Open confession: I doubt if I can ever be critical of Gen. Yakubu Gowon, former military Head of State (1966-1975).
As a pupil of St. David’s Anglican School, a public primary school in Okesuna-Lafiaji, on Lagos Island, Gen. Gowon, with his Lagos Governor, then Lt. Col. Mobolaji Johnson, did what Osun Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, now does for Osun’s most vulnerable families — school feeding.
True, the Gowon-Johnson mid-day meal programme, for Lagos public schools, was not entirely free.
But for a termly token, the government blessed the pupils with delicious and nutritious food, some of which — like Semo: vita and lina, barley cooked like jollof rice, stuffed with corned beef, spice and dried fish, and other staples, superbly cooked — most of us first sampled, and thoroughly enjoyed, in school. Why, generous fruits and chilled fan milk came with the treat!
That proved superb bonding, with impressionable minds, by a caring state!
So, when by October 1974, the inimitable Dr. Tai Solarin started writing his “Beginning of the end” letter (because Gen. Gowon reneged on a 1976 promised return to civil rule); and other heavyweight moulders of opinion then were calling Gowon the worst to have happened to the Nigerian humanity, a bit of my child’s mind balked — what the hell are these adults talking about?
Though almost a secondary school graduate at Gowon’s 1975 overthrow, and replacement by Brig. Murtala Muhammed, my teenage mind felt something close to personal grief.
Fond recall of the Gowon regime, seeping with child-like innocence and naivety! Even then, Gen. Gowon’s May 15 Abuja recollection of that ouster evoked that same deep pathos, echoing a long lost age, of child-like military innocence!
At his ouster in 1975, he told the 8th AGM and Conference for Heads of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Commonwealth Africa in Abuja, that he had no dime, save his salary savings.
It was a Monday morning, away at Kampala, Uganda, heading the Nigerian delegation to the summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU, now rechristened African Union, AU).
Even worse: his tearful delegates had to contribute part of their estacodes to fly him to London, UK, his new home in exile. Otherwise, he would have been stranded in Uganda. Yet, he had been military Head of State for nine years, superintending Nigeria’s first Oil Boom!
Gen. Gowon’s conclusion? That big-scale corruption came after his regime, since his military successors were scared stiff of ending up kobo-less like him.
With all due respect to Gen. Gowon, that conclusion cannot be right.
For starters poverty, real or feared, cannot be basis for stealing. If stats shows Nigeria’s rich elite are more vicious thieves than the vulnerable poor, it logically follows that those who steal are driven by base instincts, just as those who don’t are driven by high principles.
Besides, there was that “You-Tarka-me-I-Daboh-you” scandal, broken by the old Daily Times. Godwin Daboh (now dead) accused the late Joseph Tarka (Benue co-native and Federal commissioner — minister — under Gowon) of corruption. The crusading media back then accused Gen. Gowon of alleged cover-up.
And, after Gowon’s overthrow, the Murtala regime indicted 10 of Gowon’s 12 state governors for corruption (Lagos’ Mobolaji Johnson and Western State’s Oluwole Rotimi were the two exceptions); and ordered seizure of their assets.
So, for Gen. Gowon to claim corruption came after him would sound rather rich. Yet, there is a sense that hyperbole could make some sense, when you compare the modest Gowon-era military office holders, with the Murtala-Olusegun Obasanjo set of successors.
The mercurial Murtala boomed and roared and kicked against “indiscipline and corruption”. In fairness to his memory, he walked his talk for the six months he ruled (29 July 1975-13 February 1976).
But that cannot be said of his successors, despite projecting empty exceptionalism. The ex-general as a super-rich citizen, bristling with an offensive sense of entitlement, dawned after the Obasanjo handover to civil rule in 1979.
Gowon’s “corrupt” governors included names like Bendel’s iconic Sam Ogbemudia (God bless his soul!), Kano’s Audu Bako, Rivers’ Alfred Diette-Spiff (now a king) and even Kwara’s David Bamigboye.
Though tarred by Gowon ouster probes, their achievements and regime conduct still loom large in their respective states, so much so that the late Ogbemudia, aside from rallying back as elected Bendel (now Edo and Delta states) governor (1 October-31 December 1983), died a hero among his people.
In contrast: former army generals, morphing into emergency, much sought-after boardroom czars, just to pimp illicit influence to corner public sector contracts, was basically a post-Obasanjo affair.
While Gowon, as ex-Head of State, exited as a golden pauper, Obasanjo exited the same position, even after a shorter duration, as a big-time farmer.
Obasanjo’s deputy, the late Maj-Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, that regime’s Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, exited as big-time investor with niche interests in banking, shipping, publishing — the so-called commanding heights of the economy.
Contrast that to Gowon’s No. 2, Vice Admiral Joseph Edet Akinwale Wey (1918-1991), and you’d probably figure out Gowon’s claim that corruption came after him.
Besides, though not many noticed it back then, a more noxious strain of systemic corruption, tailoring public policy to private ends, if not entirely novel, would appear to have luxuriated.
Take Obasanjo’s laudable Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) campaign, of household food gardening and mass farming. That birthed the Land Use Decree (now Land Use Act). But that access to land on the cheap — courtesy that law — created many ex-army general farmers, including Obasanjo himself.
This clever ploy of self-settlement, hiding behind the veneer of productivity, would decay into the subversive generosity, aka ”settlement” and sweeping sleaze of the Babangida regime; and hit the nadir of brazen heist, of the Sani Abacha era.
Why, even Obsasanjo’s second coming, as elected president (1999-2007), boasts its own holy acquisition: when a “blind trust” saw clearly enough to suborn the flower of Economic Nigeria, to “donate” to a sitting president’s exit library! The result today is the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), first in Africa!
Not even the vilest of the Gowon era boasts such audacity! Yet these military regimes, starting with the Muhammadu Buhari junta (January 1984-August 1985), were proud “off-shoots” of the Murtala-Obasanjo regime!
But the spartan Buhari, now sitting president, would appear the only refreshing difference, from that post-Gowon era of holy venality. That clearly explains his missionary zeal to risk all to kill corruption.
But Prof. Wole Soyinka, our own WS, has nailed the anti-corruption argument: until EFCC brings thieving past leaders to justice, there would be little dent on that nation-slaying monster.
