Following his capitulation, (Major Chukwuma) Nzeogwu was brought to Lagos and admitted at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) where I went to see him. I asked why they killed all senior officers in Lagos and Kaduna, and further asked, ‘do you realise the damage this has done to the esprit de corps of the army and the Nigerian armed forces?’ After I asked, ‘why did you kill Ademulegun?’, I realised I should not have bothered because the answer to the question was obvious. Everyone knew he was hostile to Ademulegun; they never agreed on several issues, especially because of what he termed the Brigade Commander’s romance with the Northern political leaders. I then asked: ‘What about Shodeinde, one of the most decent and gentle officers we had?’
At that point, Nzeogwu visibly became truly angry but not with me. He was quite upset with his other colleagues in Lagos, his co-conspirators in the South, especially (Major Emmanuel) Ifeajuna and others at the core of the planning. He said there was no such plan for a one-sided execution, that is, killing of the officers from the North. I was not too convinced, but he sounded quite sincere and it truly sounded like he was double-crossed by his colleagues. I then made him realise, just in case he didn’t know, the enormity of the problem they had created. I said: ‘Do you realise what you have done? You’ve taught other people what they could do, and it could go against anybody or group in the future’…My well-known position remains that Nzeogwu was ‘a misguided but gallant soldier with principles’, which was a primary reason I ordered that he be buried with full military honours after he died in battle during the civil war…
The foregoing is an excerpt from the 855-page memoir/autobiography of former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. I obtained a copy of ‘My Life of Duty and Allegiance’ on Monday evening and by Tuesday afternoon I had completed the reading of what is, without doubt, a very important account of our national history. Having for decades said he would not write a memoir so as not to ‘open old wounds’, Gowon admitted at the presentation on Tuesday that he changed his mind to “preserve institutional memory through a truthful documentation of my experience.” He also responded to people he said have peddled misinformation about him. The people to whom Gowon ‘replied’ include Alexander Madiebor, Murtala Muhammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, Godwin Daboh, Chinua Achebe and of course, those he described as ‘Biafra propagandists’ like the late Frederick Forsyth, Uche Chukwumerije and Cyprian Ekwensi.
It is clear from Gowon’s book, as it is with most accounts of that era, that the crisis of Nigeria started from the 15 January 1966 military coup and the selection of military and civilian targets for execution by the planners. That coup led to the countercoup of July the same year and the train of events that culminated in a three-year civil war. Gowon began by recalling the 1964 jostle in the military for succession to the then departing British head of the army and the role he played at the time. Four men were in competition: Brigadier Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, NA 3; Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, NA 4; Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, NA 6 and Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari (the only Sandhurst trained officer), NA 8. “In my position as Adjunct General, my counsel was sought on who I thought was best suited for the office. I was lucky in the sense that Alhaji Muhammed Ribadu, the Minister of Defence at the time, had high regard for me. He asked the Permanent Secretary, Mr Abdulaziz Atta, to sound me out. I gave him my honest assessment of all the officers under consideration. With me, Ademulegun’s highly temperamental disposition knocked him off. Ogundipe, I felt, would have command-and-control issues. Although I believed Maimalari was very capable as an officer, I was more favourably disposed to having Ironsi appointed as GOC because he was a good officer and given the situation at hand, it made a lot of sense to respect seniority within the officer’s corps so as not to create any bad blood amongst us. Ironsi matched my inclinations. I recommended him.”
However, Gowon’s faith in Ironsi began to shake on 15th January 1966 after the first military coup that took out many northern leaders and military officers. The story of how one of the plotters saved his (Gowon’s) life for an intervention he once did regarding foreign posting is quite revealing, but the lopsidedness of the killings was an issue. “All the officers affected happened to have come from the same school—Barewa College and from the same region—the North and of the rank of Lt Col and above. All were the most senior officers from the North and were believed to be loyal to the country’s leadership and Maimalari.” Meanwhile, seven months earlier in May 1965, Gowon had gone on a military training at the Joint Services Staff College (JSSC) in Latimer, UK and, as he recalled, returned to Nigeria on 13th January, “hours before a catastrophic occurrence which changed the history of Nigeria and the story of my life.”
