Transcript CNN International interview with Nigeria's President Obasanjo and USAfricaonline.com Publisher Chido Nwangwu on Democracy and Security Issues

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Biafra: Gowon's needless fights with history and Ojukwu

By NKEM EKEOPARA

Special and Exclusive to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
USAfricaonline.com and NigeriaCentral.com

Nigeria's former miliatry dictator (1966-1975), retired General Yakubu Gowon was the man who led -on the Nigerian side - the prosecution of the unjust and bloody Biafra-Nigeria war. At the 'cessation of hostilities' in January 1970, Gowon declared to the world that there was no victor, and no vanquished. To heal the destroyed, brutalized and decimated infrastructure of the Biafra, that is, the former Eastern Region, the main theatre of that most brutal war in Africa's recent history, Gowon talked about 'Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation', the so-called 3Rs. But with his recent comments, the world which believed him at the time have doubts, today. Ndigbo knew better even in 1970.

One of Gowon's war officer's is Nigeria's current ruler, retired Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, who have more than added to the global concern about the deliberate policy of Nigeria's post-war governments/regimes to discriminate and deny. (See USAfricaonline.com insight on Obasanjo and Biafra by its contributing editor Prof. Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, titled "Obasanjo obsession with Biafra versus facts of history"). The world now knows better as well.

32 years ago on the 3Rs, it did appear that Gowon spoke from his head. He pretended to be speaking from his heart. His latest outing reminds one of the legendary English Playwright, William Shakespeare who noted in one of his great books, Macbeth, that: 'there is no art to find a mind's construction on the face.'

He was a gentleman...' Well, Ndigbo in their time-tasted and cautious ways have always known that 'obi di awuwo/aghugho (the mind is a mastermind). They did not need any 'art' to deconstruct Gowon's mind then. They do not need one now. They felt it and still feel it in every facets of the 'New Nigeria'.

Since the 'end' of Biafra-Nigeria war, views have been expressed in certain quarters that Gowon's government masterminded an official multiple containment policy of exclusion that every Nigerian government has implemented against the Igbo ever since. And this continues to take its toll on the Igbo in particular and the Nigerian State in general, even though their rulers continue to be in denial.

In his recent BBC interview reported on the front page of the Christmas 2002 special edition USAfria The Newspaper (dated January 15, 2003) and the Lagos newspapaper, Vanguard (of December 23, 2002), Gowon appears to have deconstructed his own mind implicitly. And in doing that he said what we have always known and feared, that he would not have 'spared' if they had captured him. What with his recent utterances in a BBC interview regarding the hero and Oxford-trained former head of state of the defunct Republic of Biafra, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, who courageously led his people to challenge injustice and an extermination and genocidal war against Igbos and other easterners. Gowon, as we know served as the leader of the Nigeria soldiers having seized power by military coup in 1966.

Would one be wrong in interpreting this as amounting to the same fate of instant brutal death meted out to the famed Biafran Commander and one of the principal actors of January 15, 1966 coup, Tim Onwuatuegwu and that intellectual giant, Dr. Kalu Ezera on proper identification after the war? Just to mention the most documented. Now can anyone reconcile this with Gowon's apologies over the war, especially at Afikpo about 1998, which was a subject of intense debate among the Igbo in the Diaspora?

Does Gowon in view of his upbeat of having another person's fate in his hands want anyone to take him serious in his traversing over Igboland with his 'Nigeria Prays?'

Is that not a half-hearted and hypocritical preoccupation that is deeply ingrained in the psyche of past and present Nigerian rulers when it comes to Igbo plight and the Nigerian question? Gowon is not God! And thank goodness, Gowon and his local and foreign advisers were not wiser than the Igbo who prevailed on the Biafran leader to proceed abroad at that moment in history.

Further, in Gowon's recent outbursts, he told the BBC that Odumegwu-Ojukwu couldn't be allowed to lead Nigeria because he once sought to divide it. I consider that ill motivated, inciting, very insensitive and most insincere as his authoritative position that he would not have 'spared' Ojukwu if he were captured.

If the fact must be restated, it was Gowon who was a party to the counter military coup of July 29, 1966, the sole aim of which was to effect the secession of Northern Region from the rest of the British contraption, Nigeria. Issuing from the above, Gowon proudly proclaimed to the entire world that there was no basis for one Nigeria. And when it suited him and his advisers, he reversed himself and assumed command over his superiors, thus seeking to bastardize hierarchical discipline in the Nigerian military.

