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By Tony Eluemunor.

I know that many would wish that the Biafran war tragedies should be
swept into deep history and should no longer be discussed. My take on
that is stoutly and lustily this: “I prefer to be accused of nastiness than to join in the national pastime of consigning events of a few years ago into prehistory”. Chinua Achebe wrote that in the preface of his book of essays, Morning Yet On Creation Day, published in 1975, to explain why he had to include essays on the Biafran war in that book
instead of pretending that the war never took place. Here and now, I second that “motion”.

Tatalo Alamu, the respected columnist, in his offering titled Ninety Bouquets For Jack Gowon published in the Nation newspaper of November 3, 2024, poured encomiums on Gen. Yakubu Gowon, “as an exemplary Nigerian patriot, a soldier-statesman and shining moral exemplar for many of his compatriots”. Tatalo Alamu, whether in his first essayist incarnation as Prof Adebayo Williams, or in this present one, is not just an engaging writer but a deep thinker. The reader is my witness that I have left all alone his other incarnation when he was Larrie Williams but he had to drop that name because of Larry Williams the dramatist. Even when you disagree with Tatalo Alamu’s reasoning, you would still strike gold in his glittering renditions, his energetic turn of phrase that appears to make his words hop off the essay to embrace the reader…like a lover. That reminds me of the incomparable respect Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie and Ihechukwu Madubuike paid the poet, Christopher Okigbo in Towards the Decolonization of African Literature: “The early Okigbo wrote nonsense…but captivating nonsense”. Then they raised a din that has refused to subside when in comparison, they added that Wole Soyinka (the poet as against the playwright) wrote “abject nonsense”.

May we please begin from the two concluding sentences of Tatalo

Alamu’s 1, 200-word essay: “The rotund vultures are still hovering in

the air. When are we going to get proper closure in this land?”

Answer:.A proper closure would never come “in this land” until those who

defaced Nigeria’s history, harmed the lives and destinies of

individuals and sections of the country, making it terribly difficult

to unify Nigeria, have owned up to their evil roles, admit their

mistakes, deliberate ills or iniquities to show that they recognize the

sheer humanity of those harmed by their past actions. But did Gen.

Gowon own up to any mistake in his 90th birthday interview? No!

Chuks Iloegbunam has spent over 30 years researching into the two 1966

coups, the Nigerian-Biafran war and their aftermaths, so he is an

authority on such matters. He pointed out the untruths in Gowon’s

statements in his October 26, 2024 Vanguard article which Tatalo Alamu

referenced. Chuks went straight to the point: “Dear General Yakubu

Gowon, you spoke to the Daily Trust on Saturday, October 19, 2024. You

celebrated revisionism and claimed things that were not backed by

evidence. This open letter is to point out and correct your horrendous

amputations of contemporary Nigerian history”. Tatalo Alamu romped

into the arena against Chuks Iloegbunam as though he was mounted on

the chariot of Achilles, drawn by the Greek hero’s fleet footed

immortal horses, “Xanthos and Balios”, as his essay’s passionately

runaway cadence bore witness. Unfortunately, instead of countering

any point Chuks raised against Gowon, he began to manufacture excuses

for Gowon. Chuks said that Gowon was no super-patriot because he had

announced “on Monday, August 1, 1966, that there was no basis for

Nigerian unity”, thus rendering his claim in 2024 “My duty and

profession at that time demanded to make sure that we kept the country

together” baseless. Tatalo Alamu owned up that he listened to that

broadcast, and “the initial push of the victorious coupists was the

breakup of the country until they were cautioned by western concerns”.

 

That leads to the question; could Gowon have been among the July 1966

“victorious coupists?” Chuks had reminded readers of the strange 1966

telephone conversation between Captain T. Y. Danjuma who informed

Gowon that he was set to arrest Ajuiyi Ironsi, the Supreme Commander, as recounted in Danjuma’s biography and Gowon, Ironsi’s Chief of Staff

asked him “can you do it”? Nothing more! And Gowon, who could not hurt

a fly did not even say, “please let there be no bloodshed”. Oh,

elsewhere, the columnist had excoriated Aguiyi-Ironsi for surrounding

himself with an “ethnic cabal”, though Danjuma, the Northerner who

arrested him also headed his personal security team, but he never used

such words for Gowon and the North … but he asserted Gowon ran a

Northern show because the victorious coupists were Northerners. Haba,

Tatalo Alamu, haba!

Who quelled the January 1966 coup, Easterners or Northerners? If

Eastern officers did, then that coup would not have been an Igbo one.

Chuks Iloegbunam wrote: This is Colonel Njoku: “Having got the battalion in motion, I turned to the General Officer Commanding to spell out the task he had for us. The General Officer Commanding is not normally the person to give orders directly to a battalion. It should come through the proper channel, i.e. via Brigade Headquarters.

In that emergency situation, the General Officer Commanding was acting in order. …The General Officer Commanding asked for paper and a pen.

These, I provided. He wrote down the key points (KPs) and very

important personalities (VIPs) to which troops were to be sent for

protection. These included the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation

(NBC), the Parliament House, Post and Telecommunications (P&T), the

Prime Minister, the Inspector General (IG), the Brigade Commander – No

11 Thompson Avenue, etc. In addition, he listed some of the officers

he wanted apprehended. These included Major Ifeajuna, Captain Oji and

Lieutenant Nwokocha…My Order Group (‘O Gp’) was ready in my room. I

had moved apart to prepare my orders leaving him and Jack behind,

although all of us were still in my office. As soon as I was ready, I

moved to my conference room. They both followed me. The adjutant

called all to attention. I stood them at ease and went straight into

my orders. At the end, the General Officer Commanding said nothing but

Jack said a few words emphasising what I had already told the

officers. “B” Company under the command of Captain Hans Anagho, the

Cameroonian, was ordered to move to the Parliament building, Nigerian

Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and Police Headquarters. Jack (Gowon)

decided to accompany them… (See Hilary M. Njoku, A Tragedy Without

Heroes: The Nigeria-Biafra War. Fourth Dimension Publishers, Enugu,

1987, page 19”.

