Article By Matthew Hassan Kukah
2: Trial And Redemption
The
author’s ordeal started in the hall in Kampala after the announcement of the
coup that overthrew him. Many might ask, why did the author go to Kampala? His
response is that he had to travel to Kampala because of; his determination to
secure the support of other African leaders in Angola’s quest to achieve
independence (p13). He also was anxious to make a good case for ECOWAS which
had just made him Chairman!
The
author had come to Kampala as a Head of State. Now, he was merely a stranded
man with no country. General Amin felt a sense of obligation to his guest. He
offered a detachment of the Ugandan army to go to Nigeria to flush out the
coupists, but his guest would not hear of the possibility of shedding blood to
claim his throne. Happily, on July 25th, his wife, the master strategist with
ears to the ground, despite the author’s protests, insisting that they should
wait for his return, had decided to travel with the children to London for the
summer. He therefore headed to London to join his family.
Barely
seven months later, on February 13, 1976, the Dimka coup happened. A catalogue
of tragic misfortunes followed. The tragic coup took the life of the Head of
State, General Murtala along, a man who had become very popular in the nation
for his courage and patriotism. Dimka went on to make the shocking claims that
the purpose of the coup was to bring back General Gowon to power.
Naturally,
these spurious allegations did go a long way to place the author and his family
in the most precarious situation. He was literally on a head-on collision with
the government of the day. The dramatic turn of events, their impact and
consequences for the integrity of the Gowon family were profound. Chapters
28-32 address this very traumatic phase in the life of the author and his
family. I can only summarise some of the high points of this period as follows:
•
Stranded in Kampala with a total savings of three thousand pounds made up of
collections from estacode of some of his staff and those of the High Commission
in Kampala (p35)
• Idi Amin donated $10,000
• He is officially declared a fugitive.
• Nyassingbe Eyadema offers him refuge in Togo
• His name and records are wiped out from the Nigerian Army
• Streets named after him are changed. Yakubu Gowon Street is renamed Broad
Street
• His two brothers, Captain Moses and Isaiah are arrested and detained for long
spells.
• His daughter’s graveyard is desecrated in Wusasa.
• Government refused to sell his property at No 11 Okotieboh in Ikoyi to him.
• After 19 years of military service, he received N38, 304 out of which only
N20,000 had been remitted to him into his only Bank Account as Head of State
• His pension of Seven thousand pounds was stopped after the February coup in
1976
• His total life savings from 1956-1975 came to N41,000
• Total gratuity received came to N34, 000 with which his house on Sultan Bello
Road in Kaduna was built
• He is homeless in London, madam is an emergency real estate expert
• Emmanuel Oti from Arochukwu offers him his house in London (p605)
• Receives some assistance from a few former Governors here and there
• Ahidjo sends a whopping $50,000 to him (609).
• Ten years after his overthrow, he is unable to pay his children’s fees and
has to approach the then Head of State, General Buhari who had failed to pass
the test to become his orderly
• he is accused of having several properties and bank accounts around the world
but the government could not trace either a bank account or a house
• Like a scene out of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a price and a bounty had
been placed on his head. Anyone who shielded him would do so at great cost.
• He is finally a student in Warwick University and bags a Doctorate
• Nigerians are scandalized at the sight of him carrying a lunch tray in the
cafeteria
• But all Nigerians recall is him lining up with tray for lunch as a scandal
This
was a period of serious frustration even for the government in power. The
federal military government was anxious to get the author to trial, while he
himself was anxious to clear his name. The main problem however lay in the fact
that the author could not trust the military authorities back in Nigeria. In a
broadcast, the Head of State had said clearly: We have made it clear that any country which habours Yakubu Gowon is
committing an unfriendly act towards the government and people of Nigeria. In
the meantime, the Supreme Military Council has decided to dismiss Yakubu Gowon
from the Nigerian Army. He will from now be treated as a wanted person to face
allegations against him anytime he sets foot on the Nigerian soil (p.641).
This
was the most trying period for the Gowon family. It was a time that he could
have sought refuge in a friendly country, where, perhaps like his colleague Col
Ojukwu, he could have pursued some legitimate business or plotted his way back
to power no matter how long it took. Yet, in all of these periods of trials,
the General and his extraordinary wife managed to cope. He suggested that they
surrender their official passports which were now redundant, but his wife, the
diplomat and counsellor, said no. They would place themselves at a greater risk
and could become people with no country!
3: General Gowon: Truth And
Redemption
General
Gowon’s state of mind through this period illustrated what faith can do to a
man who really and truly trusts in God and abandons himself to the supremacy of
the divine will. It was of him that the Psalmist say: A thousand arrows will be thrown your side,
ten thousand by your right. But it shall not come near thee (Ps
91).
