By Ray Ekpu
A former Nigeria Head of State General Yakubu Gowon has just clocked 90 years. His admission into the nonagenarian club has brought to the fore his role in Nigerian affairs especially his role in the Biafran war aka Nigerian civil war: A prominent Igbo politician and presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) had the decency to congratulate Gowon. Some of his followers have demonized him for his charm offensive. They probably think that since Gowon was at the other end of the Biafran war in which many Igbos and other Easterners died he deserves no goodwill message from Peter Obi who has now become the most prominent Igbo politician in our polity.
But Peter Obi is a politician who needs the goodwill of Nigerians from all parts of the country to make an electoral impact in future presidential elections. If he despises Gowon because of the civil war those who admire Gowon for conducting the war in a humane manner may also despise him when he needs their votes. Besides, behaving in a statesmanly manner puts Obi in the good books of those who believe in propriety, who believe that our past, particularly our bad past, must not be allowed to haunt us forever.
In any case, the man at the other end of the war, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was treated by Obi very decently and respectfully. When Ojukwu was sick in 2011 Obi who was the Governor of Anambra State then arranged for Ojukwu to be treated in a hospital in London. He visited Ojukwu there several times. His wife Margaret was with Ojukwu’s wife, Bianca at his bedside in London throughout his ailing days. Ojukwu, too, had supported Obi when he had political problems in his party the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA). Ojukwu went to Onitsha to campaign for Obi. He said: “Why I came is for it to be clear to everybody that Igboland is not a bush but a land owned by somebody. The owners of Igboland are Igbo. What I want everybody to know today is that Igboland is Igboland and that Igbos agreed that their leader is Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. All the Igbos have agreed that wherever I go they will go. What I am telling you is that I have come out again so that I will tell you where I am going.”
With Ojukwu’s support Obi won the election. But Obi had since done his political arithmetic and come to the inescapable conclusion that APGA does not have the national spread that he needs if he wants to play at the national level. He had since abandoned APGA for PDP and also abandoned PDP for Labour Party (LP) where he has now pitched his tent.
But it is the height of partisanship to condemn Gowon only for the civil war. Neither Gowon nor Ojukwu can be free from blame on the civil war. Every war is avoidable if the leaders do not think that pacifism is a disguise for cowardice. It is not. The only alternative to co-existence is co-destruction.
Yes, we had a coup on January 15, 1966 that took the lives of some politicians from some parts of the country especially the north and set the nation on edge. Yes, on May 29, 1966 a number of Eastern Nigerians, most of them Igbos, were killed in the north. As the body bags arrived in the Eastern Region Ojukwu, the Military Governor of Eastern Region described the incident as pogrom. Yes, on July 29, 1966 another coup occurred which was called revenge coup. This coup took the lives of several people from the Eastern Region including that of the Head of State Major General J.T.U Aguiyi Ironsi. These three killing scenarios compounded the ethnic and political problems of Nigeria, problems that needed concessions rather than confrontations for solutions to be arrived at.
Gowon and Ojukwu carried themselves to Aburi in Ghana in January 1967 and under the leadership of Ghana’s Head of State, General Joseph Ankrah, they sought for a way out of the imbroglio. They arrived at a series of decisions that Nigerians thought were the magic formula for our unity and co-existence. On arriving back in Nigeria some federal civil servants thought that Gowon had given away too much to Ojukwu. Ojukwu and his advisers insisted on the full implementation of the Aburi accord. The slogan “on Aburi we stand” was born.
For six months the country was drifting to the edge of the precipice. Tension ran high. You could cut it with a knife. On May 27, 1967 Gowon came up with a master stroke. He announced a 12-state structure for the country, equally divided between the north and the south. That was Gowon’s way of solving the problem of the minorities in the South who had been campaigning for Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers States (COR) without success. That creation definitely complicated for Ojukwu the problem of unity in the region. However, on May 30, 1967 Ojukwu declared the Eastern Region an independent country and named it the Republic of Biafra. On July 6, 1967 the guns boomed from Ogoja in present day Cross River State. A civil war had begun.
Did Ojukwu expect to get away with the declaration of secession? He was too smart to think so. Mt belief is that he thought he would get enough global support because of oil in the region. He got recognition from five countries namely; Tanzania, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Haiti. None of them was a major power so their support meant next to nothing for Biafra or Ojukwu.
It was also surprising that Ojukwu, a military officer who knew the military strength of Nigeria chose to engage in such a frivolous, volatile gamble. Here are the facts: Major Abubakar A. Atofaran had in his work titled, “The Nigerian Civil War Causes, Strategies and Lessons Learnt had listed the major military installations in Nigeria before the 1966 coup. In Northern Nigeria there were 14 military institutions namely 3rd battalion, 15th battalion, 1 Field Battery, 1 Field Squadron, 88 Transport Regiment, Nigeria Defence Academy, Ordinance Depot, 44 Military Hospital, Nigeria Military Training College, Recon Squadron & Regiment, Nigerian Air Force, Ammunitions Factory, Recruit Training Depot and Nigerian military School. All of these facilities were located in Kaduna except three that were located in Zaria and Kano. There were three facilities located in Western Nigeria. These were 4th Battalion, 2 Field Battery (Arty), 2 Room Squadron. Two of these were allocated in Abeokuta and one in Ibadan.
In Eastern Nigeria there was only one, yes one, the 1st Battalion which was located in Enugu. With such a huge difference between what was in the Eastern Region and what was in the other two regions why did Ojukwu make the Eastern Region a war target? Was he tempted or lured by the fact that there were no demonstrations or protests in the Eastern Region against the secession? Again, my theory is that Ojukwu thought that some foreign powers would probably back Biafra because of the oil in the region. Ojukwu, a man who was a demagogue and a rhetorician even said that “even the grass would fight.” I lived in the Eastern Region throughout the war, I did not see the grass fight. It was the soldiers on both sides of the war that killed the grass as they marched through the bushes with their big boots.
Neither Ojukwu nor Gowon was or is a hero. War is a coward’s way of escaping from the problem of acquiring peace. In war soldiers kill soldiers but in every war they kill more civilians, directly or indirectly. So the truth is that in the long run all wars are lost; they bring only losers, no winners.
In the Nigerian civil war Biafra surrendered to Nigeria but Nigeria was not a winner. The problems of that war are still with us today. Biafra has been resurrected by young people who have no idea about the monstrosity of a war. So whether you choose to queue up behind Gowon or Ojukwu simply bear in mind that none of them is a hero of the Nigerian project because they both failed to avoid war. They both contributed to the dire consequences of that avoidable war in which over one million lives were lost and unquantifiable property destroyed.
The above by Nigeria’s foremost journalists, Ray Ekpu, was first published by The Sun