General Gowon, Saint Or Sinner?

                                  

Whenever we interrogate the roles a man like General Yakubu Gowon played in the history of Nigeria, it is time to be reminded how we made our diversity to work against us rather than for us. Gowon is one of those giants of Nigeria’s history about whom you cannot discuss without reopening the unhealed sores of our past.

Thank  God, Gowon, our second military head of state, is alive and kicking as we talk about him at the ripe age of 80. Many others were not quite so lucky. We had to talk about them “behind their backs”. These include Gowon’s chief antagonist during the war, the late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu; one of Ojukwu’s philosopher kings, Professor Chinua Achebe; and recently, one of Gowon’s field commanders, retired Colonel Benjamin Adekunle.

Of the lot, Gowon is blest to be alive to read and witness all the things being said about him, most of which conform to the mood of celebration of the man who successfully managed the civil war and kept Nigeria one, even if not united.

That is the greatest achievement for which he will be remembered. The second outstanding contribution of this genuine officer and gentleman was that he was able to create an atmosphere for the former Biafrans, especially the Igbos, to come back into a country of which they were at the forefront during the fight for its independence.

The bitterness that drove both sides to the war seemed to evaporate into thin air as soon as General Philip Effiong led the Biafran delegation to Dodan Barracks, Lagos to submit the instrument of surrender. Perhaps, if a different person was in Gowon’s place, what is happening in the Plateau area, where secret killings have continued even after several signed peace agreements, would have been a child’s play.

Yet another good point for which Nigeria will remember Gowon, is that during his nine years in power, he surrounded himself with great minds made up of politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats and specialists, who helped him to succeed in managing the war and its economy, such that Nigeria did not take a single penny as loan. Rather, we leveraged on the oil boom and followed well laid out development plans that, had we continued faithfully to implement them, we would not be far behind Singapore, if at all we would be behind them.

Unfortunately, after nine years in power, Gowon drifted into vanity. He had promised to hand over power to an elected civilian government in 1975. All the surviving politicians were already dusting up their agbada and babanriga to re-enter the political fray when Gowon changed his mind and decided to continue in power without even setting another clear date for handover. By 1975 when he was toppled, Nigerians had gotten tired of him and welcomed his ouster.

But little did they know they were jumping from frying pan to fire. After General Murtala Mohammed was assassinated six months later, General Olusegun Obasanjo climbed into power, and thus started the rapid decline of the nation in all its aspects. That was when heads of state, top military officers and their civilian friends started becoming millionaires and billionaires overnight. The groundnut pyramids disappeared, the railways, airways, shipping line, all the big state-run companies which had operated efficiently and profitably, collapsed or lost so much value that they were sold as scrap to the same people who looted them. The Nigerian Naira, which was stronger than the American Dollar, dropped out of sight in value, and the Brain Drain commenced.

The question can be posed: What could have happened if Gowon had kept faith and handed over to an elected government in 1975 as promised? Perhaps, the military, especially the commanders who fought at the war front, spurred on by the greed to freeload on the oil wealth, would still have toppled them. They felt entitled to be in power after burning their hides in the war front to keep the country one.

The soldiers were clearly intent on rewarding themselves with the oil wealth of the nation after “defeating Biafra”. Some of them still own oil blocks even in their seventies and eighties. But if Gowon had handed over on schedule, his honour in that regard would go with him into the history books. But he squandered that opportunity and became the precursor of the many failed attempts (so far) at “self-succession”, “tenure elongation” and “third term” by his successors.

Another question can be posed. Gowon said, in his recent big interview with the Guardian, that he was prevailed upon by his fellow officers to take over. That is not the whole truth. He was prevailed upon by his fellow Northern officers to jump over the well-established line of command to replace General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, after they brutally murdered him.

Gowon thus became the first point from which regionally-motivated indiscipline crept into Army. After the Northern army officers killed Ironsi, they simply appointed one of their own, Gowon, to take over even though Brigadier BAO Ogundipe, the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, being the most senior, should have stepped into Ironsi’s shoes. The tradition continued and eventually weakened the highly politicised Nigerian Army to this point where a rag-tag band of Islamist insurgents are irreverently putting their dirty fingers in the eyes of our once mighty Army!

Again, could that civil war have been avoided? If Gowon had taken decisive measures to stop the killing of Igbos in the North after the first coup of 1966, would the war have taken place? If Gowon had implemented the Aburi Accord, would there have been a civil war? Was Gowon really interested in allowing the Igbos the space to stay in Nigeria in safety and with dignity? The answer was clearly, No.

The creation of 12 states, especially the way it was done, was meant to reduce the Igbos to a minority status. That agenda – of having only the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba as the only majority groups in Nigeria – is still raging in the minds of enemies of Igbo people, such as those who say the South East do not deserve six states like the others.

Gowon was part of the agenda to remove the Igbos from reckoning for the North and its various lackeys to have a free ride to the oil wells of the Eastern Region. Gowon forced the Igbos to fight and lose the war to aggrandise Northern domination.  Yet again, after “magnanimously” declaring “No Victor, No Vanquished”; “Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation”, he only paid them lip service. He permitted the “Abandoned Property” policy in Rivers State to intensify enmity between the Igbo and their regional neighbours. He enacted the first Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1972, which enabled the war’s winners to leverage on the oil boom and take over multinationals at a time Igbos had no access to anything. General Gowon wrote the script on Igbo marginalisation before, during and after the war.

Still, I agree with The Guardian, which described Gowon as “the last good man standing”. In spite of the aforementioned acts of omission and commission on his part, Gowon is still the best among the rest. In retirement he is playing the role of Father of the Nation, unlike other former presidents who like to sell goats and hold on to their ropes, as President Jonathan would say. Gowon is neither saint nor sinner. He is human.

Copied from Vanguard without bye line