As
Head of State, General Gowon had the country as his oyster. He had the
opportunity to own whatever land he wanted. It was during these periods of
trials that his integrity, firm belief in the supremacy of the will of God
shone most. Throughout his career, everything had been about keeping Nigeria
united, making it a great country at all cost. No sacrifice was too much. He
went through the fire of purification.
While
he was Head of State, Brigadier General Mobolaji Johnson, the State Governor
offered him a plot of land but he refused to take it. He saw it as abuse of
office. The Governor decided he would use his wife’s name, but the author still
refused. Finally, after so much pressure, he accepted the offer of a 2.7acre
plot of land in Ikoyi. Even at that, he protested that the land was too large.
The next Governor, Commodore Adekunle Lawal, revoked the land allocation. The
land would be sold, resold and resold while still bearing his name (p627).
In
chapter 32, titled: Realising a
Deferred Dream, the author offers readers new perspectives about how the
idea of Abuja came about and all the hard work that he undertook. Still, in
Abuja, his baby, he did not have a plot of land. While all kinds of characters
had streets named after them, not a single street bore his name. It took the
intervention of General Babangida and Major General Gado Nasco, the then
Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, for him to have a Crescent named
after him! General Nasco went on to allocate a plot of land to the author.
Years later, the plot was not developed. Later, after his workers moved to site
and started work, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the then Minister of the FCT, revoked
the land allocation! It took the intervention of General TY Danjuma for the
decision to be rescinded.
It
would seem that through it all, the relationship between the author and his
successors was not that of vicious hatred. There was still respect. These were
very difficult circumstances and with hindsight, General Murtala still showed
statesmanship towards the author. For example, the author says that: Although General Murtala never really
apologised to me, our mutual friends told me that he had felt bad that I had
been badly treated on suspicions of conspicuous consumption. He said he had
authorised that a lump sum of money be paid to me, but I never saw any money.
No one ever owned up to collecting any such money on my behalf. The
money simply evaporated (p611).
On
General Obasanjo, the successor to Murtala, the same ambivalence seemed to have
played out. Much respect, but constricted by circumstances. General Obasanjo
had delivered a fiery speech warning that any country that harboured the author
would be considered an unfriendly country. However, it would seem that he was
not prepared to go the whole distance to punish his former boss. For example,
in Alison Ayida’s response to Obasanjo’s book, Not My Will, it seemed that
General Obasanjo had been caught between the expediency of his duty as the Head
of State and his commitment to a man he respected. In reality, despite seeking
the repatriation of the author, he did not want the British Government to
extradite him because they were not sure of his safety back home. He may not
have wanted to face the dilemma of putting him to trial.
According
to Mr. Ayida, General Obasanjo had told him to tell the British High
Commissioner that they did not want the author to be repatriated. However, he
had said: If however, the message leaked, the Head of state will deny it and
then castigate him, Ayida, publicly. I accepted my assignment, knowing fully
well that I would be sacrificed if the assignment failed (646). This seemed
fair because earlier in the book, the author had expressed the sentiments he
had for Obasanjo as a young man in the Army. He had said: I became his informal guardian angel and for
security reasons, trusted him more than any other person (p339). It
must have been a difficult time for men who had grown up with tall dreams for
their country, but now found themselves forced to become friendly enemies.
4: Victoria: Wife, Mother, The Shield
And Diplomat Who Wore The Trousers
Victoria
Gowon comes out as the heroine in this book. It is a measure of the greatness
of her husband that he indeed recognised and appreciated her. She comes across
as an ocean of serenity, managing and turning turbulence into a calm. Her
beautiful and serene face hides a gentle yet tough, firm, steely, resolute,
unwavering and a focused heart of granite underneath. She was the
quintessential good woman of the Scriptures of whom the writer of Sirach says:
Happy is the husband of a good wife. The number of his days shall be double
(Sir. 26: 1). The author says of his dear wife at the beginning: Victoria had
become attuned to military life and traditions and her antennae easily picked
signals that I sometime waived aside as basic human intuitions (p16).
It was
in their period in the wilderness and sojourn in the UK that she proved her
mettle. For example, her husband, by virtue of his status as a fugitive, could
not have a bank account in the UK. He also could not earn an income. So, as he
himself lamented, he became a kept man (p616). It took her dexterity to keep an
idle husband and look after three children who were just growing up with no
job. During this period, she knitted bedsheets and pillows for sale, she raised
chickens and even tried raising cows, though she fell victim to swindle.
Despite
the trauma of living with a kept husband, it is interesting that their cook,
Mallam Barau who had served them for years, turned out to have been an
informant for the government planted to spy on him. Sadly, after years of
spying, he couldn’t track anything worth reporting back to his superior. Amidst
these difficulties, she kept the lid and stopped the house from being a
hothouse of anger, quarrels, boredom and intrigues.
