proud for that than the man who reset my track, Professor Humphrey Nwosu.
That his graduate education was at the University of California, Berkeley, interestingly moved my focus in that direction. Even though an American Fulbright Scholar at UNN, Floyd Arpan, led me to choose Indiana University where Prof Arpan would teach me in grad school I looked in the policy sciences to Berkeley. My scholarship was therefore much influenced by people like Aaron Wildavsky, who wrote the Politics of the Budgetary Process, Jeffery Pressman who were rote the impressive book on policy implementation back then in the 1970s and even the Italian Economic Historian Carlo Cipolla who contributed much during my graduate school years.
More interesting for my Berkeley connect was the group of Indonesians who got their PhDs in Economics from Berkeley who Suharto would rely on for their economy to travel a better track than their development twin, Nigeria. They came to be known in Indonesia and abroad as the Berkeley mafia. One of them Professor Mohammed Sadli, who hosted my visits to Indonesia in the late 1990s served as Oil Minister of Indonesia when General Mohammadu Buhari was Pettoleum Minister in Nigeria. Chatting in his modest bungalow on a hill in Jarkata on a visit reminded me of the essence of the moral authority of the intellectual which it is clear Prof. Humphrey Nwosu lived out.
From that jammed classroom in Nsukka with inadequate stock of chairs shortly after the end of the civil war, 52 years ago, I would observe character in the man Nwosu and watch him leave his imprimatur on the public life of a generation.
With the elections of June 12 1993 Prof. Humphrey Nwosu provided us proof positive that have courage and capacity can ride the Tiger and set a noble course for history and ride that wave to immortality.
Those who believe that righteousness exalts a nation have an obligation to lift up his spirit and set him up as standard that those who strive for the common good can look up to in the the way the molten Serpent was raised for Israelites bitten by snakes in the wilderness in the journey to the promised land.
As we honor his legacy and pay tribute to his intellectual prowess and political sagacity it is important to note the methodical way he went about the options for the elections and the media campaign to sell it to the people amidst so much skepticism.
I kept trying to persuade people of his tenacity of purpose and grit that would lead him to pull off the assumed impossible. It is interesting that quite a few of those who thought his course a mission impossible were among those I saw repeatedly referring to the elections as the freest and fairest elections in our history, years after.
A one time President of the American Political Science Association James McGregor Burns in his tome Leadership, argues that the Intellectual is endowed with Moral Authority. We saw that clearly in how Professor Humphrey Nwosu walked his talk.
Today I feel much pride in our shared antecedents as Lions, UNN Alumni who roar, as teacher/student, and as friends. It is truly a privilege to have known him.
My prayers go to his family and close friends and for the mercy of God so that His holy angels escort our dearly departed compatriot, teacher, statesman and hero into paradise.
Patrick Okedinachi Utomi
Brown Capital Management Fellow and International Policy Scholar
Woodrow Wilson Center,Washington DC
Professor, Lagos Business School, PAU.
Founder, Centre for Values in Leadership.
Adjunct Faculty, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University.
