By Promise Adiele, PhD
Nigeria’s former military head of state Mr Yakubu Gowon recently marked his 90th birthday anniversary. Expectedly, many Nigerians felicitated him on the landmark occasion. Peter Obi, Labour Party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 general elections, also congratulated the nonagenarian. However, Obi’s congratulatory message has set various news and media platforms agog. Many people fierily questioned the politician for ingratiating himself with a man who legislated the genocide of over three million Igbo people during the Nigeria–Biafra war. Swayed by the emotions his congratulatory message to Gowon provoked, Obi issued a statement explaining why he congratulated Gowon which, in summary, is predicated on his drive for forgiveness, renewal, healing, and the emergence of a New Nigeria.
The incident has once again called the attention of millions of Nigerians to Peter Obi, a private citizen who does not hold any public office, reminding us of the symbolic patch he occupies in the country’s socio-political terrain. Given the way Nigerians bestir over anything about Peter Obi, it seems he is the de facto president of Nigeria. Sadly, Nigerians do not expend the same energy and vigour in holding government officials accountable at all levels.
I once wrote an essay titled “Peter Obi and Nigeria’s Post-Election Blues.” In that essay, I submitted that “It confounds every iota of reason and logic that after the 2023 general elections and the emergence of winners at all levels, some Nigerians are fixated on Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate in the last election. Shockingly, the press and some media spaces are awash with stories about Peter Obi as if he is the president of Nigeria.”
I argued that Nigerians hold Peter Obi accountable in every conceivable way as if he is their president. One wonders if Peter Obi has lost the right as a private citizen to live a normal life or make choices. Anytime he coughs, it becomes a national issue. Any time he blinks, it becomes a motion for debate. Nigerians fervently anticipate his opinion on every issue. During Gowon’s recent celebrations, many Nigerians and other distinguished personalities wished him well. Dr. Chidi Amuta, a respected senior colleague in the literary fraternity wrote an epistle praising Gowon. Other eminent Nigerians did the same and no one batted an eyelid. Immediately after Obi sent his birthday message, the entire country convulsed. Nothing could be more illogical.
It is understandable if some South Easterners, especially Igbo people, are miffed toward Gowon for obvious reasons. But Gowon and Ojukwu, the principal actors in that war made peace before the ex-Biafran warlord passed on. Generally, Igbo people and many South Easterners have made significant progress after the war, proving better than their counterparts in most parts of Nigeria. Igbo people have successfully reintegrated into Nigeria. They live across the country, doing big businesses and flouring in various vocations.
Indeed, many people excoriating Peter Obi for sending the birthday message to Gowon are tied to many Northerners as friends and business associates. At such times, they do not remember the war. But Obi congratulates Gowon and we all remember the war. It is within Obi’s right as a private citizen to congratulate whoever he likes. He did not commit any crime. To ask him not to congratulate Gowon is to mortgage his conscience and invidiously hold onto the past with all its corrosive, retrogressive potential.
Although the current Obi-Gowon saga has elicited a display of historical ignorance of colossal proportions among people, we must bury the hatchet and move on. I have read very laughable but shameful accounts of the war and the events that led to it in the past few days. The purveyors of these misleading stories are positioned to achieve deluding objectives but the conscientious mind must not succumb to such facile, jejune propaganda. Peter Obi is aspiring to be a national leader, therefore given Nigeria’s fragmented national consciousness, it is apt for him to preach peace and forgiveness.
Peter Obi has earned his place in the historical annals of Nigeria as a reconciling phenomenon whose emergence has promoted the hunger and possibility of a New Nigeria. Nigerians cannot be wishing for a New Nigeria and be stuck in all the destabilizing morass that has held the country down over the years. If we must conspire, let us conspire to enthrone an equitable national structure that would lead to the emergence of a New Nigeria and not against a private citizen. That brings me to the issue of conspiracy.
