"I wanted to be a teacher’
"Abuja was my dream’
"I was a popular choice’
YAKUBU Gowon, a General, and founder of “Nigeria Prays Ministry” who became Nigeria’s Head of State at 31 and will clock 80 on Sunday has revealed to The Guardian some of the hidden trials and triumphs that marked the country’s march through the civil war years that he successfully managed.
Specifically, the man who took up the gauntlet of reading up to a doctoral level in a British university after the fall of his government also spoke about the fear that initially gripped his youthful self when he was sworn in and how he overcame it. Hold your breadth, the man generally regarded as “the last good man standing” actually disclosed so many remarkable things to The Guardian…in an interview conducted by editors.
His words on how he began life in the central part of the North:
“…I had wanted to be a teacher but in the end because I saw so many of my colleagues joining the army, going for the initial interview, I then thought that if all my colleagues were going to join the army why shouldn’t I? That was the wish of my school authorities, they thought probably that I had those little qualities that I possessed and who knows that was God’s own doing?
“So I followed them. They were about 12. So I was the last to go there and I was the only one from that bunch that in the end got accepted for military training and then the story I told you, did my training and I finished as a young officer. I came back from a course and to me the disaster we had from there and, of course, the event that happened then propelled me into public life and something that certainly was never my intention. I never thought of being the Head of State.”
How he overcame fears…
‘…Really I think one would thank God for giving one this opportunity. Right from childhood from upbringing in the faith, the various ideals inculcated in one to love and fear God, and to love mercy and justice, all those things that were taught in the religion that we were brought up to really make one a good person were inculcated in us right from childhood. And they make meaning to me.”
Was that because you were so young?, he was asked: His response: “It was a combination of all but that was not what I was thinking about: becoming the Head of State but the possible risk of that, that you may be the Head of State and you may possibly die (laughter) but then you never can tell but the real fear of taking that responsibility. The buck stops on your table that really put fear in me. There were questions that ran through my mind: ‘Am I capable of doing it? Will I be able to do it and what is it going to be?’”
The man who got married as Head of State told The Guardian what removed fear from the battlefield of his mind at the time:
“I can assure you, the one that really did the trick was I asked everybody to leave me alone and I went down on my knees to pray to my God to give me the wisdom of Solomon and the courage of David to be able to do the right thing for the country and for the people and not for myself…
“Honestly if one does that in the end the blessing would come for the country and for the people. As the statement I made yesterday (Tuesday) at the Leadership Award that I owe everything to Nigerians who told me to ‘Go on with one Nigeria’ I didn’t know that is what Gowon means. I did not create that acronym. I read it in one of the newspapers in those days.
The meaning of Gowon as I used to know from my late father is somebody who is the owner of a traditional god and my father must have been put in charge of that area of faith until he got converted to Christianity.
“To me it is the power of God and the teachings of the Bible that determine all the values and qualities and ideals. I asked everybody to leave me and I went down on my knees and prayed and after that, that initial fear disappeared... Honestly that was the feeling I had up till the time I knelt down to pray.”
The general who said he refused to go for a direct master’s degree when offered at Warwick University in the UK and enrolled for a first degree, told The Guardian board of editors how the plunge he took was managed:
“But this time now you’ve got to be who is like the source of authority and let me tell you this, I know that I may be the source of authority because of the circumstances that brought me there but I know that I am not the source of knowledge but I have the knowledge that all the answers will have to come from me. And it’s a question of discussing with all those that are around you to start up with all those very good civil servants that we had at that time such as Allison Ayida, Abdul Atta and many of them including the current Oba of Benin but the very senior ones like Dagash, Musa and Apata who died a few days ago, and others.
“Honestly with them we ensured that we continued to run the government as normal despite all the distractions that we had and I assure you I will remain grateful to those people. Come to think of it, a lot of them were my bosses, Permanent Secretaries in the Ministry of Defence and so on. And of course you used to say sir to them and they were truly our seniors and they were the ones who truly recommended our promotion and appointments and overnight, you became their boss. People like Philip Asiodu, who is that impertinent man who seemed to demolish any arguments that I put forward for what I wanted and I just had to threaten him and say ‘who is that cantankerous young man’ and only to find out that he is one of our best in the land.
“That was how in the end we were able to organize and to get things running the way we wanted to run with the hope that one day when we handed over the political leadership would be able to run much more forthrightly, without putting their political interest.”
He had this to say about Ojukwu’s claim to seniority and still on his youthful age and governance:
“With what happened, that was after the second coup and really they were demanding among other officers that were left, those who were senior to me even Emeka Ojukwu was claiming to be my senior but I always told him that I was commissioned an officer even before he thought of joining the army but that was just a joke between us.
“These young officers said it was me they wanted to give the leadership. At that time Ogundipe was around, Adebayo was around and all other senior officers. I was the one that they chose. It was me most of them knew because I was an adjutant in that particular unit…”
“Abuja was also my dream”
Besides, the general who revealed the circumstances that led to the then Shagari’s government rescinding previous decision that implicated him in the coup that claimed the life of General Murtala Mohammed revealed that Abuja, Nigeria’s capital was his brainchild. He told us that he had completed the blueprint with the ‘three musketeers’ who were members of his cabinet namely, Olusegun Obasanjo, Murtala Mohammed and Shehu Shagari who were in charge of Works, Communications and Finance respectively. He said to us that, the map of the new capital that he left in his office then in Lagos among other documents were useful to the Murtala-Obasanjo administration that eventually began the project up to the Shagari’s government that showed commitment to the building of the new capital.
Source: #Guardian_News.
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