 

Tatalo’s non-reply: “It will, however, be stretching it too far to

insinuate that Gowon did not contribute anything significant to

quelling the majors’ uprising on that night of murder and mayhem.

Although he had no troops under his direct command having only arrived

in the country the night before, he was a figure of calm authority

behind the scene as he rallied the troops and made sure that the idea

of military disruption of the political process was a professional

abomination”. Pray, how did Tatalo Alamu arrive at this conclusion?

When did undocumented personal whims become the basis of history?

 

Chuks showed that Gowon reneged on the Aburi Accord, and ensured that

Nigeria would not back track from the war precipice. He detailed out

war crimes the Nigerian Air Force committed against Biafra, including

deliberate church, school and market bombings and over 50 years later,

the Gowon with the storied heart of a church minister still claimed

that he obeyed the Geneva Convention. Surprisingly, Chuks didn’t

dwell on the Asaba massacre, the worst act of genocide committed in

that war, and I hold it against him. Tatalo did, but he only added

insult to injury; he had dined with two Asaba people who remembered

“with eerie graphicness about the indignities visited on young women

(read mass rape), the man’s attention was focused on the actual pogrom

which he survived as a boy by lying still amidst the huge pile of the

dead and dying. Later, he had helped sympathizers carry the body of

Chief Okongwu to his adjoining homestead for proper dressing before

interment. That incidentally was the father of a former First Lady of

Nigeria”.

 

Gowon, Tatalo Alamu’s hero, remained Nigeria’s Head of State for seven

years after that Asaba massacre but questioned/punished no one for it.

Okogwu, whose murder and burial the Asaba man remembered vividly

decades later, had actually just finished reading the welcome address

to the Federal troops…and he was savagely executed. The lady recounted

the mass rape and sex slavery Asaba women suffered under angel Gowon

but that elicited no condemnation from Tatalo Alamu. All he could ask

was “When are we going to get proper closure in this land?” If that

showed his impatience with the injured former Biafrans and/or Asaba

people for failing to FORGET their injuries, then Tatalo Alamu has

just committed the second Asaba massacre by his startling

insensitivity. The Omu whose burial he so memorably attended suffered

anguish during the Asaba massacre. Actually, her spirit may have died

during the pogrom but she kept breathing like a person

in coma…for she could never have forgotten how her “children” were

massacred with careless abandon.

Chinua Achebe was right after all when he wrote that “Wisdom does not

come from what happened but the lessons people learn from events

because much could happen to a stone without making the stone any

wiser”. Even Gen Gowon and Tatalo Alamu have refused to learn the

right lessons from the Biafran War, Africa’s nastiest and most brutal

civil war. The brutality and irrational killings of that Civil War

visited all the towns and villages in the Anioma area of Delta state, steeped in an orgy of wanton savagery. Apart from

Asaba, Oko Anara suffered a massive attack from the Federal troops

who also killed over 400 people one night at Ishiagu. In my home town

of Ubulu-Uku, Lt. Nwajei (Ngozi Nwajei’s father) and Captain Ugbechie

(the journalist Kenneth Ugbechie’s uncle) and two other officers of

the Nigerian Army were shot at point blank range by their former

colleagues. Mr. Paul Okocha (Nkem Okocha’s father) was murdered when

the Federal troops chanced upon him at Onicha-Ugbo and his Peugeot car

was seized; he had gone to drop off a brother or sister-in-law. Many

civilians died from the senseless shelling which heralded the Federal

troops entrance into the town. Mr. Tony Chiejine of the Dangote

Group’s Media Office was being led to safety when a shell exploded and

shredded his loving sister who was holding his hand. What nightmare!

Actually, the two coups of 1966, the Abujri Accord, the Nigerian Civil
War and the subsequent tragedies that took place in Biafra have not
been fully discussed. The roles played by all the commanders in the
American Civil War or the two World Wars have been detailed out by
both the key actors and respectable historians. All the battles have
been looked into, the key players’ roles have been detailed out. The
mistakes made as well as the strategic schemes of the outstanding
commanders have been documented. The criminal killings are not hidden.
So, it is not only infuriating that the Nigerian Head of State during
that sad war in which the Federal troops committed the sort of
atrocities that devastated Asaba, and who punished no single actor in
that sordid scene from hell would be telling us over fifty years later
that he even knew about the Geneva Convention. Then why didn’t he
enforce real obedience on his soldiers? The white colonialists doubted
our sheer humanity and treated us as subhuman. So, too, do ethnic
champions who pretend to be national leaders doubt the sheer humanity
of certain sections of the country. Equally guilty are the columnists who applaud them as inspired statesmen offer insipid excuses for their inexcusable faulures. Leaders must be made to account
for their actions or Nigeria will never advance. That university
professors and respected newspaper columnists would wave side the
failing Iloegbunam recorded against Gowon is one reason Nigeria
remains totally disunited and steeped deep in the dark ages. And oh,
thank you Chuks Iloegbunam; damn the heretical revisionists or cretins
who would dare argue that your historic service to Nigeria on the
Biafran tragedy is not noble.