Yakubu Gowon and the ramblings of discontent

Nigeria's Schism

DIALOGUE WITH NIGERIA BY AKIN OSUNTOKUN 

F ormer military head of state and elder statesman, General Yakubu
Gowon, cuts a quixotic figure of history and complicates the taxonomy of
the 1966-70 era of Nigeria’s history. If you have not heard of taxonomy
before, you are not alone-you are, in fact, in the majority. ‘Taxonomy
is one of those words that most people never hear or use. Basically, a
taxonomy is a way to group things together’ and a less specific but more
familiar synonym would be classification.

So what was the taxonomy of this most problematic era? Originally the
taxonomy was the Eastern region versus the Northern region and then it
widened to become the Northern region (plus Western region) versus the
Eastern region. There was also the overlapping classification of the
Army hawks of both Eastern and Northern regions versus one another. The
former was headed by the late Ikemba Emeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, while the
latter was anchored by the late General Murtala Mohammed and it was
between the bellicosity of these two forceful personalities that the
civil war became inevitable.

According to the biography of General Ibrahim Babangida (authored by
Dan Agbese) the Northern countercoup was spearheaded by Murtala Mohammed
“As soon as he (Gowon) knew on the night of July 29, 1966 that the
commander in chief had been kidnapped in Ibadan and learnt of the
identities of those involved, he tried to save the lives of
Aguiyi-Ironsi and Fajuyi. Unfortunately he knew too late and acted too
late…..Gowon went to Ikeja cantonment where he met Major Murtala
Muhammed and the others”.

“As the most senior Northern officer, they deferred to him. It is not
clear if they had him in mind all along to succeed Aguiyi-Ironsi but in
the circumstances, the majority of the officers who planned the coup
accepted his leadership. The rebels ignored Gowon’s argument that the
military hierarchy be maintained. He flatly rejected the other demand,
that Northern troops be withdrawn from the South in a secessionist bid”.

Ahmadu Kurfi offers more clarification: “The original intention of the
July 29, 1966 counter coup leaders was to seize the reign of government
and then announce the secession of the Northern Region from the rest of
the country. This was in line with the general mood of the people of the
North, whose clarion call during the May 29 disturbances in the North
which claimed many Igbos lives was Araba or Aware (Hausa word for
“secede”). In fact, the coup leaders instructed Northern elements in
Lagos to leave the metropolis for the North, giving a deadline within
which to comply”.

“The original draft speech of the new head of state declaring secession
was modified by civilians who were holding discussions with the coup
leaders. The revised version was broadcast to the nation by the new
Supreme Commander, Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon on August 1, 1966. A portion of
the speech implied that the intentions to secede or to resort to
confederal arrangement were not abandoned  altogether”.

One of the major contradictions of this vicious era was the spectacle
of an officer of Gowon’s genteel temperament and dovish predilection
emerging as the helmsman of the federal armed forces onslaught. It seems
highly improbable that a man of his pacific disposition could seize the
initiative, stabilise the volatile cross-currents and stare
unflinchingly at Ojukwu’s bravado-all by himself. Hence the perception
and apparent reality of him being a proxy of the ultra-Northern
nationalist hawks dictating the tune behind the scenes.

There were credible speculations of the role of the British government
(through their high commissioner in Lagos) in ensuring the back-track of
the Northern forces from the original resolve of taking the Northern
region out of the Nigerian federation. And it is more logical and
plausible to expect the British (in its capacity as the neo-colonial
minder of Nigeria) to exercise this vested interest at a most critical
junction for Nigeria rather than imagine a contrary scenario of
disinterested detachment.

Gowon was an unlikely war time general and the unique virtue he brought
to bear on the conduct of the war was the competent diplomatic
management of its aftermath. If the war had to happen-he was, no doubt,
one of the least objectionable faces to enforce the will of a Northern
region controlled federal government-fighting a morally challenged war.
And here again we come upon the complexities of the war. Any other
commander-in-chief answering to a Northern Muslim identity would be
prone to a lot more demonisation and deemed less tolerable to America
and other Western powers-answerable to a powerful Judeo-Christian lobby.

The grave imperfections of the war notwithstanding (and I say this with
due regard to the sensibilities of the war victims). It is also
doubtful if any other putative commander-in-chief would have conducted
the war with better sensitivity to the acceptance of the secessionists 
as estranged siblings. Similarly, given the ferociously disagreeable
mood of the Northern officer corps, any one of them-other than Gowon,
would be relatively indisposed to relate less cantankerously with other
Nigerian stakeholders and vice versa.

Gowon personifies the rebuke of inadequately informed theoreticians
sold on the simplistic classification of Nigeria as a near categorical
division between a Christian South and a Muslim North; but reinforced
the advantage of being adopted by the hegemonic Muslim North with the
tolerance and acceptance of the largely Christian South.