One of the remarkable ingredients of Julius Caesar’s tragedy is his complicity in the conspiracy that led to his tragedy. Is there a conspiracy to implicate Peter Obi in some ways? Perhaps. But he must be careful not to facilitate or become a catalyst in actualizing that conspiracy. At the end of Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame King Odewale avers “the powers would have failed if I did not let them use me”. He admits that he played into the hands of the powers that designed his tragedy. Peter Obi must be careful not to play into the hands of his detractors. Caution to speak and associate should be his watchword. Conspiracy is a fact of the human community. It happens everywhere – at the workplace, the family, church, and society. It takes divine wisdom to recognize conspiracy and take precautions.
The intentions of conspirators are clear – to humiliate, disgrace, and sometimes kill. Unfortunately, a deluded, gullible polity will easily swallow the apocryphal narrative of conspirators. Sometimes such narratives and the associated evidence are elementary and laughable. They arise from a heart full of bile and envy. However, we are encouraged by the avowal of the Holy book in Job 5:12 “He disappointed the devices of the crafty so that their hands could not perform their enterprise”. Those who have been victims of conspiracy can easily relate. Peter Obi, beware.
Many people, within and outside Nigeria interpret the person of Yakubu Gowon in various ways. While some people think he is a hero, other people conceive him as a villain on whose shoulders rest the blood of millions of innocent people including women and children. I have my opinion about Gowon but it is inconsequential in the general scheme. Whether he is a hero or a villain, posterity, that inscrutable unfailing portent, will judge him. It would be difficult to achieve a historical consensus about Gowon however, it is indisputable that he masterminded a war that decimated a part of the country, killing over three million people in the process.
William Shakespeare puts it succinctly “the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”. So let it be with Gowon. However, it is immoral to circumscribe people’s consciences towards self-expression and social interactions as a result of the war. Peter Obi has done absolutely nothing wrong by sending birthday messages to Gowon. Indeed, it is counter-productive to continue to be mired in all the remote tensions associated with the war.
Nigeria needs urgent revival. I have read some dim-witted, hare-brained fellows argue that those who expose the country’s economic and political putrefaction should stop and proffer solutions to the ailing country. Nothing could be blander and puerile. The psychological unease from these categories of Nigerians arises from their fragile, implausible convictions and inability to find a corresponding avenue to defend the anomalies in the country, thus they end up creating a self-debasing image for themselves. Therefore, they shout, ‘stop the criticism and give solutions’. I have never heard of or seen a society where criticism or identifying aspects of social implosion are outlawed.
We must at once erect a moral code as a mechanism to check such mental abstractions which seek to plunge human cognition into irreducible, stagnated gestures. Many critics are motivated by Soyinka’s maxim that ‘the man does in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny’. It will be an unforgivable sin for anyone who possesses the expressive conviction to look away as the current political class lacerates the country. Is the tyranny in the land not loud enough to provoke reactionary voices? I wonder.
As we aspire for a New Nigeria, Nigerians of equitable conscience must reject all signifiers of disunity such as ethnicity and wanton excavation of historical issues that would open healed wounds and create tension in the country. Today, Nigerians of all ethnic persuasions are on their knees crippled by harsh economic conditions orchestrated by World Bank but implemented by a feeble, witless power protocol back home. The fifteen-year minimum timeline given to Nigerians by the World Bank to recover from the current economic blind alley is a clarion call for all well-meaning Nigerians to urge the present government to revisit most of its economic policies. Nigerians should ask questions, criticise, discuss, and hold the political leaders accountable.
If Nigerians would do so with the same energy they hound Peter Obi, the political leaders would adjust their self-seeking ways and embrace more people-oriented policies. The bickering over Peter Obi’s birthday message to Gowon has not and will never contribute anything to improving the country’s economic malaise. Bola Tinubu, all the governors in Nigeria, ministers and political office holders should be held accountable for the country’s circumstances. That is the way of the modern world. To do otherwise would amount to clutching on straws while the country irredeemably nosedives. Will Peter Obi’s congratulatory birthday message to Gowon reduce Nigeria’s spiralling inflation? Certainly no!!! Therefore we march on.
Promise Adiele PhD is of Mountain Top University and can be reached through Promee01@yahoo.com, X: @drpee4
