Transcript CNN International Interview Sept 17, 2002 with Nigeria's President Obasanjo and USAfricaonline.com Publisher Chido Nwangwu on Democracy and Security Issues

If I had captured Yakubu Gowon in Biafra....

By Prof. CHIMALUM NWANKWO

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

If I had captured Yakubu Gowon in Biafra, only God knows what I would have done. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for him, he was nowhere and never ventured near Biafra. The story we heard then as Biafran kid soldiers was that he was safely far away from the frontlines, and that even though he was a general, his business as generalissimo only ended after the murder of General Aguiyi Ironsi and indeed at times poorly extended into bunkers in Dodan barracks in fear of air raids by daredevil Biafran air men in dangerously puny planes. I was plunged into these thoughts by Gowon's own dark and sordid yuletide reflections about what he would have done if he had captured Emeka Ojukwu. But how could he have captured Ojukwu? In what sectors of that three year bloody mess, 1967 to 1970, did General Gowon show up?

One of the things which really madly intoxicates me beyond relief about Nigeria and some of the post civil war apologists and defenders of that internecine fratricidal carnage is the silly assumption that because Biafra lost the war those so-called winners were right about it all. But that is the way of the world, thanks to Machiavelli. Winners always take their purple salutes into the heavens of a screwed up moral universe. And now I can only periodically curl up into miserable corners moaning to myself about what I would have done to Yakubu Gowon if I had captured him in Biafra.

I am not running to be Head of the great Nigerian Republic or whatever is left of it as a dream entity, but certainly like Yakubu Gowon and all the other victorious phantom federal generalissimos, I am entitled to wonder aloud to myself privately or in moments of media vainglory about what would have been. I would have enjoyed a few moments even if it is in a kindergarten classroom candid answers from Yakubu Gowon and all the military salvationists for the following puzzles. And let us begin from the beginning...

History has it that Ojukwu was not part of Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu's  January 1966 coup. Indeed when Nzeogwu sent word to Ojukwu at the Kano cantonment demanding to know his stand, General Madiebo's book and other sources have it that Ojukwu arrested Nzeogwu's men. Clearly this is not the bent of a power-mad Igbo secessionist. It looks more to me like the decision or propensity of a man who deeply believed in an orderly Nigerian military heirarchy. We are later told by historical analysts that, in fact, Ojukwu's appointment as Governor of the Eastern Region by General Ironsi was a reward for that military uprightness and discipline. That appreciation, we have also been told, bizzarely extended into Nzeogwu being incacerated in a military hold under Ojukwu's command. Dear Yakubu, it seems to me that up to this point in the mess, Ojukwu still functioned as a fine officer and genetleman as far as the Nigerian military was concerned. True or false ?

Then Ironsi was murdered, with thousands of innocent Easterners and anybody who looked Igbo all over Northern Nigeria.There was flight and fear and national and global outcry over, what till this day, remains inexplicable bloodletting.And there was your famous declaration, Dear Yakubu, that regarding the Nigerian entity,"there was no basis for unity." We all remember also your thanking God that power had come into the hands of another Northerner.There were the Aburi meetings and what looked like an emerging accord, which you reneged after re-considerations by your British mentors and Northern backers. The now published Aburi submissions from the three different regions indicate that regarding the existence of the polity we all call Nigeria, the submission by the North was the most intransigent.The North was clearly sick and tired of the entity called Nigeria and wanted out!!! True or false ?

OK. Biafra was declared. It had to be because Igbo people found themselves in a complex and terrible trap where the Shakespearean onerous "to be or not to be" was more than a question. Then and now, whether the Republic of Biafra was the most appropriate answer remains a terrible and imponderable question. What appears clearer now to the Igbo people and a few honest Nigerians is that there has been a systematic plot to humiliate the Igbo nation for daring to forge a larger more powerful unitaristic meritocracy. The scary tell-tale threat by the Igbo nation is meriticracy, a very ugly word. Western Nigeria loves that word, cautiously. Much of the East would also love it at least catiously also, if they had not been confused with relentless Northern Nigeria propaganda and poorly thought out crude oil driven dreams. Much of the North hates meritocracy because it would threaten the gun-manned dominance which the British willed them to enable the British to control all of us through them for ever and ever...Amen !!!

Many of us concede that you may not have known such critical things initially because you were just an ordinary military coupist without time for books, but at least later you earned serious degrees and even became a Professor somwhere. Certainly, Yakubu,you must know now after your education that the thought of a great and united one Nigeria was something originally envisioned and projected by Herbert Macaulay in his National Council of Nigeria and the Camerouns which later morphed into the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens.Remember that the immortal statesman, Dr. Azikiwe, assumed leadership of the NCNC only because of the accidental and pre-mature death of Macaulay. No party yet among the present assemblage of horse-trading money-sharing kangaroo gangs we now call parties can claim the kind of idea-driven spread which the NCNC inaugurated in Nigerian politics. True or false?

