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New Page 17
Gowon in Njikoka matrix
ANDY IKE EZEANI
General
Yakubu Gowon loves Nigeria. Not even his harshest critic will contest that. He
does not, however, wear his patriotism and undiluted love for his fatherland as
a badge, to adopt an expression made with pointed emphasis in a different
context by US presidential candidate, John Kerry in the just ended election in
USA.
Gowon’s life and antecedent testify most
eloquently to his total commitment to the survival of the Nigerian state. He
anchors his actions and policies on planks of justice and equity. For his
society that has become a virtual hotbed of corrosive injustice, parochial
politics and primitive accumulation,Gowon seems to believe that through living
an exemplary life of goodwill, sincerity of purpose and brotherhood, the society
may take a cue and yet find salvation.
It takes more than being a jolly good
fellow or having a disposition in sobriety for any man in the position Gowon
found himself at a young age to take some of the positions he took. It takes a
special blessing and a gift of deep, uncommon love for man and country for him
to have done some of the things he did, especially after the civil war.
His declaration of no victor, no
vanquished at the end of the civil war may have seemed in many instances as more
symbolic than real, but even that symbolism was substantially meaningful. He may
not have achieved the ultimate goal of fairness and equity in all critical acts
of his regime when he wielded power as the first in the fairly long line of
military leaders of Nigeria, but there never was any serious doubt about the
nobility of his spirit.
Once the war ended, Gowon moved on and
pursued means of making a nation out of the fractious state. In the years after
his exit from military service and government, he has remained committed to the
same pursuit, albeit from informal angles now. He was and remains remarkably
different from some among his generation. Some of these who were at the
periphery of the execution of the civil war and were by no calculation near
Gowon’s central position as the chief executor of the war are found till date
evincing retrogressive virulence, said to be a hangover from the civil war. Not
so with Jack (as he is called by his peers). He will rather pray for Nigeria and
for all. And he does. His initiation of a national prayer programme, an
extension into the public domain of what must have been a long personal
undertaking, is apparently a supplication for it to be well with Nigeria.
Gowon’s intervention last week in a
critical matter that has become a moral and political burden for Nigeria throws
further light into the nobility of the dominant spirit within him.
By weighing in to canvass that the next
president of Nigeria should come from Igboland, Gowon not only voted
characteristically for equity and fairness, but manifested a profound
appreciation of the disposition and steps necessary to realign Nigeria to the
path of balance, equity and progress. By his intervention, Yakubu Gowon took up
an issue which many are either insincere or too selfish to concede. People of
Gowon’s rare insight realize that there can hardly be progress for an aspirant
nation as Nigeria if injustice and cheating as a state policy persist.
The truth about Yakubu Gowon is that he
does not need to ingratiate himself to the Igbo people to carry on, more so as
it is clear he is not nursing any political ambition. The public stance he has
taken on the need for the next president in 2007 to spring from Igboland can
only be a result of a deep reflection about a loved country that needs as a
necessity be pulled back from a mortal hug with injustice and inequity.
By a certain coincidence, at about the
time that General Gowon was going public with his endorsement for Nigeria’s next
president to be Igbo, a core professional Igbo elite group, Aka Ikenga,striking
a familial chord with Ohanaeze Ndigbo was holding a retreat in Asaba,where the
focus was on leadership, of Igboland and Nigeria. The theme of the retreat,
Njikoka: a search for fresh standards at once made the point that the
existing standards in leadership and values in the society are deficient.
It is doubtful that anyone in the Igboland
in particular or in the larger Nigerian society will contest the reality of this
decline. For every segment of the society really, the need for such
re-evaluation and firming up of the values and standards are nothing but urgent.
For Igboland, the situation is an emergency. The virtual conscription of the
public domain and attendant imposition of new unwholesome values by a crop of
brazen rapscallions have thrown all decent citizens into grief. Money is the
name of their god and what does it matter where the wretched new god comes from?
The attendance at the Asaba retreat was
most impressive: Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, Dr. Alex Ekwueme,Professor Joe
Irukwu,Professor Okonjo,Senate President Adolphus Wabara,Governors Sam Egwu and
Achike Udenwa,Chief Anyim Pius Anyim,Obi of Onitsha,Nnaemeka Achebe,Asagba of
Asaba,Prof.Edozien,Chief Francis Ellah,Admiral Ndubisi Kanu,Chief Christopher
Ezeh,Igwe Umenyiora and an array of younger generation of intellectuals and
professionals who brought rich insights into the issues of social problems and
leadership needs to reshape the society for better result. Professor Bart Nnaji
presented the keynote lecture on which the retreat hinged. He lived up to his
billing as a world scholar with firm roots in his Igbo culture.
Now, make no mistakes about it, the
substance of the Asaba retreat by Aka Ikenga did not derive as much from the
number of colourful or prominent persons in attendance as from the actual
quality of inputs and originality of thoughts. Of course, there were some among
the participants especially from the political band who were part of the
problems in focus. There were some others who were like the proverbial seed sown
on rocky ground. The words sown on those types were bound to be choked by
calculations of survival within Nigeria’s vicious setting.
In all, the search for fresh standards
that Aka Ikenga initiated provided an encouraging basis to further pursue the
project of reclaiming the soul of the Igbo society and by extension, the
Nigerian one from the present grip of sundry vices and their purveyors.Examining
the concept of leadership in our contemporary society and defining how it can be
strengthened for the good of all is a most noble engagement.
It was most apparent at the Asaba retreat
that Nigeria cannot lose but gain when it commits itself to a new dawn with a
president from Igboland, provided the process is not undermined as has become
the case, to throw up one from the present band of reprobates who are at once
the favoured of consistent governments at the center and the source of our
collective grief.
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