Toast to Nigerian statesman, officer and gentleman at 80
On October 19, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, former military Head of State who presided over Nigeria’s Civil War (1967-1970), turned 80. The irony of the landmark is gripping.
Gen. Gowon fought tooth-and-nail to keep Nigeria one. Indeed, the war-time acronym from his name, GOWON: Go-On-With-One-Nigeria, showed his personal commitment to his chosen cause, and, on the Nigerian side, the general enthusiastic identification with that cause.
Forty-four years after that war, Nigeria indeed has remained one territory. But the push-and-pull of disintegration has not totally disappeared. That, of course, has nothing to do with Gen. Gowon’s noble and patriotic exertions, for a well-run, united and strong Nigeria is a heartbeat from greatness.
Rather, it has everything to do with not resolving the deep injustices and structural hiccups that led to the war in the first instance. It is a classic case of winning the war, and losing the peace! But again, that had little to do with Gowon, except of course, if his own tiny drizzle of leadership mistakes is now part of the roaring flood of leadership glitches, over the years, now threatening the sanity of the polity; and the integrity of the country.
But despite his mistakes, Gen. Gowon has remained an exemplar: a former ruler as a statesman par excellence; a high ranking soldier as the iconic officer and gentleman; a deposed leader, who bore his setback with grace and nobility; and a crisis-time leader oozing an excellent temper to cope with the perilous times, both with dramatic happenings in the polity and the often rash and hot-headed disposition of his military colleagues, juniors and contemporaries. Looking back on all these, Gen. Gowon has remained a study in calm navigating violent storm.
Comparing and contrasting Gen. Gowon with the late Gen. Murtala Muhammed (who overthrew him in a bloodless coup) and Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo (who succeeded Muhammed after his assassination in a bloody but failed coup) is instructive.
Gen. Muhammed was a hero in a hurry. Like the comet, he hit the land and expired in a flash, taking the Civil Service with him. Not a few believe that Muhammed’s furious but failed reforms of the Civil Service built the foundation of the crippling corruption today, even if the brave soul’s laudable target was to eliminate corruption “with immediate effect.”
Gen. Obasanjo, on the other hand, is a recurring decimal with the Nigerian polity, crowning a tenure as military head of state with that of a two-term elected president in a democratic order. Indeed, given sentiments from Gen. Obasanjo’s Not My Will, Gen. Gowon, who he brashly dismissed as “Mr. Gowon” in the vituperations in the book, was a common criminal all but fit for the gallows — all because of unproven allegations that Gowon was part of the Buka Suka Dimka failed coup that nevertheless killed Muhammed.
With the right temper, however, Gowon showed the way in institution-building and deepening, for it was after his regime and the Muhammed probes that the Civil Service unravelled. And with personal probity and golden quiet, Gowon projected “principle, morality, honour, integrity, character”, words that periodically tumble out of Obasanjo’s mouth but which Gowon exemplifies, even without uttering a word.
Still, on the right temperament for stability, Gen. Gowon was also an excellent study during the Civil War, with the way he managed his hot-head commanders, Murtala Muhammed, Mohammed Shuwa, and Benjamin Adekunle, to somehow achieve the desired balance. A precipitate move against any of them could have upset the applecart and led to more chaos.
If Gowon earned plaudits for the compassionate and humane way he prosecuted the war (though many Igbo that wilted in the Biafran heat would scoff at such a claim), his No Victor No Vanquished philosophy, followed by his famous 3Rs — Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation — was the stuff of which post-victory nobility is made.
Again, many on the Biafran side would dismiss the 3Rs as Nigeria’s post-war gimmick and propaganda. To the extent that no policy can be implemented 100 per cent, the nobility in the concept was crystal clear. Besides, the absence of any post-Civil War recriminations and victimisation, and the fast reintegration of the Igbo into the Nigerian community is tribute to this fine philosophy.
Still, Gen. Gowon was not without blame. He was often perceived as fatalistic, weak and indecisive, an un-military trait, many insisted, that made his 12 governors become a law unto themselves, thus leading to massive corruption. Indeed, 10 of the 12 governors of the era were found remiss, by virtue of the Muhammed government’s probe.
But the Muhammed-Obasanjo government’s attempt to rein in the governors, and turn military governorship into strict military postings, signposted the smashing of a federal Nigeria. That has resulted in the command mentality that has turned Nigeria’s paper federalism into glorified unitary practice, with grave consequences. Yet, without rediscovering a truly federal balance, Nigeria’s economic and developmental future hangs in the balance.
On the political front, Gowon’s most grievous error was reneging on his promise to hand over to a democratic order in 1976. In a broadcast in 1974, he told a shocked nation that the promise was no longer “realistic”, claiming politicians had not learned their lessons and he needed more time to consolidate on the economy. That radicalised his civilian opponents (like the late educationist, Dr. Tai Solarin, who printed a handbill, “The beginning of the end”, which he mass circulated, after newspapers would not publish the opinion on their pages) and gave the military the excuse to move against him. He was ousted in 1975.
On the economic front, the Gowon regime was an era of scrupulous four-year national development plans, under which ambit the regime wrought great infrastructural achievements like Eko Bridge, Ijora Causeway Complex, in Lagos and other groundbreaking roads nationwide. The regime’s expansion of opportunities into universities, with scrapped tuition fees and heavily subsidised meal tickets, also showed a military regime willing and ready to invest the new oil wealth in its citizens. That cannot be said of the so-called “corrective regimes” that came after him.
As Gen. Gowon gracefully ages, he again epitomises what Nigeria can have but strangely appears beyond its reach. He was the most federalist of Nigeria’s military heads of state, with a masterful juggling of federal diversity and the military’s command structure. The Nigerian military exited power in a dust of disgrace, earning the tag of an institution that killed itself with the sweet poison of power. But Gen. Gowon eternally emits the noble image of the military, before the loss of innocence and rectitude.
When basic ennobling mystiques about governance continue to disappear, and the government and whoever are in it continue to project a din of sleaze, distrust and turpitude, Gen. Gowon, with his personal conduct and grace, continues to tell Nigerians that the paradise of a caring, compassionate and empathetic governance can still be regained.
We wish the Gentleman General and statesman many years yet of grace, health, peace and wisdom, as he continues to contribute to the development of his country.