In his stewardship, we find the practical manifestation of the instance
of what political scientists call the utility of cross-cutting
cleavages-on which the hope of a cohesive and integrated Nigeria
ultimately resides. Cross-cutting cleavages describe a situation of
overlapping cultural identities across ethno-regional demarcations
(within the same country) in which, for instance, the significant
population of Christians in a predominantly Muslim region is matched by
significant Muslim presence in a perceived predominantly Christian
region.

As his personality gets better clarified it is easy to understand why
it is difficult to dislike or remain unforgiving of Gowon. Along with
General Abdusalam Abubakar and Alhaji Shehu Shagari, he is perhaps the
least ego driven and inoffensive occupant of the C-in-C office.

Despite being the most senior Army officer from the Northern region;
and copious evidences from intelligence sources notwithstanding, Gowon
was relatively in the dark concerning the counter coup. On what steps to
take in the wake of the coup he had to seek guidance and directive from
the chauvinistic ideologues of the counter coup holding out at Ikeja
cantonment-who pointedly declined his plea for the restoration of rank
and seniority discipline to the military.

In the words of Dan Agbese, ‘Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe (who was next
in command to Aguiyi-Ironsi) found out even a sergeant would not take
orders from him or Major Mobolaji Johnson……a soldier, presumably a
Northerner, reportedly told Commodore Akinwale Wey, head of the Nigerian
navy, that he was going to take orders only from his Captain,
presumably a Northerner’.

As further indication of Gowon’s tendency to avoid confrontation,
Agbese reminded us that ‘as far back as April 1975, Gowon was said to
have been pretty certain there was a plan afoot to oust him. Just before
he left for Kampala, in July, to attend the OAU meeting, he called Joe
Garba and told him that if they wanted to topple him, he was not going
to stop them, but that they must make sure there was no bloodshed’

The dialectics of irreconcilable intra-regional differences within the
Northern region resulted in the middle-belt agitation for
semi-autonomous identity-and found national resonance in the widespread
micro-nationalist agitations for a bigger slice of the national pie
(couched in the relentless demands for creation of states and local
governments).

Critical intimations of the autonomous identity-crisis syndrome include
the aborted Dimka coup of 1976, whose exclusive middle-belt conspiracy
caucus featured heavy weights like General Ilya Bisalla and police
commissioner J D Gomwalk as ringleaders; and ultimately implicated Gowon
himself, who was indicted as grand patron of the coup.

The pre-empted Mamman Jiya Vatsa coup of 1987 and to a lesser extent
the ill-fated Gideon Orkar attempted putsch of 1990 reinforced the
precedence of the Dimka coup-in its ascription as pan middle-belt revolt
and foreshadow  the now more or less conclusive intra-regional split
within the North.

The electoral civilian politics aspect of the schism was indicated in
the election of Solomon Lar as the first civilian governor of Plateau
State on the platform of the specifically non Northern party called the
Nigeria’s Peoples’ Party (NPP), founded (as essentially Igbo party) by
the late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe.

In the contemporary and increasingly violent intra-regional dichotomy
within the North, Gowon has his task cut out for him. As a resident of
Jos, he is well exposed to the full measure of just how far gone is the
adversity and division within the region- represented in the scorched
earth irredentist warfare between so called indigenes and non-indigenes
invariably corresponding to the Christian/Muslim polarisation.

Tragically, the problem has defied all mediatory efforts and appears to
have acquired a self-propelling momentum. Relative to the (now almost
weekly rampaging) reciprocal slaughter between the rogue foot soldiers
of the nomads and settlers; the jihadists and crusaders- the
intermittent Kaduna riots (of yore) look somewhat tame. If there was any
hope of containing the spiralling bloody fratricide, the explosive
arrival of the Boko Haram insurgency on the scene all but put paid to
such hopes.

At 80 years, Gowon deserves all the peace and rest he can get-fate
however seemed to have determined otherwise. The civil war he fought at
the prime of his life appears to have gone full circle and re-emerged in
his regional backyard at the twilight of his years.

I commend his Nigeria Pray initiative as most appropriate and go
further to suggest that the body politic of Nigeria is shot through with
self-abnegating poison and the best place to begin to seek the
detoxification is a prayer of forgiveness and atonement for the sin of
the civil war. It was not a just war and embedded in its outcome was the
seed of Nigeria’s present troubles.

Rather than the vaunted magnanimity of the federal government at the
end of the war, what Nigeria needed was penance.  And then maybe our
prayers concerning peace in the North and all of Nigeria will be
answered. Happy birthday in arrears your excellency.

Culled from ThisDay