On 14 January 1966, a day after Gowon returned to Lagos, a party had been organized by Maimalari with many officers, including Ironsi, in attendance. Gowon did not spend much time at the party before leaving. Not long after, the same Ironsi was at Ikeja Cantonment rallying troops in a manner that would later arouse Gowon’s curiousity, if not suspicion. “The harvest of deaths yielded answers to some of the questions that had bothered my mind a few hours earlier. I instantly recalled I had asked Martin Adamu why it was the GOC, Ironsi, and not the Brigade Commander, Maimalari, that arrived at the barracks in Ikeja immediately after the H-Hour the coup planners struck. It now seemed clear to me that the GOC, General Ironsi, must have known what was happening and what happened to the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie Eboh, and Brigadier General Maimalari who had all been killed.”
It was not only Ironsi’s sudden appearance in Ikeja that worried Gowon but what transpired between them earlier at the same party, as he (Gowon) was leaving with his girlfriend. “Ironsi’s statement to Edith (Ike but later, Okongwu) and me when we took our leave from him at the party a few hours earlier came back to me. On our way out, he had said to us, ‘Have a nice time; you never know tomorrow.’ Of course, I knew that the GOC’s remark was vulgar but, given my state of mind then, I had easily waved it aside. However, in the situation that we were in before dawn and with what happened, Ironsi’s reference to ‘tomorrow’ suddenly took on a new meaning.”
After highlighting the circumstances under which Ironsi became Head of State, Gowon detailed the misgivings within the military of some actions taken by their C-in-C, especially when the report of the investigative panel revealed that the January 15 coup “bore heavy ‘Igbo’ stamp because no officer from the North was involved and no Yoruba officers, apart from Major Wale Ademoyega were named as primary accomplishes.” The details of the second coup, how he (Gowon) tried to save Ironsi and the roles played by the actors are quite revealing. So is how he was made the Head of State (at age 31 and a bachelor) against his wish and the disagreements with Ojukwu which eventually led to the civil war. Gowon’s recollection of the civil war is insightful but also measured. The roles of the UK, United States, France and Soviet Union are also documented.
Gowon’s conclusion is that Biafra lasted as long as it did basically due to a well-oiled propaganda machine which, as he argues, continues till today. “Although the war ended more than half a century ago, remnants of Biafran propaganda still pop up in a lot of literature purveyed by writers from Eastern Nigeria, especially by the late Chinua Achebe. His stories were easily digestible because they appeared so palatable, yet they were so far away from the truth,” Gowon wrote. “Later day writers, too, have rehashed some of these stories in enchanting prose that made pretensions to speaking truth about war-time Nigeria too subjective and well-off mark. God knows if we had behaved in the way some crude leaders did or if we had acted like some other countries would have done, there would have been no talk of reconciliation or keeping the country together. In the end, to parody the writer, Chinua Achebe, there really would have been no country.”
In January 2013, I started what I thought would be a long series, Memories of Biafran Nightmares, following my encounter with the late Rev Moses Iloh, who headed the Red Cross in Biafra. Given the responses I received after publishing the first part, I knew I was embarking on a dangerous mission. Former Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) President, Mr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN did not take kindly to Iloh’s account of how his car was seized by the late Justice Geoffery Ubaka Agbakoba, a former Chief Justice of the defunct East Central State, who happened to be Olisa Agbakoba’s father. I ended the second part, Still on the Biafran Nightmares…, with a terse line: “I am done with Biafra.”
Apart from governance and the reforms initiated, Gowon also recounted the circumstances surrounding the coup that topped his administration and the Dimka-led coup against Murtala Muhammed to which he was linked. But it is in how he was toppled that Gowon gives himself away. “The coup that terminated our administration made me more aware of the fickleness of human nature…it is not my style to want to expose people, especially close friends, who might have betrayed my trust. Instead, I leave them to the pangs of their conscience.” But Gowon did not leave some of them, especially two, to their conscience. He took his pound of flesh, albeit in a subtle manner. Both are now of blessed memory: Joe Garba and Abdullahi Mohammed who were Colonels at the time. The former was Commander of the Federal Guards Unit while the latter (who would later be Chief of Staff to both Presidents Obasanjo and the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua) was the Director of Military Intelligence.
