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 Chinewizu, 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?”

 

 

Yet, 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 the evil roles, admit their

 

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

 

sheer humanity of those their past actions have harmed. 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

 

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. 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. 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.