Opinion
Gowon: An unrepentant apologist, accidental leader, turns 90
General Yakubu Gowon, the Nigerian leader who superintendent the country through its most turbulent period turned 90 years old last week. A lot has been written about him, much of it in praise of his extraordinary career, and the grace of God that has dogged his life to this ripe old age of a decade less than a century.
But on some questions bordering on his understanding of the issues that led to the war, and his leadership, he remains equivocal at best, and an apologist in the main. In the course of his birthday celebration, he was quoted as saying that the Igbo caused the war. This is a typical northern narrative of the event, which was clearly recently demonstrated by Prof. Bako’s inaugural lecture, that characteristically portrayed the Igbo as uppity and exploitative with a singular ambition of the domination of other people wherever they settled, which influenced their national politics.
At the Justice Oputa Truth and Reconcile Commission, Gowon had regretted the entire event and blamed it on mistakes by both sides, insisting that in hindsight, the outcome would have been different. He apologized on the October 7, Asaba massacre by federal troops led by the late Head of state, Gen
Murtala Mohammed, whose 2-I-C ( Second In Command) Maj Gen. Ibrahim Haruna, disclaimed. What a leader!
He often shifts responsibility to avoid any spotlight on his own personality weaknesses and failures. Not being part of the coup plotters, he was held hostage by the officers, who eventually ousted him.
For instance, he disowned and repudiated the Aburi accord, which he willingly signed, because those officers and some civil servants rejected it. Today Nigeria would not be talking about restructuring and ethnic domination.
Gowon emerged from the shadows of the July 29, 1966 counter-coup led by
young northern elements; and thrust by fate, time, and chance to manage the chaos of the coup, and in fits and starts, trial and error piloted the affairs of the country through the bloody civil war and post civil war Nigeria until he was ousted by the palace coup led by General Murtala Mohammed.
As fate would have it, Nigeria’s history will never be complete without his place and outstanding role in sustaining it.
The coup that catapulted him to power in 1966 was the second of many military coups in Nigeria. It was masterminded by Lt. Colonel Murtala Muhammed and many other northern military officers. It began as a mutiny at roughly midnight of 28 July 1966, and was a reaction or return match to the killings of Northern politicians and officers by some soldiers on 15 January 1966 .
The coup resulted in the murder of Nigeria’s first military Head of State General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and Lt. Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi (who was hosting a visiting Aguiyi-Ironsi) in Ibadan by disgruntled northern non-commissioned officers (NCOs).
Upon the termination of Ironsi’s government, Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon was appointed Head of State by the coup conspirators.
He came on the scene just some weeks away from his 32nd birthday on October 19, making him the youngest leader in Nigeria’s history.
At a recent virtual reality history competition on the theme, “Sustaining peace together,” organized by ANISZA Foundation and Gallery, Gowon noted that he never wanted to be president.
“I felt petrified when I took over as Head of State. I never planned to be the President; it just happened,” he was quoted to have said.
However, Gowon’s litmus test came when the Aburi Accord broke down following the refusal of Oxford educated Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu to recognize his government, preferring that the rule of seniority, which automatically conferred leadership of the country on Brigadier Ogundipe be followed.
The Ghana – brokered Aburi Accord could no longer be respected when the super permanent secretaries around Gowon interpreted the full import of the Accord to the young Head of State.
The refusal of Ojukwu and his declaration of independent State of Biafra led to the war which festered for 30 months (1967-70)
Many have criticized Gowon for playing the fiddle while the country burned, a reference to his marriage to his heartthrob, Victoria, in thick of the war.
The war ended on January 12, 1970 after the Biafran soldiers surrendered, but the costs on both sides to the conflict were enormous.
On January 14, Gowon delivered his famous “no victor, no vanquished” speech, which echoed throughout the world as he sought to heal deep-seated wounds after the conflict.
While speaking in a special interview he granted to the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Service on January 15, 2020, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the civil war, he said: “I want to thank God that we ended the civil war on a peaceful note; like I said back then, there was no victor, no vanquished.
“I thank God for the peace we’ve enjoyed over the last 50 years since the war ended.
“The war wasn’t what someone wanted. It was fought by those who wanted Nigeria to remain one unlike those on the other side who wanted it to divide; that was what led to the war.
“Because of that, I will not say I committed a crime by going to war; it was out of our love for the unity of Nigeria, especially after the killing of Nigerian leaders of northern extraction, of our prominent officers from the ranks of Lieutenant Colonel to General. I was the only one left,” he said. Nigeria had only one Maj
Gen. Ironsi, and three Brig. Generals, Ogundipe, Maimalari, and Ademulegun. Only Maimalari, a northerner, and Ademulegun were killed; no other northern officer is known in history to have been killed in the first coup.
In a seminal work on the civil war , ” Crises and Conflicts Inside Biafra”, written by Bernard Odogwu, the head of Biafra intelligence , Gowon was blamed for the war, which was avoidable if he had come middle ground to the position of Ojukwu.
