MurtalaMuhammed: Memories of a folk hero (I)

Yet, it is the speed of recovery, the power of critical self-retrieval and self-cleansing, which he demonstrated in a manner that could be said to be unprecedented in the history of national leadership that began to restore value, believability and conviction in his leadership of seven brief months between July 1975 and February 1976, that […]

Yet, it is the speed of recovery, the power of critical self-retrieval and self-cleansing, which he demonstrated in a manner that could be said to be unprecedented in the history of national leadership that began to restore value, believability and conviction in his leadership of seven brief months between July 1975 and February 1976, that begins to justify his immortality in our national consciousness. He began by shedding all genuine and doubtful material encumbrances, property and wealth—that he acquired once he took over the leadership of the country and lived a simple, uncorrupted life thereafter, to the extent that he left scant survival means for his relatively tender family, at his death.
His art of charismatic leadership, commitment, simplicity, discipline and decisiveness in governance, during the short span of his governing aegis of the country until he was cut down by the assassin’s bullet through an unpopular and abortive coup, earned him instant popularity and visibility across the country.
He inherited a state already in the clutches of frustration, disillusionment and despair as the military government of Gowon was unable to appreciably convert the abundant human and material resources of the country to the benefit and fulfillment- yearnings of the Nigerian people. It was a drifting nation that Murtala Muhammed shook and jostled awake in July 30, 1975.
General Muhammed ran a dynamic, decisive, forthright, purposeful, action-packed and programmatic regime.  His administration’s signature was ‘with immediate effect’. It ramified all his actions. These include the whittling of the civil service, dismissing about 10,000 of the work-force; the setting up of the 50-man Constitution Drafting Committee; his setting aside of the 1973 census and his adoption of the 1963 census figures for official use; his low profile style of governance, shunned of ostentation and opulence (he ordered that no official should ride a car higher the a Peugeot and he remained in his residence rather than moving to the fortress at Dodan Barracks); his federalization of the two national dailies—The Daily Times and The New Nigerian as well as the universities that were in the hands of the regions, such as Ahmadu Bello University, University of Ife and University of Nigeria; his creation of additional seven states; the decision to move the Federal capital to Abuja and his ramifying indigenization of the commanding heights of the economy, which also saw to the highly popular nationalization of British Petroleum company. All these, in seven brief moths!—even though the implementation of most of these policies was done after his death by his reluctant (as we were told) but faithful deputy and successor, General Olusegun Obasanjo. There was also, and this is most instructive of his genuineness to be a corrective regime, his transition programme to hand over power to a civilian government in four years and return the military to the barracks after a protracted period of professional rot in politics.
On the international scene, Murtala’s foreign policy was, by and large, the most dynamic in Africa in its Nigerian, nay Afro-centric vision. A man determined to remove the shackles of dependence and over-reliance on foreign philosophies and ideologies, General Murtala threw the weight of Nigeria behind the liberation struggles in Southern Africa. His material support for and recognition of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) attracted the displeasure of the United States of America and Britain, as they both frowned on the Communist links of the ruling party of Angola. Many would argue, with a high degree of justification, that his assassination was inseparable from his policy of fierce independence and the unease of Western capitalist institutions with his political and economic programmes.
As a result of his fervent nationalism, his reformist, even radical domestic and foreign policies, his swash-bucking forthrightness, his simplicity and daringness in governance, and above all, his long walk from the myopia of a secessionist instinct to a broad, patriotic Nigerian nationalism, Murtala became a folk hero whose memory is indelibly ingrained in the nation’s consciousness. He was one hero whose flaws the nation found easily forgivable and whose dynamic exploits earned him a secured place in the nation’s Hall of Fame.

Concluded