Between 1967 and 1970, Nigeria prosecuted a bloody civil struggle, one of many bloodiest within the annals of contemporary historical past. And on the centre of that horrible nationwide tragedy is that man of future, Common Yakubu Gowon, the pinnacle of the army administration—the second within the historical past of Nigeria’s chequered post-independence political historical past. After the deep euphoria of independence, the 1966 coup and the aftermath of civil struggle had been too disjunctive for a state that was aiming for the standing of a key participant on the continent and on the globe; a nation state that was alleged to reverse the ills of colonialism and improve the well-being of her residents.
These sequence of nationwide occasions had been additionally one thing that no nationwide chief must be saddled with. And it’s because the place Common Gowon was meant to defend—upholding the post-colonial standing of 1 Nigeria even within the face of gross nationwide inconsistencies —- one which led to the 1967-70 civil struggle. However then, who would need to be related to the dissolution of a state that future has known as on one to guard?
Common Gowon’s entry into the trajectory of Nigeria’s nationwide mission implies that he was known as upon to oversee the route Nigeria would go proper from the graduation of nation-building. The accountability to channel the political growth of the Nigerian state was thrusted on his unwilling head, and from a critically debilitating level of maximum disunity. And it’s on this sense that we will regard Common Yakubu Gowon because the grand personification of the resilient Nigerian spirit.
It is rather troublesome to not imagine that Windfall had a hand in inscribing Gowon’s life with a really distinctive objective that got here to lastly intersects Nigeria’s. From the face-off with the late Common Odimegwu Ojukwu to the crafting of the Aburi Declaration which broke down finally due to contrasting interpretation of what the accord calls for of the federal and Japanese regional governments.
The complete trajectory of incidences and occasions represent fairly an attention-grabbing subject of examine not just for political scientists, but in addition political psychologists. As an example, what mixture of political ego was accountable in tilting the vital scenario right into a pissing contest between the 2 nationwide gladiators?
Warfare is all the time a horrible enterprise. Within the Nigerian case, the variables concerned are all too a number of and complicated to make any coherent sense. From exterior enterprise pursuits to the inner social and ethnic cleavages whose fissiparous tendencies had been the first causes of the battle. And but, that struggle needed to be fought, and Gowon needed to supervise the looming disintegration of a nationwide mission that had barely taken off.
If we agree that Windfall had thrusted this nationwide future on Gowon, we also needs to know that it’s not deterministic. He may have capitulated in following by means of with the divine accountability. He didn’t. He accepted it as God’s will even when he may not have had that non secular understanding on the time, and he introduced Nigeria so far as he may with a combination of sound and unsound selections and judgments. Let me spotlight simply two that talk to how contradictory management selections can generally be.
On October 1, 1970, Common Gowon promised to set in place a political and electoral course of that may result in the handing over of the rein of authority to a civil authorities by October 1, 1976. Sadly, the Supreme Navy Council was pressured to renege on its promise. And the rationale was that the political class didn’t appear able to take up the good activity of transferring ahead a state that was nonetheless reeling from the results of the civil struggle, and the ethnic bitterness that attended it. That call may very well be approached from a number of interpretive views. One may ask what gave Gowon the messianic audacity to legislate on the way forward for Nigeria. In any case, the political habits of Nigerian politicians has not modified since then. Others may level at a key patriotic sensibility that didn’t need to scuttle the progresses made for the reason that finish of the civil struggle. Nobody who went by means of the grotesque struggle would need to ever have a repeat of it.
One of many notorious moments of the Gowon administration is the misplaced alternative of reworking the general public service system in Nigeria by means of the adoption of the Udoji Fee report and the implementation of its grand managerial paradigm shifting suggestions. The report was initiated on account of a worldwide managerial revolution that insisted that the previous Weberian administration should give method to a brand new public service that might be versatile, economical, lean, efficient and environment friendly within the achievement of service supply.
The brand new public service is supposed to be modernised and boosted for an output-oriented efficiency that improve Nigeria’s productive base inside a grand structure of a developmental state – one with a maintain on the ‘commanding heights’ of the nationwide economic system.
Udoji was motivated in its vital evaluation of the Nigerian public service by the Fulton Fee Report of 1968 that additionally took on the British Civil Service and the urgency of its institutional reform.
