Dr. Yakubu Gowon


By Ori Martins 



Nigeria's second military Head of State and the third executive leader, retired General Yakubu Jack Gowon turned 90 last week. He marked this milestone with a grand celebration and most Nigerians, particularly the elite class, felicitated with him. 


Sadly, the generality of Ndigbo recall with painful memories that it was Gowon that put them in their present precarious position in the country. 


After the January 15,1966, the late General Ironsi who took over power considered and subsequently selected Gowon as his Chief of Army Staff . In doing this, Ironsi considered many factors, including his close relationship with Gowon which got cemented in London. There, Ironsi was the military attache to the  Nigerian envoy in London while Gowon was his ADC. 


Furthermore, on the morning of the coup, the person Ironsi personally dragged out of his bed to assist him in quenching the mutiny in Lagos was also Gowon. It was on those accounts that Ironsi, a disciplined and patriotic leader, chose Gowon above his contemporaries and seniors to be his COAS. (This narration and many more are comprehensively detailed in the book, Ironsi: Nigeria, The Army, Power and Politics, written by the veteran journalist and author, Chuks Iloegbunam


In spite of Ironsi's love and professional consideration for Gowon, he still rose from that elevated position offered to him by his boss and benefactor to plot his brutal assassination and reckless overthrow on July 29,1966.  


In his beautifully researched book, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, the late General Alexander Madiebo graphically recorded that Gowon was the man who plotted the gradual systematic and eventual overthrow of Ironsi. Madiebo accused Gowon of complicity in the dastard act, exposing how he confronted the COAS about his conspiracy plot before the Head of State. But Ironsi believed his COAS than the Kaduna battalion commander. 


On the day of Ironsi's overthrow, Madiebo who later emerged the second Chief of Army Staff in Ojukwu's Biafra, stated  clearly that Gowon supervised the murderous proceedings that led to the killing of the supreme commander, his host, Adekunke Fajuyi, and about 162 other army officers of Igbo extraction in Lagos, Abeokuta, Ibadan and various parts of Northern Nigeria. 


Lady Victoria Ironsi granted me an informal interview in early July, 2006, when I was doing a story for the Sun newspapers to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the late Head of State. 


With misty eyes she said: "I forgive Gowon. I put everything into God's hands. At least all my nine children are graduates. However, I vividly recall with nostalgia that I fed Gowon in London. He lived in my house. In January 1966, my husband appointed him Chief of Army Staff. On the night of July same year, when news filtered to me that my husband was being kidnapped in Ibadan, I called Gowon on several occasions on both his private and official lines, he neither picked nor returned the calls. That was the end and I never saw my husband alive again". 


When Gowon controversially emerged Head of State, the killings of Ndigbo in Northern Nigeria took a different turn and Gowon  kept a criminal silent. In all, the late General Emeka Ojukwu put the figure, conservatively at 50,000.That was the number of Ndigbo that Gowon allowed to be murdered, unprovoked. 


When Ojukwu refused to recognize Gowon as Head of State, insisting that the most senior officer, Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, a Yoruba, must be allowed to reign, or the third man in the hierarchy, Robert Adebayo, another Yoruba, or any of Philip Efiong, Hilary Njoku, Madiebo, etc, the conference in Aburi, Ghana was made possible. 


In Aburi, Gowon agreed to Ojukwu's superior proposal of regional autonomy of the four regions but reneged upon his return to the country. Ojukwu maintained  that "On Aburi We Stand". Contrary to the Aburi Accord, Gowon created the 12 state structure. It was there that Gowon started the Igbo marginalization. His Supreme Military Council (SMC) of about 21 members never had any true Igbo representation. In the 12 states he created, he allotted just the East Central State to the Igbo country and made the former Eastern Minorities  to have two - Rivers and Cross River States thereby overtaking the South East in number of States. 


Today, there are only five States in the South East while the South - South has six alongside other zone except the North West that has seven. 


As Ojukwu never recognized Gowon, and because of the latter's non compliance with the Aburi Accord, worsened by the creation of 12 states to weaken the Igbo stronghold, Ojukwu pulled the East out of Nigeria and named it Peoples Republic of Biafra. 


Gowon thus declared war on the East and prosecuted it with ferocity, committing atrocities of the worst proportion by bombing markets, hospitals, churches, and thickly populated communities. In the end about two million Igbo people were killed, while starvation devastated hundreds of thousands of others. 


Again, Gowon, came out with his 3R policy of Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of post war Nigeria. Yet, he never fulfilled any of these policies. Instead, he sold out Nigeria to other ethnic nationalities without Ndigbo, using a political economic policy of "indeginization". Before that he allowed Ndigbo to go home with just 20 pounds no matter how much any of them had in the bank. 


His Second National Plan never brought any first class or meaningful project to the Igbo nation in comparison to what he established in other zones. 


In real terms, Gowon set Ndigbo backward. He depopulated the Igbo country with the civil war and reduced the states by giving the Igbo area just one state in his 12 states creation. Since then, all other governments in Nigeria have continued from where Gowon stopped in Igbo marginalization. 


Also, Gowon removed the iron and steel project at Enugu and took it to Ajeokuta. 


Yet, we wish him happy birthday anniversary. But we cannot forget...


Martins is a journalist and pro-democracy activist