ELDER statesman and convener of Igbochukwu Organisation, Dr Chike Obidigbo, has regretted that Nigeria’s former head of state, retired General Yakubu Gowon, deliberately kept away the basic truths about the genocide against Igbo during the 1967 to 1970 Nigeria versus Biafra war.
He said that at 90, the former Head of State should have emulated former military President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida by clearing all cobwebs of deceit or doubts about the events that culminated in his disagreement with Lt Col Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, shortly after they reached the Aburi Accord.
He said he and other Nigeria Elders such as Ibrahim Babangida; Oluesgun Obasano, Theophilus Danjuma, as well as President Bola Tinubu, ought to have learnt by now that we cannot continue to deceive the younger generation, especially now at their twilight ages.
Obidigbo, who said he waited to digest the salient historical lessons contained in Gowon’s “My Life of Duty & Allegiance,” before commenting, noted that the entire biography read like a command narrative that was intended to serve as a personal position on the troubling issues that gave rise to Nigeria’s troubled structure.
“I can say without equivocation that Jack did not include the basic facts and truth regarding the greatest historical challenge that troubled Nigeria’s political economy. Perhaps, having been used to the command and control structure of the military, which remains his constituency, the former Head of State maintained allegiance to the institution rather than to the nation.
“One area that I felt Gowon should have elaborated was the fact that the Biafra and the attempted secession by the Eastern Region was not the original idea of Ojukwu. The former Head of State knows that Ojukwu was a victim of unexpected circumstances, and the unintended consequences of the pogrom in Northern Nigeria that culminated in the hostilities,” he remarked.
He noted that even though Ojukwu was very angry at the situation of things at the time, his single intention was the protection of people of Eastern region rather than the declaration for a separate republic.
According to Obidigbo, “I know this as true. In April 1967, Ojukwu had August visitors that included the then British Deputy High Commissioner to Eastern region, Mr Roland Walter Parker, the Managing Director of Shell BP Development Company, Mr Stanley Gray, Mr Frederick Stephens, the chairman of Shell international, who visited Port Harcourt at the time, and a representative of Sir David Hunt, the then British High Commissioner to Nigeria.
“These visitors’ assignment to Enugu was to encourage Ojukwu to pull Eastern region out of Nigeria, and secondly to discuss the fate of petroleum exploitation in a new nation expected out of the then Eastern region, since according to them, Gowon got British backing to renege on the terms and modalities for the peacefully association as agreed on the Aburi Accord in Ghana.”
Further, Obidgbo said that Ojukwu disclosed that he told the visitors that since his people were very itinerant, Nigeria offered them the space they needed to transact, secondly that he felt that since the country was in the early stages of bonding, such secession may not be in the overall best interest of the new country, Nigeria.
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