Looking
back, I imagine that the author had known all along that he had not married an
ordinary woman who would be dazzled by power. Just in her 20s when they met,
Ms. Victoria Zakari was surprisingly not swept off her feet by this dazzlingly
handsome, whose looks had other women swooning.
The
sheer prospects of what lay ahead as a wife of a Head of State did not daze
her. Her feet stood solidly on firm ground of confidence. When at last this
young, handsome Head of State summoned courage and told her he loved her, she
remained unfazed. She looked at him straight in the eye and told him: If you
mean it, then put it in writing! A whole Head of State with the entire Nigerian
army under his command, with the whole nation under his heels caved in and
wrote down his first love letter, perhaps with his military hands shaking
(pg347). From then, I believe he knew whom he had married.
Then,
finally, the returned to Nigeria, thanks to Alhaji Shehu Shagari graciousness,
a man who had been one of his commissioners as they were then called. Back home
and seeking to settle down, the author was lured into politics. Not
unexpectedly, his wife resented the idea and told her husband as much.
However,
the offer had come from General Babangida through the late Alhaji Dan Kabo.
Appreciating that the General had been partly responsible for his
rehabilitation, the author believed it made sense. Moses Ihonde, his very
dependable aide, was, however, skeptical and warned that General Babangida was
using him to test the political waters of his personal ambitions while actually
plotting to get him, Gowon out of the way. He brushed his wife and Mr. Ihonde’s
anxieties aside and decided to dive into the pool of politics without any
safety jacket.
On a
good day, we like to humour ourselves in the north that there are no religious
differences among us. We pretend that we are all northerners. Yet, Gowon, the
real manifestation of all that there can be in being a northerner fell victim
to the usual intrigues when it mattered. Despite the position he had occupied
as Head of State, despite saving the north when it mattered, despite his family
pedigree in Zaria, the prospects of his victory in the elections brought out
the worst in the muslim political elites. According to the author: Christians and Muslims were threatened with a
fate worse than death if they voted for a Christian candidate….houses will be
burnt [707]. In the end, the people of Zaria bowed to the
intimidation of their elites because they also knew that violence was one of
the strategies and valuable political currencies in political competition and
bargaining. In the end, logically, a little known Alhaji Dalhatu Tafida, a
medical doctor scored 165 votes, while Gowon scored 29!
Not
unexpectedly, rather than be saddened by her husband’s loss, Madam actually
danced and toasted to the results of this treachery. Ruminating and with some
form of remorse, the author said: I had ventured into an unfamiliar territory
in which I had no training and for which my temperament did not seem best
suited (707).
5: What Next, Who Next: Wither
Nigeria?
In
conclusion, let me return to the beginning. The author had concluded his
Preface by stating that: History
has been kind to me and I bear no grudge against anyone. If this book achieves
anything, let it be to show that public service is never a call to vainglory
but an aspiration to guardianship by those who would lead with conscience and
conviction (pxx1). Secondly,
he said: If the way things turned out for me out of office was the gratitude
one got from serving with honesty and integrity, none of my successors wanted
to suffer the same fate (p612).
We
have read several accounts by historians and Generals about the civil war, the
controversies about their roles. We have read General Obasanjo. We have read
Ojukwu. We have read Shagari. We have read General Babangida. We have read
General Danjuma. We have partially read President Jonathan. Now we are reading
General Gowon. We will read General Abubakar next month. What lessons have we
learnt?
In the
Foreword mentioned earlier, the author had said he had no wish to open new
wounds. The problem is that up till date, the old wounds have not healed.
Delaying opening wounds simply means that our path to national healing has been
delayed. Autobiographies of those who have had an opportunity to govern are not
meant to be efforts at seeking affirmation or vindication. The important thing
is that they offer a national catharsis. Autobiographies often destroy myths,
exorcise demons, provide other perspectives. They humble us and help us to
appreciate that in reality, there is always in real life, my truth, your truth
and the real truth which is often caught up in the cracks of half-truths. There
is often the real truth is an elephant and all often autobiographies are just
like the Six Blind Men of Hindustan, each merely holding only a part of the
elephant.
My
final obligation on this podium is to thank General Gowon for finally putting
to bed a pregnancy that has lasted for almost 50 years. I believe he will feel
some relief and many readers will find new insights into his struggles. Men and
women of faith should learn from this book what it means to lead or serve
according to the mind of God. In all dimensions, it is difficult to find a
better manifestation of a Christian in service. So, General, warts and all, we
thank you and we love you dearly.
Read the first part:
BOOK
REVIEW: Inside Yakubu Gowon’s “My Life Of Duty And Allegiance” By Mathew Hassan
Kukah (Part 1)
