also initiated the use of Commonwealth observer groups to assist elections in various countries. Apart from exerting beneficial influence on the electoral process, the presence of Commonwealth observers made it easier for the parties who had lost to accept the result, if the election was judged by Commonwealth observers to be free and fair. In his ten years as Secretary-General, he sent 51 election observer groups to various Commonwealth countries. Beginning with President Kaunda in 1991, he intervened to help Zambia and several other Commonwealth nations to transit from one-party state or military regime to multi-party democracies. For example, he in the same year, persuaded President Arap Moi of Kenya to have a constitutional expert come and help the country revise its constitution to adapt it to the requirements of a multi-party democracy and thereafter in early 1992, persuaded the three opposition parties leaders who had rejected the result of the presidential elections to accept it thereby saving the country from a serious political crisis. These interventions were not limited to Africa. His intervention in Bangladesh was another example that demanded a lot of time and patience. The country's two political leaders were Begum Zia and Sheikh Hasina. Begum Zia had become the prime minister following the assassination of her husband who was the Prime Minister. The leader of the opposition party, Sheikh Hasina, was the daughter of Sheik Abdul Rahman, the first Prime Minister of independent Bangladesh who with his entire family with the exception of daughter Hasina had been killed in a military coup d'état. Hasina was lucky to be out of the country on that fateful night. Anyaoku persuaded the two leaders to agree to his proposal to send an experienced representative to come to Bangladeshi to hold discussions with the Prime Minister, Begum Zia and the leader of the opposition Sheik Hasina with a view to finding a formula for mutual accommodation between their two parties. Anyaoku consequently sent as his special representative, Sir Ninian Steven, a former Australian Governor-General, who spent weeks in Dhaka brokering peace between the government and the opposition parties. He also intervened in Pakistan during a potentially destabilizing disagreement between the then President, Mr. Farooq Leghari and the Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. The most challenging of his interventions was the crisis in his country Nigeria that followed the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election by the then military junta