Tip Gowon For Nobel Peace Award, Owolabi Salis Urges Tinubu

Eminent Lawyer and politician, Owolabi Salis, has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and notable public spirited institutions and individuals, wherever they might be, in any part of the world, to make a persuasive representation for the world Nobel Peace Award to be conferred on ex Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. In a tribute […]

Eminent Lawyer and politician, Owolabi Salis, has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and notable public spirited institutions and individuals, wherever they might be, in any part of the world, to make a persuasive representation for the world Nobel Peace Award to be conferred on ex Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon.

In a tribute to the great Nigerian leader, during his recently celebrated 90th birthday anniversary, the Ikorodu-born Lagosian described him as one of the most effective and most beloved leaders ever to have emerged from the African continent.

He said that the remarkable sense of unity with which he executed the Nigeria – Biafra civil war and the effective re-integration of the Igbos into the mainstream of the Nigerian community after the war, through his ‘no victor,no vanquished’ slogan,coupled with his universally applauded catch-phrase of ‘Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Re-integration’ then popularly referenced as “the three Rs”stands him out as one of the greatest leaders of all times.

“It is therefore for this reason, that this illustrious Nigerian leader stands out as the most deserving potential beneficiary of the Nobel Peace Award”said the lawyer-politician and polar tourist who made a resounding record as the first black African to have traveled both to the frigid Zone of the North and South Pole.

He described Gowon as an astute leader,who assembled one of the most efficient team of leaders and functionaries,in the mould of the Tony Enahoros,the Obafemi Awolowos,the Aminu Kanos among others, who were popularly celebrated for their unalloyed patriotism, efficiency and absolute devotion to the visionary cause of Nigeria’s greatness, adding that,it was that singular decision that contributed above others,to the relative success creditable to the Gowon administration, rating him far above others in the post-independence annals of governance in the larger Nigerian landscape

Going down the lane of political history,he recalled that the stormy tribulation and vicissitudes which Awo encountered during the Coker Commission of Enquiry and the Treason trial both of which whether wrongly or rightly were believed to be a calculated cooked up charges meant to persecute Awo were seen by the preponderance of the Yoruba stock as a collective persecution of the Yoruba race .

Against this background,he noted that the immediate release of Awo from prison and the opportunity offered him to serve, immediately on Gowon’s assumption of office,went a long way in appeasing the patently aggrieved Yorubas and giving them a sense of national belonging.

“The fore-going undoubtedly succeeded in enabling him to mobilize and carry along the Yorubas including the core political elites in the drive towards the actualisation of the greater Nigerian dream.And when you consider this along with his adroit integration of the Igbos after the civil war,you cannot but salute his remarkable acumen in political engineering and States craft”,said the Ikorodu-born Lagosian who in 2019,contested for governorship on the platform of Alliance For Democracy.

“If we also consider the fact that Awolowo never made it as an elected president throughout his lifetime, despite his immensely vast talent and unsurpassed toiling and hard work,as believed whether rightly or wrongly by the diabolical manipulations of the power cabal of the moment who tried assiduously to deny him leadership,then the opportunity offered him to serve in the Gowon administration particularly as Vice-chair man of the Federal Executive Council,a position equivalent to a Prime-Minister in the civilian democratic dispensation,could be seen as a most soothing balm in compensatory atonement for whatever sense of deprivation Awolowo, and his vast mass of his supporters might hitherto have suffered.

“In another breadth,the fore-going would undoubtedly be seen as an epic opportunity for self-fulfillment, just as it also stands as a redeeming feature in Awolowo’s trajectory of public service, because Awo would have died a completely dissatisfied man,and Nigerians would not have been availed of the opportunity of his excellent stewardship,especially his remarkable ability to manage the war-time economy effectively without Nigeria borrowing a single penny from extraneous sources”,said the Ikorodu-born High Chief.

Narrating in the context of the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka,Salis remarked: “Quite in keeping with his abiding conviction that a man must not offend fellow man to the extent that he departs the earth with the burden of grief of that offence carried to his grave, we would remember how Gowon caught the whole world in pleasant disbelief when he dramatically appeared at a birthday anniversary of the Ishara-born Professor of Dramatic Arts to apologize for his action in ordering his arrest and detention for close to two years on the allegation of espionage committed by him in complicity with Ojukwu during the Nigeria- Biafra civil war.”