Gowon also did a character reference on many of our famous retired Generals since they all, at one time or another, served under him. There were many references to Obasanjo whom Gowon said would never willingly agree to be number two to anybody—not even to himself, Obasanjo! But it is the portrait of the late Murtala Muhammed whom Gowon described a “temperamental, contentious and highly impulsive individual” that I find most interesting. He was Murtala’s senior at Barewa College. “Many a time in school, he would pick fights with some of his colleagues, especially Hamza Zayyad who would later chair Nigeria’s Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE). Both would typically injure each other before reporting to the school’s dispensary where I was in charge.” But that did not prevent Murtala from fighting Zayyad or somebody else the next day!
Despite their differences, Gowon also attested to Ojukwu’s sense of humour, citing a particular one to make his point. In June 1968, the then British Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Lord Malcolm Shepherd, visited Gowon in Lagos and Ojukwu in Enugu. Displeased with the report the minister took back to London, Ojukwu reportedly retorted, ‘Certainly, this Lord is not my Shepherd!’ Gowon remarked: “Even in anger, Ojukwu still maintained some of his edgy humour as he played on the title of the life and peer, The Lord Shepherd.”
Gowon ruled for nine years and it was under his administration that Nigeria started to reap the oil windfall. The current generation of Nigerians will marvel at a story told by Gowon on the day he received a call from then Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Dr Clement Isong, a Harvard-trained economist, seeking appointment on an emergency situation. Having cancelled all his appointment to see Isong, Gowon said he was surprised to see the CBN Governor walk in with excitement. “Governor, what was so important that you could not tell me on the red line? And why are you looking so happy with yourself?” Gowon reportedly asked, especially considering that he had been worried. “My question did not erase the smile on his (Isong’s) face. Instead, he sounded far happier than I had thought when he began to explain the purpose of his earlier call. ‘Sir, I have come to tell you that we’ve got so much money and I do not know what to do with it?’”
I leave readers to find out the interaction that followed at period when Nigeria had more money than sense. But let me drop this from Gowon: “Indeed, this was at a time the World Bank came to borrow money from our government to finance industrial developments in some developing countries. We obliged the World Bank on the condition that there would be no delays in repayment whenever we needed our money to finance various obligations on our national development plans.”
I know what usually follows whenever I write on a book like this. For that reason, I called Dotun Eyinade yesterday to ask whether they have copies of Gowon’s book and he assured me they do. So, whoever wants to read the book should contact RovingHeights Bookstores.
In his review at the presentation on Tuesday, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Mathew Hassan Kukah broke down the book into five key themes: The Three Coups; Times of Trials and Tribulations; Truth and Redemption; Victoria Gowon: Wife, Shield, Diplomat and Chief Security Officer and Nigeria: Who Next, What Next? But as insightful as Kukah’s take, BOOK REVIEW: Inside Yakubu Gowon’s “My Life of Duty and Allegiance”, By Mathew Hassan Kukah is, it still doesn’t capture the whole essence of the book.
However, whatever one makes of Gowon’s account, and there will be contestations, as there should be with any memoir that touches on such defining moments in our national history, it is a reminder that the past is never really past in Nigeria. The ghosts of 1966 and the civil war continue to haunt our present, shaping how we see ourselves and one another more than half a century later. That Gowon, now in his nineties, finally decided to put pen to paper suggests he understood that silence, however well-intentioned, is not always golden, and sometimes, the old wounds must be reopened, examined, and properly dressed if they are ever to heal. Whether ‘My Life of Duty and Allegiance’ will contribute to that healing or add another layer to our contested narratives remains to be seen. But the conversation it provokes is important, especially at a time when the centrifugal forces threatening our union seem stronger than the bonds holding us together.
Now, COYG!
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