The Udoji Fee was without delay inaugurated to take care of the protracted wage and incentives points that the civil service had been coping with earlier than independence and which ultimate decision the Adebo 1971 report handed on to the Udoji Fee for a holistic systemic reconsideration. Sadly, the Gowon administration (presumably as concession to the feelings of his super-permanent secretaries) cling on to the wage parts of the Udoji Report and left off the extra basic dimensions of institutional reform that will have radically improved the potential readiness of the general public service system.
How may an administration that balked at handing over energy to a bunch of unprepared political class not see the importance of getting ready the general public service system as a situation for nationwide productiveness and good governance? Professor Lars Konlind’s perspective on why establishments enter into irredeemable decline, attributed this sense to what occurs when an organisation shun adjustments on the peak of its success.
Consequently, leaders (political and administrative) develop selective deafness, one which within the Nigeria’s case over-glorifies the ‘I’m directed’ Weberian bureaucratic custom by disregarding the improvements that managerialism portend, one which has earned Nigeria the status of the “hesitant reformer.”
And but, with out being flippant or hagiographic, Common Gowon is in my evaluation one of the crucial heroic of Nigerian leaders. He represents a way of statesmanship that stands in sharp distinction to the extraordinary sense of gratification that characterises politics at the moment.
The trajectory of his statesmanship is considerably defining. To be born earlier than the founding of such a flamable nation as ours, and to have matured to obtain a calling to battle a struggle to raise a man-made creation of the British colonialist—‘a mere geographical expression’, to cite Chief Obafemi Awolowo—to the standing of a state price preserving, is nothing lower than a defining trajectory. When as a nation we had been confronted with a “to be or to not be” dilemma in our evolution, Common Gowon selected Nigeria. With that alternative, Common Gowon introduced a big dimension to the significance of the minority ethnic teams in crystallising the Nigeria Venture. That being a clarion name to the bulk ethnic teams that Nigeria didn’t solely belong to all of us; it’s God’s divine mission.
Regardless of the fake pas in regards to the Udoji Fee Report and its momentous suggestions, the Gowon administration nonetheless left an indelible administrative instance that replicate the Awolowo-Adebo administrative mannequin within the previous western area. The corps of the super-permanent secretaries considerably backstopped the Gowon administration within the coverage area that was stampeded throughout the years of the civil struggle.
I can hypothesise that with out that basic mannequin as a vital fulcrum, the civil struggle would have been worse that it was. And so, as a testomony to the potential greatness of the Nigerian state, we have already got two variations of the politics-administration mannequin that may very well be reinvented to stimulate good governance.
In addition to, Common Yakubu Gowon was not only a regular run-of-the-mill soldier. He was an officer and a gentleman. At a time when the determine of the solider or the picture of the Nigerian military has dipped considerably in status, Gowon embodied the very essence of army professionalism and status for excellence. As a commissioned officer, he was minded concerning the instructional and coaching extent a lot in order that he was able to go the complete lengths to show his thirst for studying to be an increasing number of skilled.
Common Gowon was not content material together with his prestigious coaching at Sandhurst, Camberley and Latimer. He simply needed to finally bear the tutorial rigor of grownup training to earn a doctorate diploma on the College of Warwick in the UK. Which may have been a private imaginative and prescient of fulfilment, however it elevated the general public notion of what and who an officer must be. With that accomplishment, Officer Gowon turned a composite picture of a real army skilled that isn’t outlined by his brawn or capability to wield the gun, however by intelligence, mind and humaneness in a occupation outlined by its distinctive masculinity.
In all, Common Yakubu Gowon believes in Nigeria. Solely essentially the most wrong-headed critique wouldn’t take that as a consequential reality. Certainly, after he had left the corridors of energy, Common Gowon nonetheless holds on to a non secular accountability to maintain up the Providential crucial that Nigeria is on a divine course to greatness. For being so politically, professionally and spiritually concerned within the programs of Nigeria’s nation-building efforts, there isn’t a different method to see Common Yakubu Gowon order than as a patriot, and one in every of Nigeria’s everlasting heroes.
And there’s no different method to cap his many efforts as seeing Nigeria fulfill her divine mandate than to discover his political and nationalist legacies whereas he’s nonetheless with us. At ninety, our nonagenarian statesman and normal deserves greater than nationwide accolades. He deserves to see the Nigeria of his goals and aspirations.Prof. Olaopa is chairman, Federal Civil Service Fee, Abuja. He might be reached through:[email protected]
