Yakubu Gowon: Just Before We Part -By Ochereome Nnanna

I had intended to entitle this article: “Gowon, just before you go.” But I reminded myself that going is not necessarily according to age. The Almighty God, the giver of life, asserted His total sovereignty over life and death by making the date of death unpredictable for all ages. Because of this, I might very easily go before General Yakubu Gowon (PhD) at 88.

The brief rumours of Gowon’s “death” about a fortnight ago prompted me to tell him what I think of his legacy as Nigeria’s erstwhile longest serving leader (nine years) before General Olusegun Obasanjo outdid him with eleven and a half years with his extra eight years as an elected president. Gowon’s rule redefined and thwarted my early life as an Igbo person. It also sowed the seeds of future destruction of the destiny of Nigeria, making nonsense of the romantic poetics of our National Anthems (both versions) and National Pledge. How did Gowon destroy the future of Nigeria?

Yakubu Gowon

In the first place, he failed to make his regime a corrective one. This he could have achieved with the Aburi Accord. The departed British colonialists configured Nigeria inequitably, giving the strategic North dominance. The first “coup of the five Majors” was aimed at correcting the inequities, but it flopped. The coup that brought Gowon was a vengeance by the ousted Sokoto Caliphate regime with two objectives in mind: (a) taking back the power they had lost and (b) removing the Igbo nation from the federal equation to afford them complete control of the unfolding oil wealth of the defunct Eastern Region.

To achieve this, Gowon forged an anti-Igbo grand alliance with the West, Northern Minorities and Southern Minorities as the Caliphate North’s coalition partners. They levied war on the Igbo nation and successfully thwarted their independence from Nigeria. They called it a war “to keep Nigeria One”. This mantra had an idealistic and patriotic ring to it and fired the zeal of many on the federal side while weakening the resolve of some Biafrans who still harboured love for Nigeria.

When Biafra surrendered, Gowon declared “No Victor, No Vanquished”. He followed it up with the three “Rs” – Reconstruction, Reconciliation and Rehabilitation. But it was all false. The Sokoto Caliphate was merely using Gowon to perform a taqiyya or a “holy lie” on the Igbo to deceive them into completely forgetting about the “rebellion”.

Bola Ige with Yakubu Gowon

The manner of creating the 12 states in 1967 had cut off the Igbo hinterland from the coast and oil-producing areas. These, the North and their Western allies took control of, even to the detriment of the very people of the creeks they had hoodwinked into joining them to their Igbo neighbours. Despite all the Niger Delta struggles, the North and West dominate the oil industry governance and own over 80 per cent of the oilwells.

Gowon’s failure to implement his three “Rs” was a continuation of the Caliphate imperialist agenda that led to the first coup. Rather than learning from the consequences of that coup, they reinforced it.

Compare Gowon’s handling of the post-war policies with what the victorious Allied Powers did with Germany, Italy and Japan, the defeated Axis Powers after the Second World War. The Axis were asked to drop militarism. In exchange, they were absorbed into the Western fold, protected and fully supported in their war recovery efforts. German innovations during the War were also mainstreamed by Western technology. Since 1945, there has never been a war in Western Europe. Indeed, Europe formed a thriving economic community – the European Union, EU – with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, as their common defence platform. Germany is the fourth wealthiest country in the world. We like to copy, but our poisoned mindsets drive us to copy for self-destruction.

Gowon and Awolowo

Biafra also had innovations which, if exploited, would have helped launch Nigeria far afield in industrialisation, technology and defence. But Gowon’s victorious federals contemptuously gathered the Biafran innovations into the War Museum in Umuahia. They concentrated on eating the fruits of their victory. Fascinated by the proceeds of the oil wealth of the former Eastern Region, Gowon built massive infrastructures in Lagos, the West and Northern Nigeria. The rest he gave away as the Udoji Award.

That failure to carry the Igbo along was a bad precedent which successive administrations continued to recycle till date. See where it has led Nigeria to: utter failure. Gowon’s leadership defined the failure we face today as a nation because he failed to unite us.

Every charitable or uncharitable attitude is a boomerang or karma. Today, the same Sokoto Caliphate that pushed the taqiyya of false “One Nigeria” on Gowon in 1970 are being attacked, kidnapped, raped, sold into slavery and killed. They are being forced to pay jizyah to home-grown terrorists and bandits – people of their own ethnic and religious brotherhood – before they can enter their farms and earn a living.

Gowon was just a figurehead and a useful tool deployed by the Caliphate to hold their horses while they recovered from their devastation of January 15, 1966 coup. Gowon is a Minority Christian born and raised in Wusasa, Zaria, a commune of largely Hausa Christians in the belly of the Sunni Sokoto Caliphate whale. Inside the federal war machine were Muslim extremists like Murtala Mohammed, Muhammadu Buhari, Sani Abacha and the rest who committed countless war crimes throughout the war.

Gowon and Buhari

Many of them wanted to continue the massacre of the Igbo after the end of the war, but their hands were stayed by Gowon’s British puppeteers who advised Gowon to aim to “win the war and the peace”. “No Victor, No Vanquished” and the three “Rs” were designed to discourage Biafra extremists from resorting to guerrilla warfare which Boko Haram and other jihadist and bandit groups have effectively used to destabilise Nigeria today.

It is good that Gowon is alive to see his handiwork for himself.