On Gowon’s duty and allegiance to Nigeria

Some are born great; some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them The above is a line from Shakespeare’s Twelve Nights spoken by Malvolio, a character in the play. It is a self-evident philosophical reflection on the essence of greatness which comes and manifests in various ways in the life and times a […]

Some are born great; some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them

The above is a line from Shakespeare’s Twelve Nights spoken by Malvolio, a character in the play.

It is a self-evident philosophical reflection on the essence of greatness which comes and manifests in various ways in the life and times a person destined for greatness.

Last week Tuesday at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, the cream of Nigerian society gathered for the launching of the long-awaited autobiography of former Head of State General Yakubu Gowon titled: My life of Duty and Allegiance.

As one of the principal figures that led Nigeria as military head of state through its most trying moment, namely the events that occurred in 1966 leading up to the civil war from 1967 to 1970, Gowon’s comprehensive accounts of his own participation and those of others had been long sought after. Before the launching of his autobiography on Tuesday, accounts of the events that transpired in Nigeria between 1966, when Gowon took over as Military Head of State, right up to 1975 when he was eventually overthrown in bloodless coup was mainly from books and interviews by some of the dramatis personae of the events of the time.

Indeed, there was a biography written by late Professor Jonah Isawa Elaigwu titled titled ‘’Gowon: The Biography of a Soldier-statesman’’ first published in 1985.

For most people who had yearned for a first-hand account of General Gowon’s direct involvement in some of the profound developments in Nigeria’s contemporary history the General’s autobiography launched on Tuesday would help provide much needed illumination on the gray areas of those events.

But from the comments that followed the unveiling of the book, if anyone thought that General Gowon’s candour and rationale as military head of state would help dispel some of the long-held misconceptions and information gaps on the events of his tenure, then we are mistaken in this belief.

By the launching of the book, General Gowon’s critics have been given yet another opportunity to resurrect their drivel against the man to whom they attribute, rather uncharitably, as the main culprit for the existential issues Nigeria faces today. If Gowon had endorsed and implemented the ‘’Aburi Accord’’ in 1966 which called for a loose Nigerian confederation of regions, the country would have achieved greater autonomy and socio-economic development.

On the reprisal coup of July 1966 in which many military officers’ of Eastern Nigeria origin were killed by their Northern counter parts and the mass killings and massacres of Easterners in the Northern region leading to the civil war in which millions more lost their lives, General Gowon is cast as the mastermind and commander. But perhaps the most unkind of the tirades directed at General Gowon was to say that the killings going on in Plateau, where the General comes from, and other parts of central Nigeria is a fitting retribution for his acts of omission and commission during his tenure as military head of state.

A critic is rightly entitled to his criticism on issues of national import, but in doing so he or she must observe the requirements of objectivity and presentation based on facts.

From January 1966 to July 1975 when he was overthrown, General Gowon found himself fortuitously thrown into the brutal vortex of Nigeria’s combustous politics. When he arrived in Nigeria on January 13, 1966 from a course in Britain to take over the 2nd Battalion Ikeja, he had no inkling that he was in the cross hairs of blood thirsty coup plotters who had planned to kill him along with his colleagues two days later. At the reception in Brigadier Maimalari’s Ikoyi residence both the plotters and their intended victims mingled enjoying the seemingly convivial occasion.

But at some point in the shindig, his companion, who was with him at the event, pleaded with him to retire for the night which he reluctantly did. This was perhaps the divine intervention that not only saved Gowon’s life (for the plotters struck a couple of hours later killing the targeted officers including Maimalari the host), but more significantly saved Nigeria.

Gowon emerged the following day alive, took charge of the situation and at great risk and personal danger, helped put down the mutiny saving many officers and political figures in the process.

On the demand that Gowon should have implemented the terms of the ‘’Aburi Accord’’ that suggestion is as preposterous as it was imbecilic. Gowon had no mandate to do such thing because he went there as the military head of state of Nigeria as a whole. He could not have signed such a document without full consultation with his colleagues in the Supreme Military Council and with sectors of the Nigerian state. Colonel Ojukwu went to the Aburi talks not as a recognised head of a state but as a governor of a part of the Nigerian state as he then was.

Gowon knew this fully well and what many people did not know at the time was that had he gone ahead to sign the Aburi Accord Gowon would most likely have been detained and removed as Head of State or even probably shot in those tense times.

But again, why would Gowon yield to the pressure to sign the Aburi Accord from the same people who just six months before had by Decree 84 struck down the regional structure of Nigeria following the January 15, 1966 coup?

If the regional structure that Nigeria had was not feasible in January 1966, when the coupists struck, why would it suddenly be so post July of the same year?

Another issue that needs to be addressed is the repeated claim that Colonel Ojukwu was Gowon’s senior in military rank. The fact is that Gowon was commissioned in 1956 while Ojukwu was commissioned in 1958. Another fact is that Gowon was a regular trained officer who attended the Sandhurst Military Academy while Ojukwu was trained under the Short Service programme for six months at Eaton Hall. It is only in Nigeria that an officer commissioned in 1958 and trained under the Short Service course would be considered senior to an officer who did the regular course and was commissioned in 1956.

Critics of General Yakubu Gowon are free to go on hating him if they derive joy from such an undertaking, but they do not have the right to take liberties with the facts of his life and times.

Like all humans we must agree that General Gowon can make mistakes in his duties as a soldier which he has, on many occasions, admitted and called for genuine reconciliation among Nigerians on the sad chapters of our history. Let us consider that he was thrown into the vicious cut and thrust of Nigeria’s political convulsion as a young military man without any premonition, living in the officers’ mess at Ikeja, fresh off a military course, without a wife to comfort him, without a command, marked to be killed, deftly navigating through the frequent tempest of his officers at the rear and in the frontlines of a vicious civil war, the conflicting demands of the various component of the Nigerian state as well as that of foreign powers and interests.

Yet in the midst of all these, he mustered the ability to stay above the dense fog of these existential challenges and kept the ship of the Nigerian state through the troubled waters. Now that truly is what the call of duty and allegiance to one’s nation is all about.