By John Owen Nwachukwu General Ibrahim Babangida, a former military head of state, has revealed that a commitment made to the Igbos by G...
By John Owen Nwachukwu
General Ibrahim Babangida, a former military head of state,
has revealed that a commitment made to the Igbos by General Yakubu Gowon that
their lives were safe in northern Nigeria, was unfulfilled.
According to him, this led to the 1966 progrom that saw
thousands of Igbos killed in every part of northern Nigeria.
In his new book the ‘Journey in Service’ launched in Abuja
on Thursday, the former military leader pointed out that the emergence of then
Lt-Col Yakubu Gowon as the new Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces
marked the beginning of the tension between him [Gowon] and Lt-Col. Emeka
Odumegwu-Ojukwu.
He said that Ojukwu had in a broadcast from Enugu, rejected
the decision to have Gowon as the Militry head of state and Commander-in-Chief.
According to IBB, Ojukwu insisted that in the absence of
Aguiyi-Ironsi, Brig Babafemi Ogundipe, who at that time was the most senior
army officer, should be the head of state.
Babangida explained that this heightened the tension in the
land and Gowon was forced to make some moves to restore confidence in the
country.
“Lt-Col. Gowon assembled regional politicians, dubbed
Leaders of Thought, to fashion a way forward for the country,” he added.
IBB explained that Gowon made what could only be described
as a poltical masterstroke as he sought to calm the situation by releasing the
leader of the Yorubas, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, from Calabar prison.
Obafemi was serving a prison sentence for treason in Calabar
and with that move Gowon secured the much-needed support of the Yorubas at that
time.
“Unfortunately, Gowon’s commitments to the Igbos— that their
lives were safe in northern Nigeria— were unfulfilled,” he said.
“Almost simultaneously with the deliberations of the Leaders
of Thought taking place in Lagos, perhaps the most horrific killings of Igbos
occurred in different parts of northern Nigeria on September 29, 1966.
“The killings were frightening. A deluge of refugees swamped
eastern Nigeria from practically all parts of Nigeria. Faced with this intolerable
situation, Ojukwu, understandably, barred the eastern Nigerian delegation from
further attending Gowon’s Peace and Reconciliation Talks in Lagos, insisting
that the lives of Igbos outside eastern Nigeria were unsafe.
“The country was locked in a national stalemate until
Lt-General Joseph Arthur Ankrah, who had become Ghana’s Head of State after the
overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, stepped in by suggesting a neutral and safe venue
for an actual reconciliation conference between Ojukwu and the Federal Government.
“That intervention, seen as the last chance to prevent an
all-out war, led to the famous Peace Conference in the southern regional town
of Ghana, Aburi, between January 4 and 5, 1967.
“That conference between the eastern Nigerian delegation,
led by Lt-Col. Ojukwu, and the federal delegation, led by Lt-Col. Gowon,
resulted in the famous Aburi Accord.
“In the absence of fully published records from the federal
government regarding what transpired at the Aburi meetings, the details of what
happened have remained speculative.
“While the published accounts of the eastern Nigerian
delegation insisted that an agreement for a loose Nigerian federation was
agreed to, the federal government claimed that the agreement reached was
understood and seen within the framework of a united Nigerian state. The one
area of agreement on both sides was that force was not to be used to settle the
Nigerian crisis.
“In response to the Aburi Accord, the federal government
promulgated Decree 8, which was meant to embody the Accord as understood by the
federal government.
“At a meeting of the Supreme Military Council in Benin on
March 10, 1967, where Decree 8 was to be ratified by the Military Governors,
Ojukwu boycotted the talks, claiming that the Decree violated the spirit and
meaning of the Aburi Accord.
“These differences in interpretation were the final trigger
for the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War,” he stated.
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