It was an illegality that ought to be resisted. History records that Ojukwu exemplarily and courageously resisted that illegality. He kept a time-honored military tradition, while other senior officers, mostly of Western Region, bowed to it. He deserves respect and honor for his valor and not vilifications. More than anything else, it was Gowon who subverted the Aburi Accord that has now resurrected as a Sovereign National Conference seen as a panacea for resolving the festering Nigerian question. That unholy action was the immediate cause of Biafra-Nigeria war and the resultant genocide that Gowon superintended against the Biafrans. It amounted to a declaration of war on Eastern Region, a peaceful and progressive people, whose nationals had been massacred in their thousands in the other regions of Nigeria, while he (Gowon) watched.

The subversion of Aburi Accord remains at the heart of the current state of anomie in the land. As Ojukwu observed recently, it was a document to which Nigerian leaders accented to its spirit and letter. For Gowon to have assumed supremacy above that document and today wants the world through BBC to believe that he should be exonerated from Nigeria's past, its present unjust structure and tragic consequences, while Ojukwu be made to take the heat, shows how distanced he is still to the realities of those days and much more the uncertainties of present times in Nigeria.

Today, Gowon's 'United Federal Republic of Nigeria' is one poisonously perforated with pervasive insecurity, ethnic bigotry and religious zealotry and I dare say it is one in which the basis of one Nigeria does not now exist, as it did not when he spoke 36 years ago. It is one in which there is no Nigeria and there is no Nigerian in the true sense of it.

Most who believe in Nigeria as it is today and think they are Nigerians are those who continue to ravage the resources of Niger Delta peoples and the Igbo. They are those who benefited and still benefit from Nigeria's infamous corrupt and greedy traditions. Those who shout one united Nigeria are those who are willing always to pity the poor against the poor, exploiting their marginal existence and sometimes are as much willing to sacrifice their comrades to achieve and sustain their selfish ends.

Also, Gowon's 'United Federal Republic of Nigeria' and all those who refer to that amorphous amalgam as such, is one in which truth seekers look in retrospect, and concede to Odumegwu Ojukwu his visionary and heroic status in African history. The reason being that if Gowon did not, shortsightedly, repudiate the Aburi Accord just before the Biafra-Nigeria 1967-1970 war, those conflicts would not have been fought and its high cost to the Igbo and the rest of Nigeria, would have been avoided.

This explains why such statesmen as Julius Nyerere of Tamzania supported the rights of Biafrans to self-determination. Perhaps, countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan would have adopted it and saved Africa the blood spillage in their own regions.

Growth and development would not have been stifled on account of wars and constant threat to peace. Poverty, ignorance and disease would not have been bold imprints on most soils of Africa, from Cape Town to Cairo. Africa would have been a safer, competitive and more prosperous place. The unfortunate thing for Nigeria nay Africa, is that those responsible for such missed opportunities as related above, rather than engage their conscience, the still voice in them in a dialogue of true reflection and repentance, always prefer to revise history themselves or through paid and professional revisionists. And those abound for a penny mostly in Nigeria of today.

Most who know the challenge that Nigeria faces in Bakassi Peninsular that Gowon ceded to Cameroon in order to achieve his total blockade policy against Biafra between 1967-70, believe that such a 'gentleman' should be busy trying to harmlessly detonate that time bomb made more lethal by his successors, especially the mediocre regime in Abuja presently.

He will not do that! He will not take responsibility for that and other mistakes of his junta years. Instead, he chose to re-enter the peoples' consciousness in a few weeks to an uncertain election year through cheap swipes frontally on Ojukwu and indirectly on Biafra, probably an attempt to resurrect the ghost that haunted former Vice President Alex Ifeanyichikwu Ekwueme down in 1999 in his bid for the Nigerian Presidency.

To reach a wider audience, retired General Gowon agreed to make his views known on the BBC. And this is an era, Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary has publicly expressed the courageous view that Britain's colonial legacy is responsible for some of the crises around the world. I believe he singled out Kashmir, Palestine and Iraq in that truthful reflection. To that list, of course, Nigeria (and the later issues which led up to the Biafra 1967-1970 war) should be added.

Why can't Nigerian rulers, past and present speak with such frankness? Why can't they at least own up to their invidious past like the leaders in the Western world and begin a genuine search for an alternate 'United' than this one being sustained on sporadic deaths and destructions? Should they not as well be offering a 'Lott' of apologies from a contrite heart? And if they cannot, should they not just simply 'shut up?' Well, Gowon may choose to fight with history.He may choose to struggle with his conscience. On both scores, he may not be helped by anyone but himself.
Ekeopara is a contributing analyst for USAfricaonline.com and USAfrica The Newspaper (where this December 28, 2002 essay will also appear). Links to this essay are appropriate but archiving on any other web site or newspaper will be a copyright violation.

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