NIGERIANS have a cult of hypocrisy. When it is time to celebrate or mourn an individual, they let loose a sweeping barrage of eulogies that leaves you with the impression that the celebrant is a saint who has never known evil, or even made mistakes in all his life. When you examine the profile of the whoop-sayers you will find among them those who were equally enthusiastic participating in the sweeping condemnation of the same individual in the past when he had fallen from favour. We tend to sing like choristers, and how we sing depends on the celebrant’s current rating on the grace – grass continuum scale.
This syndrome makes it difficult for posterity to have proper information with which to judge prominent people who have impacted our lives for better or worse. It would be better if our people were more sincere in discussing a person’s contributions to nation building, based on information they have and the genuine impression they are left with.
Last week Tuesday, 19th 2004, the drums were rolled out for Nigeria’s longest serving military ruler, General Yakubu Gowon, who clocked the landmark 70 years. The effusion of tributes poured out at both the Lagos and Abuja ends of the celebration stood in sharp contrast with the avalanche of condemnations when he was ousted in 1975 and more so, when his successor, General Murtala Mohammed, was assassinated in 1976, with Gowon being suspected as the mastermind. In discussing Gowon, therefore, I am not floating on the hypocritical wave of elite passion. I am taking it based on what I am, the information I have and the impression I have formed of this important Nigerian through the years. After all, I am posterity, as far as Gowon is concerned. I was under ten years old when he started happening at the very top of our nation’s affairs, and today I am over forty.
MY impression of General Yakubu Gowon is that he was an excellent war general, a genuine gentleman, a great nation builder in his own way and basically the stooge type of character. An “excellent” general is a war campaigner who wins his war, gains its objectives and also wins the peace after the war. When Gowon stepped over the heads of his seniors and assumed power in July 1966 after the assassination of General Aguiyi-Ironsi, he wound up with the Military Governor of the defunct Eastern Region, Col. Emeka Ojukwu, rejecting his authority and preparing to pull out of Nigeria due to the country’s inability or unwillingness to ensure the safety of his people.
Gowon, therefore, set out to: (a) prevent the secession (keep Nigeria one), (b) remove the capacity of the Igbo to threaten the power of the north, (c) ensure that peace reigned after the war. Towards achieving these lofty objectiveshe built a multi-national coalition. First, he pacified the Yoruba nation by releasing their leaders (especially Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his followers) from jail (where they had been sent by northern leaders) and gave them high profile jobs in his cabinet. He reached out to the Tiv and brought their leader, Dr. Joseph Tarka, who was also jailed by northern leaders and gave him a job in his government.
Next, he unsettled the unity of the East by finally granting the age-old but hitherto-ignored demand for the creation of a separate state for the minorities. He dissolved the Regions and created 12 new states, giving the Eastern Minorities more than the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State (COR) they were looking for; he made it two states – South Eastern State and Rivers. He isolated the core Igboland into an East Central State “homeland”, thus effectively cutting off the core of Biafra from the coasts and the people of the coasts.
This isolation of the core Igbo was a military masterstroke because it subsequently made the Eastern Minorities to abandon Biafra and join the Federal multi-national coalition. It facilitated the military blockade of Biafra and helped to asphyxiate it, as Biafra no longer had easy access to external supplies, including food and military hardware. One of the strategic gambits Gowon pulled was the mortgaging of Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroun to secure our eastern neighbour’s cooperation in ensuring that its borders were not used by the “rebels” for accessing supplies.
Thus, the creation of states brought four major strategic windfalls for the Federal side. As pointed out earlier, it isolated the Igbo and brought the minorities of the East to the Federal side. It cut off sources of supply to the Biafran enclave. It removed the political and economic control of the Igbo from the Minorities and Nigeria at large. Most importantly, it gave the north and their junior but major partners, the west, direct access to the oil resources of the East and Niger Delta. In fact, up till today, this last item is seen as the most attractive incentive for the Yoruba in throwing their lot with Gowon, quite apart from their confessed lack of military preparedness to resist northern soldiers in their domain. Nigeria’s incumbent President, Olusegun Obasanjo, makes no mystery of this fact. And that is why he is ever ready to invoke the powers of the Nigerian state to smash any perceived move by the Minorities themselves to pursue the agenda of “resource control”.
In fact, the oil wealth of the East and Niger Delta became the greatest incentive behind the resolve to “keep Nigeria one” as a “task that must be done”. Since the war ended, the oil wealth of this zone of Nigeria (which would have gone with Biafra had the secession succeeded), has been the number one sustaining economic factor for the entire federation. Ironically, the people of the localities in which this wealth is hatched – the people of the former new states of Cross River and Rivers – added to the old Midwest, have equally been sidelined, like the Igbo, from benefiting from their resources. Gowon used the bulk of the oil wealth to develop the former seat of the Federal Government – Lagos – and parts of the north.
As soon as it became clear that the civil war was headed towards a favourable out come for the Federal side, Gowon, with the wise counsel of his British mentors and advisers, quickly repositioned the earlier revanchist posture of the war against the Igbos. He, in a manner of speaking, “cleaned up his act”. Emphasis was placed on “keeping Nigeria one” and showing magnanimity to Biafrans who gave up the “rebellion”. When eventually a formal surrender was effected, Gowon wisely announced that there was “no victor, no vanquished”. This was an assurance to the former Biafrans that they would not be treated as a defeated people for returning to Nigeria. He also enunciated policies of “reconstruction, rehabilitation and reconciliation”, which further reassured the former Biafrans that the scourge of war would be addressed by the Federal Government. Whether Gowon and his colleagues meant to keep their words was another issue.
It may be that both sides were equally tired of fighting. Or it may be that Gowon realized that having driven the entire Biafran population into the bush, they could resort to guerrilla warfare to survive, where the Federal soldiers and facilities would become sitting targets. Or it could indeed be what the Federal side has been tagging it: “magnanimity”. Whatever it was, Gowon completely secured the war’s objectives. Therefore, his place in the history of country as the architect of what we know today as Nigeria through his masterful design and execution of the civil war, is assured.
We will examine what makes him a “nation builder”, “gentleman” and “stooge” next Thursday.