I am saying these things not to insult your professorial intelligence of now but to challenge your fabled Christian morality. I have read with interest about your national prayer meetings in which you and your very religious friends beg God to save Nigeria. Save Nigeria ? I thought you had already completed the salvation process by 'defeating' Biafra? Have all the questions which provoked the war not been answered?

Permit me for being intrigued by your regret that you did not capture Ojukwu during the war? Seriously speaking, you would have if you had ventured nearer the frontlines. I remember clearly that each time things got out of control at the Biafran fronts he came in and led the troops himself. So if you had really acted like a true general, who knows, you would not be full of regret about not capturing him today. And indeed your regret is quite a Christian regret, especially with your addition that you could not vote for him to rule Nigeria today or forgive him for what he did to Nigeria. Pardon my ignorance, I did not know that the whole civil war mess was solely between both of you, with you as Nigeria!! Though I appreciate what T.S. Eliot, the famous modernist Anglo-American poet mused about Christianity in one of his poems. He enthused that the wonder about the Church is that "it can eat and sleep at once." It is that which gives all our Christian declarations their magical fiat. Most Christians can be proud and humble at once!!!

So , do I write all this with an edge of bitterness? Emphatically, yes. I am vengefully bitter about people who are still not tired of using Ojukwu as a whipping post over thirty years from the end of the civil war. I do not like Ojukwu's politics, but I respect him as a man of courage who stood up when history thrust such mighty responsibilities on his shoulders . He was there when quite a few eminent civilians and Nigerian military brass skipped across the waters.The hypocritical Western world looked away from the truth and agony of Igbo pain and dilemma, and he was there. When the whole thing was clear that the White world knew what they wanted from the war and adopted you, Yakubu Gowon, as their baby, Ojukwu remained there, tragically, as the conflict morphed into a struggle for the Black man's wealth and dignity and soul...

So how can I conceal my bitterness? One thing I love about bigots, whether they be red-necks or skin-heads or Klansmen or devious and deadly tribalists and evil apologists, is that at least I know where they are coming from. I detest people who do not have the courage to face this world, eyeball to eyeball!!! And my bitterness rises by a notch when some of such people strut around the planet as christians. I wince in horror and choking disgust.

Look at Nigeria today. Contemplate the waste and the subterranean and open hate and animal growling for loot in the name of politics. Contemplate the suffering masses and the infrastructural decrepitude. Listen to the echoes  and repeated rumblings and grumblings about whatever caused the civil war and think again. Outside the islands of elitist comfort and amazing insensitivity, don't you ever wonder whether you really truly saved Nigeria ?

Contemplate the character and intellectual stature of those ruling or jostling to rule Nigeria today. Don't you wonder, Dear Yakubu, whether you did the right thing, at least, whether you made grave historical mistakes that ought to cancel out the mistakes of some of the rest of us?

We once caught the great Zik at the dead of night pacing up and down the benighted parapet of his Nsukka Onuiyi Residence muttering to  himself in pain. Was  this all we fought for,  agonized the old man...? It was in the height of Babangida's rule. And that was prelude to the heart of the real horror initiated by his more famous friend, the late General Abacha.

In 1967,General Ironsi created 33 ethnically neutral provinces for a meritocratic united and unitary Nigeria, and he was murdered for his vision and wisdom. All that have been replaced with a dreadful centrifuge of ultra-conscious statism bearing the gust of such sweltering hatred and chaos that only God knows where all is headed. Ali Baba is there with his flags and robbers and assassins patroling brazingly all imaginable passageways from the Central Bank of Nigeria to our deepest swamps and jungles. Who is safe there in that your saved polity? We are all watching, and indeed praying...

So you see, in my own christian frankness, I really wonder today what I would have done if I had captured you in Biafra. God knows, I would have asked you quite a few questions... Who knows, I would have crazily leaped from issues of slaughter of Igbo people to my unforgiving curiosity regarding why you were able to capture civilians like Wole Soyinka  instead of Emeka Ojukwu... I do not know whether this kind of aside is relevant but...

Any way, I think your exploits have immortalised you as a great Nigerian general. As a Professor, you may not have published much, but at least you are a Professor.And that kind of accomplishment is quite remarkable after being a Head of State. How many can see such glory? Do you know that even in the United States of America , people go to school first, serve their nation, and become distinguished professors? But in your case, you humbly became a student after serving your nation.

Quite remarkable.But really,you gilded your name finally when you saved Nigeria from disintegration and therefore rendered, till this day, God's further intervention redundant.I really think that all Nigerians must seek you out to now work or if you still prefer, pray hard to see if we could find answers to so many dreadful questions thundering relentlessly between our waking moments and our unceasing nightmares.

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