Echoes of 1966 and the quest for nationhood
All is not well with the soul of Nigeria. Unless we want to indulge in self-deceit we must acknowledge that our body politic is afflicted with a sickness – a sickness unto death. Of recent, I have spoken to a few of our most influential compatriots and they have all expressed doubt as to whether our great federation will survive or even endure. A friend from the South-South lamented that if only the property market had been a little better he would have sold off his properties and pharmaceutical business in Abuja and move his family back to Ughelli.
The encroachment of militants into Ondo and Lagos communities was an ominous signal that things are indeed getting out of hand. When, in a private conversation with a senior journalist friend from Kebbi, I expressed that we should be a bit more patient with President Muhammadu Buhari, he exploded with tantrums I had never known before that he was capable of. Another friend who happens to be a legislator warned me that I should not be so complacent: “When the war comes, we in the Middle Belt are likely to be its primary theatre”.
However one looks at it, things are not looking good at all. Last week Fulani herdsmen went to the District of Godogodo, in my own Sanga Local Government of Kaduna State, killing and maiming and raping in their hundreds. They engaged in a scorched-earth policy of burning down homes, crops and barns storing whatever limited food the poor peasants had. The anger they are sowing among my people will take more than a generation to assuage.
Meanwhile the government is pushing ahead with the grazing reserves policy of colonisation. Being clever by half, they have changed the name to ‘ranching schemes’. The voice is that of Jacob but the hand is that of Esau. It is the same wicked policy of seizing other people’s ancestral lands and making it over to foreign herdsmen who have come all the way from Niger, Chad, Mali and Futa Djallon and Futa Toro; a form of compensation and appeasement for their success in killing thousands of defenceless peasants in the Middle Belt and the rest of Nigeria.
What has angered a lot of people is the reality of double-standards that the administration is not even capable of concealing. When the Niger Delta Avengers began their atrocities in terms of blowing pipelines and sabotaging vital economic installations, the government responded decisively with threats and military mobilisation. Some names were even mentioned as being allegedly among the ‘sponsors’ of the new militant tendency. I am all for that, to be honest. Let’s expose everybody involved and let’s call evil by its name.
The question many people are asking is this: Why did we not respond with the same level of resolve in confronting Boko Haram and the so-called herdsmen? Why are we so quick in providing free meals and other rehabilitation measures for Boko Haram bandits who have allegedly surrendered to the JTF? To what extent have they been fully debriefed and de-radicalised before being given this opportunity to get rehabilitated into the mainstream of civil society? And why is it that we still do not have a list of the sponsors of Boko Haram? Are we saying these armed bandits were acting purely on their own without the support of all sorts of Satanic actors behind the scenes?
And what about the herdsmen? Why is it easier to launch such decisive attacks on the Avengers but not on the herdsmen?Why have no herdsmen been arrested or charged to court for all the ongoing atrocities across our country? Why is it our first instinct to find ways of appeasing murderers and rapists while virtually nothing is being done to help their victims? How long are we going to tolerate this onslaught on an unarmed and defenceless people?
Juxtapose these problems with the ongoing economic malaise — deepening poverty, rising unemployment, the collapse of the naira and the worsening recession – you get a rather disturbing nightmare scenario. Some people have attacked the government for egregious northernisation of all the key strategic positions in the country. There is talk of surreptitious recruitments in the army and police of predominantly northern people to the detriment of the rest of the country.
For me personally, it is the least of my worries. Let the whole government be made up of Muslims and Northerners. But for heaven’s sake let it be people that know what they are doing. Nigerians are getting very desperate and very angry. It was the great Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping who famously declared that it does not matter whether a cat is black or white so long as it can catch mice. Sadly, our cats are not catching any mice. And thanks to the cabal that Junaid Muhammad recently referred to, our analogue President has been chained inside the cocoon of his own blissful unguardedness.
