Former Head of State General Yakubu Gowon (retd.) has revealed how he managed command postings during Nigeria’s civil war.
Gowon disclosed that there was a standoff between Obasanjo and Murtala Mohammed which he said was playing out during the opening phase of the civil war.
According to Gowon, when a young officer, Olusegun Obasanjo, flatly refused to serve under Colonel Murtala Muhammed during the civil war, and declared that he would “never” take orders from his junior, he had to assert authority to enforce the order.
Gowon said he resolved the confrontation by invoking his authority as Commander-in-Chief and forced Obasanjo to stand down, before going on to serve as Obasanjo’s personal “guardian angel” through the war and beyond.
The revelations are contained in Chapter 14 of Gowon’s 859-page titled “No Going Back” in his autobiography, *My Life of Duty and Allegiance*. It was presented in Abuja on Tuesday before Nigeria’s who-is-who.
Gowon also disclosed that Biafra’s leader, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, secretly pawned the mineral wealth of Biafra to the Rothschild banking family for approximately $10m, or an estimated N5 million at the time, in exchange for French-backed support for the secessionist effort.
Gowon said he first encountered Obasanjo at the Officers’ Mess in the United Kingdom in March 1958, when both men were undergoing officer training.
According to Gowon, he was short of money and unable to settle his bills on arrival in London, turned to two fellow Nigerian officers, Obasanjo and a Lagos-born officer named Foluso Sotomi, to assess who might help him.
“Whereas Obasanjo was a frugal person, Sotomi was a spendthrift and, as his nickname confirmed, a typical Lagos ‘Show Boy’ who looked smarter but was more of a bigmouth and certainly more bombastic than Obasanjo.”
When he approached Sotomi, the man had no money to spare.
“Obasanjo, on the other hand, was much different. He had more than enough money to pay for himself and to offset my initial bills. I saw that as a great display of a sense of responsibility,” the former Head of State said.
That first impression, Gowon wrote, converted into a sustained personal investment in Obasanjo’s career that would last through the civil war and into ...-war period.