Politics
You commenced S’East marginalization, Ndigbo tell Gowon as he turns 90
The South East zone has traced the age-long marginalization it claims to be suffering in the hands of successive federal governments in Nigeria to the former head of state, retired General Yakubu Gowon, who marked his 90th birthday anniversary recently.
Virtually all the respondents informed Business Hallmark that the South East’s feeling of precarious situation in Nigeria should squarely be blamed on Gowon.
A renowned journalist and notable author, Chief Chuks Iloegbunam, fired the first salvo, accusing Gowon of decimating the hitherto strong presence of Ndigbo in the army when he orchestrated as well as surreptitiously supervised the killings of 38 senior and 128 junior officers of Igbo extraction on July 29, 1967, during the counter-coup that also saw to the assassination of General Aguiyi Ironsi.
Iloegbunam argued that in the first coup in January 1966, the North lost seven elite men but queried why Gowon and his Northern army colleagues should carry out what looked like an ethnic cleansing during the counter-coup six months after
In his submission, a political historian, Mr. K. C. Okere, recalled that what is known today as Igbo marginalization began with Gowon the moment he emerged as the head of state in August 1966, following the overthrow of Ironsi’s regime. According to him, “It is obvious that Gowon sowed the seed of Igbo marginalization or exclusion.
“The moment he succeeded Ironsi, Gowon’s first crime against Ndigbo was to carefully exclude them from his Supreme Military Council, otherwise known as SMC. The most frightening assault of Gowon against Ndigbo was his creation of the 12 states on May 27, 1967.
“To be sure, Gowon deliberately schemed out Ndigbo, demoting us, while elevating the erstwhile Eastern Minorities higher than us, politically. And it was deliberate. Gowon carved out the two states of Cross River and Rivers but created only the East Central for the Igbo nation. All the other heads of government, military or civilian, have followed that foundation laid by Gowon in 1966, and that is the Igbo marginalization”.
Okere pointed out that “Gowon’s 12 states creation was his ready-made strategy after he reneged on the Aburi, Ghana Accord, where he consciously or unconsciously, agreed to the late General Odumegwu Ojukwu’s argument of a de-centralized government. Rather than implementing the Aburi Accord, Gowon went ahead to create the 12 states. Ojukwu refused to toe that path but insisted on the full implementation of the Aburi Accord. He issued an ultimatum to Gowon, saying “On Aburi We Stand”.
“When the ultimatum expired, Ojukwu pulled Eastern Nigeria out of the country, naming it the People’s Republic of Biafra. Gowon responded by declaring war on Ojukwu’s Biafra and executed with the worst of impunity, with its attendant elements of inhumanity. In the end, over two million Igbo were murdered as Gowon directed the bombing of markets, schools, churches and villages”.
At the end of the hostilities in 1970, Gowon, according to a current affairs analyst, Prince Uba Paul Ibe, issued a most welcomed post-war proclamation as he declared there was no victor and no vanquished. He followed it up with the 3R policy of Reconciliation, Rehabilitation, and Renovation.
“But can you, in all honesty, point at any institution that Gowon rehabilitated or reconstructed? Did he even reconcile Ndigbo with the other ethnic nationalities in the country? No. On the contrary, Gowon embarked upon socioeconomic-political policies that were anti – Igbo.
“For instance, it was Gowon who put in motion the indigenization policy which saw to the localization of national corporations at a time Ndigbo were financially not well balanced, albeit retired General Olusegun Obasanjo completed that aberration. Of course, we cannot forget in a hurry that it was the same Gowon who ordered the meager sum of 20 pounds to be remitted to every Igbo depositor who had money in the vault, even if it were millions”!, Uba enthused.
A human rights activist, Igwe Chinonso Agu, noted that one of Gowon’s actions against the Igbo nation was so horrifying that the head of state relocated the iron and steel complex already earmarked for Enugu by the Russian experts who were contracted for that project given the presence of coal, a critical property vital for the product of the material (iron and steel) and took it to Abeokuta. You can then imagine why the project has still been born ever since Gowon’s wicked act.
Most Igbo people therefore believed that their ugly state in the country today as far as it concerns exclusion was spearheaded by Gowon.
“For us, we point fingers at Gowon for having just five states in a federation of 36 states. We blame Gowon for having About 95 local government areas out of 774.
” Ndigbo are not happy with Gowon for being the least in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. In other words, Gowon is solely responsible for our sufferings in this entity called Nigeria. This is because, besides kicking off the Igbo marginalization concept, he went ahead to carry out various policies that stunted both the population growth, fiscal growth, and infrastructural development of the Igbo nation, and other leaders after he continued in that direction to date”. Ugochukwu Adindu observed.
Yet, there are few Igbo who asked that Gowon’s actions as head of state were taken with the best of intentions ” to keep the country”. As Udo James captured it, “I can understand the feelings of my people, Ndigbo, towards Gowon. A cursory look at Gowon’s policies and actions could reveal that he played against the Igbo nation. But I can tell you that he did most of those things just to keep Nigeria one.
“That was the full meaning of his post-war declaration of ‘no victor, no vanquished’. That is, it was a victory for Nigeria because Biafra was crushed. It was also a victory for Ndigbo because the essence of Biafra was to escape annihilation, and in 1970,Ndigbo as a people were very much alive and kicking”.