(CULLED) GOWON, WE SHALL NOT FORGET! Yakubu Gowon – the only man that became Nigerias President (military) at the youngest age of 31 in August, 1966 having been born on 19th October, 1934 – is exactly 80 years today, the 19th of October, 2014. Yakubu Gowon ruled Nigeria from the beginning of the Pogrom that led to Civil War, throughout the Civil War and 5 years after the War ended, making it 9 years in all. If President Goodluck Jonathan doesn’t win the 2015 elections, Gowon would still remain the longest-serving president without a break or interruption in the history of Nigeria. It was this Yakubu Gowon that presided over the annihilation of 2 million Igbo lives, the dispossession of Igbo people of their properties and savings through STARVATION, ABANDONED PROPERTIES and INDIGENIZATION POLICIES. His highest anchor-man on these inhumanities was the renowned Obafemi Awolowo who saw it trite that Igbo people should be made hungry that Nigeria may win the war. “Starvation is only a weapon of war” was Obafemis dearest mantra and anthem while he chiefly managed Nigeria’s treasury. Another anchor-man was David Alechenu Mark, the current Senate President who chaired the Abandoned Properties in Port-Harcourt and did the ‘justice’ he liked, as he liked and to those he liked. As Yakubu clocks 80 this day, might I present to him these lines from page 384 of Chimamanda Adichie’s HALF OF A YELLOW SUN: “‘I am from Asaba and I got word about our hometown this morning’, the man said. ‘The vandals took our town many weeks ago and they announced that all the indigenes should come out and say ‘One Nigeria’ and they would give them rice. So people came out of hiding and said ‘One Nigeria’ and the vandals shot them, men, women and children. Everyone’. The man paused. ‘There is nobody left in the Njokamma family. Nobody left’. Alice was lying on her back, rubbing her head frantically against the ground, moaning. Clumps of sand were in her hair. She jumped up and ran towards the road but Pastor Ambrose ran after her and dragged her back. She jerked away and threw herself down again, her lips pulled back, her teeth bared. ‘What am I still doing alive? They should come and kill me now! I said they should come and kill me!’” ............................................................................................................... And let the world know that Adichie’s HALF OF A YELLOW SUN is a fiction but no less a true life story of the greatest tragedy that ever befell the Igbo People of the Eastern Nigeria in the centuries they’ve existed in that region. Let the world know that that town called “Asaba” still exists just across the commercial town of Onicha and the Niger River. Let the world know that the ruins of that most animalistic contact with Gowon’s brothers/soldiers in Asaba are still alive. Let the world know that the psychological, even physical trauma of having thousands of families wiped away in just one small town 46 years ago is still fresh and haunting! Let the world know that Asaba people still suffer shortage of men and loved ones till today and that the spiritual angle to it still haunts them. Let the world know that it was under the presidency of Yakubu Gowon – this man happily clocking 80 today – that all these atrocities happened and still, no cleansing and proper apologies have been nationally done. And finally, let the world also know that 45 years after the whole abomination happened, Gowons Northern region went to war not with the East or West but with itself, killing their men, women, children, visitors, elites. Reason? Some of them rose to say that “Western Education is sin”. But is that truly the reason? Could people be paying back for wasting Igbo lives, disembowelling pregnant Igbo women and gathering a small Igbo community of about 2,000 men to shoot them all dead? We don’t forget, Gowon! Always remember that as you cut that 80th, even 90th birthday cake!
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 15:42:23 +0000
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