A fortnight ago there was a cacophonous outpouring among the chattering classes regarding the events of July 29th 1966. The Yoruba-Oduduwa press reinvented the late Adekunle Fajuyi, Military Governor of the defunct Western Region, as one of our greatest national heroes ever. According to the fable, Fajuyi had the option of leaving his august visitor General Aguiyi-Ironsi, but he chose not to. The northern soldiers, so the story goes, had no option than to kill both of them. Among the Eastern intelligentsia, some lamentations were offered for General Ironsi, who was seen as a martyr who genuinely sought to bring the country together after the tragedy of January 15, 1966. With regard to these events, the South stood on one side, and the North stood on the other. We did not hear much from the North, except for one prominent commentator who remarked that it would be naïve for southerners to imagine that northerners would ever hail anyone involved in these events as a hero of any sort.
I see in all this a profound division among the Nigerian people. The year 1966 is viewed differently depending on where you come from. For Ndigbo and the South, Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and the predominantly Igbo officers who executed the January coup were genuine patriots. Their singular aim was to rid Nigeria of corrupt politicians and to reinvent our country as a leading, progressive nation. The fact that the coup did not entirely succeed as planned was a matter or regret.
For northerners, on the other hand, the brutal assassination of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and the Premier of the North, Ahmadu Bello Sardauna of Sokoto while allowing others to escape was evidence that the whole thing was a complot against the North’s political leadership. They did not stop there. They went from house to house, cold-bloodedly executing senior northern officers like Zakaria Maimalari, James Pam and others with the intention of decimating the northern officer corps that were already skewed in favour of the South. What was worse was the aftermath. The murderers were never really brought to trial or punished for their misdeeds. There was also an open display of triumphalism. The northerners bided their time until their own moment came.
General Ironsi did not help himself very much, if truth be told. He rather liked his Scotch and the good life of the officers’ mess. He surrounded himself with his kinsmen as ministers and advisers. By Decree No. 34, he summarily abolished our federal system, replacing it with a unitary structure, to the shock and discomfiture of a gloomy and downcast North. When the northern officers struck in July 1966, it was with predictable venom and animus.
For Northerners, nobody could emerge as a hero in the whole sordid affair – not even Fajuyi. Their own leadership, civilian and military, had been wiped out six months earlier. No one expressed any apologies for it. They themselves were not in a position to offer apologies to anyone. It is a well-known fact that Murtala Mohammed and other young northern military Turks had determined that they were going to break from the federation. They had to give up that option when they were warned by British as to how misguided that option would be.
And as destiny would have it, a gallant young man of 31 by the name of Yakubu Gowon ascended the high magistracy of the Federal Republic. A son of Anglican missionary parents from the Middle Belt, he was born in Wusasa, Zaria, and was culturally a Hausa man. The young woman he had intended to marry was a winsome princess from Igbo land. On the night of a dinner party held in honour of General Ironsi, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces at Ibadan in January 1966, the young woman was troubled when Ironsi told them both to enjoy their lives “because nobody knows what tomorrow will bring”.
Yakubu Gowon was not a party to both the January and July 1966 coups. He had just returned from military training in England was staying at his girlfriend’s place in January 1966. When they came for him she hid him under her bed.
Contrary to all the lies that have been told, Gowon hated neither the Igbos nor the Yorubas. The late sage Obafemi Awolowo became virtually his adopted father. He did not suffer from the rabid chauvinism of the northern aristocracy. Gowon had his own share of foibles, but he was neither corrupt nor was he a tribal jingoist. He fought a war to keep our country together and he ruled with compassion and justice.
At a time when our country is at the verge of dissolution, when we need to learn soberly from the tragedies of 1966, we need genuine patriots to come out and speak in defence of Nigeria and her nationhood. We need men and women of the order of Yakubu Gowon and Obafemi Awolowo – men and women who love all the people of this country equally and who are prepared to lay down their lives for our country. I still believe in Nigeria and I believe in its manifest destiny as a chosen nation – a city set on a hill – a light unto the nations. Nigeria will be great again.
Obadiah Mailafia