Rebuilding the nation after the war was going to be difficult given the animosities and lack of trust. Gowon, in a bid to restore hope and inspire a united and prosperous future had made the famous “No Victor, No Vanquished,” declaration.
This declaration was followed by his programme of 3Rs: “Reconciliation, Reconstruction, and Rehabilitation”, to repair the extensive damage done to the economy and infrastructure of the Eastern Region during the war.
Although there were concerns whether there was enough commitment to its implementation, a famous Nigerian journalist and columnist, Dan Agbese, wrote in his book, Ibrahim Babangida: The Military, Politics and Power in Nigeria thus: “Gowon pulled the nation through a 30-month civil war.
His human attitude towards those who fought on the secessionist side, and his famous three Rs – rehabilitation, reconstruction and reconciliation – endeared him to the nation and the international community.”
But Professor Adeagbo Moritiwon, a political scientist told Business Hallmark that ” one of the unresolved issues of Biafra, and the lesson missed was the Igbo question. The Igbo demonstrated industrial and technological capacity that post-war Nigerian officialdom should have encouraged and heavily invested in. The bombs and other instruments of war locally manufactured actually demonstrated the Igbo genius, but it was not encouraged. Second, since the war, has any Igbo man occupied a number of positions? No, so we learned nothing. This injustice can not endure forever.”
Dr. Abbah Yaro, a historian told Business Hallmark that” Gowon was a humble young man, who simply wanted a military career, he never wanted the highest office and was not prepared for it. It was thus easy for vested interests to take advantage of his inexperience and lack of understanding of the complexities of the country. If he was more experienced he would have used other diplomatic means to pacify Ojukwu like making him deputy head of state.”
Professor Abiola Adeyanju, a sociologist, told Business Hallmark that he believed Gowon did his best, ” whatever is our opinion, the man tried, his politics without bitterness, as ensconced in ‘ no victor, no vanquished’ was statesman-like. If he had more experience he could have done better, but he is a good man.”
Gowon made a major announcement to return the country to civil rule on October 1, 1976. This was, however, based on the condition of achieving a nine‐point programme.
The programme included implementing a national development plan, eradicating corruption in national life, repairing the damage from the civil war of 1967–70, adopting a new constitution, and establishing genuinely national political parties.
Also, in his budget broadcast of April 20, 1970, soon after the civil war, the then commander-in-chief promised to review salaries and wages of civil servants, which he fulfilled by setting up the Salaries and Wages Commission, chaired by the late Jerome Udoji.
After the war, the Gowon-led Federal Military Government promulgated the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree in 1972. The Decree popularly known as indigenization Decree was meant to put the Nigerian economy in the hands of Nigerians. It was a bid to indigenize the ownership of private enterprises in the country, a policy that excluded and marginalized the Igbo in the wconoy.
Equally, as part of the process to completely heal the wounds of disunity occasioned by the civil war, the Gowon government established the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) on May 22, 1973. Young men and women, who completed tertiary education were posted to regions and states other than their own for a one-year national service to encourage inter-cultural mix and understanding as part of the post-civil war rebuilding process.
It was also under his regime that federal scholarship board and the in-service training for the Nigerian bureaucracy was introduced, making it one of the best trained in Africa. He also transformed Nigeria from a regional system into a state system by creating 12 states.
Beyond Nigeria, he was a major player in the establishment of ECOWAS, being a believer in regional integration.
Despite the strides in national unity and infrastructure development, Gowon’s administration grappled with allegations of corruption as captured in the notorious “cement armada” scandal, which was cashed in on by some military officers and resulted in another military coup.
On 29 July 1975, while Gowon was attending an OAU summit in Kampala, a group of officers announced his overthrow. The coup plotters appointed Brigadier Murtala Muhammed as head of the new government, and Brigadier Olusegun Obasanjo as his deputy. The reason was that he announced that the 1976 handover to civilians was no longer practicable.
After his ouster from power, the former head of state returned to school. In a world that had leaned more towards intellectual power, he sought to reinvent himself to fit the call of the time. And he did so while in exile in the United Kingdom.
He was offered admission into the University of Warwick, where he obtained a Ph.D. in political science as a student. Gowon later became a professor of political science at the University of Jos in the mid-1980s. He left office without a personal house and a huge account. His wife who was in London at the could not afford the hotel bill, where she stayed.
Since he retired from public life, the former head of state has been front and centre in national development discourse, playing the fatherly role both physically and spiritually. Through his non-denominational religious group ‘Nigeria Prays’ formed in the 1990s, the former head of state has sustained the spearheading of Nigeria’s spiritual well-being.
At the prestigious Barewa College in Zaria, where he obtained his Senior Cambridge School Leaving Certificate, he was an above-average athlete. He was the school’s football goalkeeper, pole vaulter, long-distance runner, and boxing captain.
He eventually joined the Nigerian Army in 1954 and was commissioned a second lieutenant on October 19, 1955.
He attended Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK, from 1955 to 1956. He returned to the UK in 1962 for Staff College Camberley and Joint Staff College, Latimer in 1965