Gowon: Ojukwu misinformed Nigerians on Aburi | TheCable - My Rejoinder

See what Gen Gowon said recently. Understandably, it caused quite a stir: http://www.thecable.ng/gowon-ojukwu-misinformed-nigerians-aburi-accord Here is my comment published in The Cableng. March 25, 2015.              **********             WRITE, GEN GOWON, WRITE The amiable former Nigerian military Head of State, General Yakubu Jack “Another Northerner” Gowon is one of the most unlikely members of his class of elite to wilfully engage in an intellectual joust of any sort. As a lightweight he will more likely than not come out of any such encounter thoroughly battered. Against this background one is at a loss, actually bewildered that this officer and gentleman would come out, as quoted by TheCable online news network, to make this strange even bizarre statement attributed to him namely that the late Ikemba Nnewi, Eze Gburugburu, Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu misinformed Nigerians on Aburi. This is a most serious allegation levelled against a dead man. Many observers have been understandably taken aback. Thankfully, reactions are coming in fast and furious. General Gowon has finally asked for it. I hope that he is prepared for what is coming to him. One commentator has respectfully pointed out that one trait expected of a “statesman”, is knowing when to shut up. Another wrote that General Gowon should not have attended the book launch. That is neither here nor there. Nobody forced him to speak. He could have, in the Nigerian parlance, quite simply graced the occasion. The matters arising from the 1967 meetings at Aburi have been deliberately left unaddressed for posterity by General Gowon for 48years. One is therefore at a loss at the sudden sense of urgency in his wanting to have his say at this most inappropriate forum. I doubt if his host President Jonathan was amused by that faux-pas. DADDY, WHAT IS BIAFRA? I think it was in 1989 that my then 10yearold daughter came home from school and threw me the above curved ball. The silence that followed reminds me of Prof Wole Soyinka’s poem Telephone Conversation. I cannot immediately recall the detailed explanation that I fudged to satisfy her 10yearold mind. What I do recall however is the meat of a short article on this encounter which I sent to a number of newspapers. What version do I give this girl? My own story? Which will render her a social misfit, nay outcast, at school so early in her life? Or do I rehash the official line enabling her to march along with everybody else oblivious of the baggage that each Igbo willy-nilly carries in this Nigerian federation? Thankfully I am now at peace because there are now almost as many Igbo apologists amongst our so-called enemies as there are in Igboland. With Noor Saro-Wiwa, Ken Saro-Wiwa(Jr), Tombari Sibe, Akin Osuntokun and, wait for it, Femi Fani-Kayode and a host of others coming to their own conclusions about “our season of thunders”, I almost do not need to run to our Prof Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe to make the Igbo/Biafran case. I doubt if General Gowon has ever followed the extant opinion of these gentlemen. I was there. General Gowon’s comments indicates that he probably thinks that we are all dead just like the Ikemba. Leaving the remote causes but dwelling on the proximate, I lived three hundred metres from the Enugu railway station and so saw the refugees arrive, including one without a head. Grown men, 60yearolds could not bear to look at the pictures in POGROM (a 1967 publication of the Ministry of Information Eastern Region) when I recently took part of my personal archives to the club. Some were truly ignorant, while others were in self deluding denial. Gowon will surely like it that way. However he cannot have forgotten that dealing with the aftermath of the Igbo exodus from the rest of Nigeria was one of the many issues discussed at Aburi. Of course there were several others. GO WRITE YOUR MEMOIRS, SIR I have had cause to weigh in a number of times on the issue of our leaders in crucial periods of our history dutifully bequeting the nation with well written and verifiable memoirs. Leading lights like Eddie Iroh have publicly agonised over this. When Bisi Daniels wrote about his difficulty in getting late Chief Anthony Enahoro to authorise and collaborate over his memoirs, I undertook unbeknown to him to soften the ground through Enahoro’s son. Ultimately Mr Daniels, a writer, lost interest in the project and soon thereafter, Chief Enahoro passed. Note however that General Gowon’s name sits at the very top of that pile of reticent who-is-who. Moreover he keeps reminding us of that unredeemed debt by his frequent unguarded public statements. About 20years ago General Gowon expressed reservation at the launching of a book, An Official History of The Nigerian Army because “it gave too much prominence to Igbo/rebel Biafran officers.” There was no indication that any Biafran officer, retired, dismissed or in jail, was on the editorial board. I had then opined that although the General had technically passed through Warwick, it was obvious that Warwick didn’t pass through him. Unfortunately that view of mine has not changed. It is perhaps too late in the day to expect any such change. Much later amid the uproar that greeted Achebe’s THERE WAS A COUNTRY, the amiable general again could not resist taking a pot shot at Ojukwu through Achebe. Hear him: ”Achebe’s book is fiction”. When this matter was brought up in a private discussion group on the internet, I was constrained to point out that General Gowon who has adamantly refused to write on his wartime activities and experiences, has no locus standi to criticise other writers’ version of events. I had added that if he was earlier afraid that the People’s General, Odumegwu Ojukwu would counter his narrative, then he needed to wake up since the Ikemba was already dead. In other words General Gowon is back at his old habits. He needs to write those memoirs. If he imagines that the writings of his praise singers like John de St Jorre, Dame Magery Perham and Prof Isama Elaigwu will do, then he is mistaken. At the moment the one reliable collection even for those not exactly enamoured of Achebe’s There Was A Country is the irrefutable list of references that constitute almost 15percent of the book. They are mostly beyond these shores and hence out of the reach of iconoclasts. In addition the archives at Whitehall and the Estates of his collaborators Sir Harold Wilson and Sir David Hunt will gladly help refresh his memory. As the young take their own reading of the Nigerian crisis and civil war under Gowon’s watch, I suspect that the trend is towards a most scathing judgement. A well written memoir, with the human foibles thrown in, and the appropriate dosage of mea culpas will definitely smoothen and ease the harsh judgement of history. Write, Gowon, write! Time is not on your side. Hurry! Leave earlier writers alone. The nation will be better for it.