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Engagements BY Chidi Amuta

In times when our national conversation becomes too heated, fuzzy and bogged in intractable controversy, I prefer to take matters to the barber’s shop at Ikeja Bus Stop. That is my definition of the Public Square. In that place, fact, fiction and faction meet and mix in a noisy chaos in search of consensus and truth. In this place of ultimate democracy, all “men” are deemed equal and all speakers enjoy a freedom that is unknown in the world outside the shop.  There is order and equality in freedom of speech as each viewpoint enjoys free rein at its time and slot. All manner of ‘experts’ crawl out from unknown places to share their experience and ‘know how’ in a quest for the ‘know why’ of our shared experience.  The gathering of veterans of sundry backgrounds testify to a national pool of human capital that we never realize abounds here. We are many. We are diverse. Our wealth of experience and exposures are nearly as robust as we are many.

In the last couple of days, respected elder statesman and warrior, General Yakubu Gowon, has qualified to enter our favourite barber’s shop arena if only to clarify where he stands on the turbulent chapter of our national history that he presided over. The man led us into war and out of it with all the bruises, tears, blood and sighs. Hardly any other Nigerian alive made that many orphans and widows in one life time.

Indeed, it is Forty Guns for the great general, a man of war that also graduated into an emblem of difficult peace. The man has just published his memoirs which many had given up hope on. Many Nigerians had rightfully given up hope on this much needed memoir owing to the passage of time, nearly sixty decades to be precise. But the man has done it. Since then, the national billboard of quarrels, controversy, banter, insults and uneducated debates  has been aflame with noise. Many have queried Gowon’s facts, disputed his honesty of intention and even his right to disturb the peace of the sleeping nation by opening what many have called ‘old wounds’.  But the wounds of the heart and memory are never old. They bleed forever for as long as there are survivors and their children,  grand children and great grand children. In fact, ‘old wounds’ are the roots of fresh hurts and new wars all over the world. See how many times Israel has gone to war since after the holocaust of the 1940s Second World War because of  the ‘old wounds’ of the holocaust and its many aftermaths. 

In many ways, Gowon helped create a war, led the nation to fight and end it. In other places, Gowon would be a deity, an oracle, a human shrine or a human museum piece. But here, the man has refused to fade into the darkening horizon of a life already lived to the fullest overtime. So, the release of his memoir. “My Life of Duty and Allegiance” has offered Nigerians a point of diversion into a bad past at a time of political katakata. Forget Tinubu. Ignore Atiku. Don’t even border with Peter Obi. Let Mr. Jonathan run as fast as he wants in no particular direction. Let us face backwards, to past years of war, anger and hate. Nigeria’s pursuit of the future through democracy leads from backwards, from the years of hurt and hate, of anger and angst and of blood, tears and sorrow. In order to pursue future happiness, Nigerians like to be hurt, to look at each other in anger and hurl insults and abuses at one another. We like to call each other nasty names in order t face the future. We are a people of yesterday, drenched in the tears that flowed freely at different points in our history.

So, enter Mr. Gowon just when we were all going to be drowned by the cacophony of the political market place. His book is about hate and reconciliation, war and the pursuit of troubled peace, division and reunification. It is about discord and concord, sinning and forgiveness. It is above all about mistakes made, errors committed and honest wickedness.

The social media is awash with “Gowonimania”. I am not so sure that a 92-year old man who ruled in the time of black and white television and analogue radio was quite prepared for this torrent of digitalized abuses and insults by mostly people who should be his great grandchildren. But here we are. Those who live for as long as Gowon has done must be ready for the consequences of living through so many transitions.

So, when I get to the barber’s shop, I am full of mixed feelings as to the people of the shop want to converse about. While waiting for an unintended haircut,  I listen for the most current tale in town. There is mostly silence. As I walk in, someone heaves a sigh of relief. “At least doctor is here. He may give us something to brighten our day.”  It is a hope that I could ignite conversation to relieve the veil of silence and brighten the visage of an increasingly depressing reality.

People are tired of agonizing over the price of a loaf of bread, a cup of rice, a liter of petrol to fuel “I pass my neighbour”, or the bus fare from Oshodi to Obalende. The things that now afflict us are beyond words. Even the vibrant world of the barber’s shop is struck by an epidemic of silence. The hardship of the times overwhelms the usually noisy and loud Nigerian character.

I walk in and settle down. “Ah, doctor, have you read this Gowon book?” I affirm my familiarity with the new book and express worry that I am still trying to grapple with the dividing lines between truth and lies, fact and fiction, memory and revision in the new book. Unconsciously, I had opened a dam of interest.

Suddenly, nearly everyone in the shop has a viewpoint on the contents of the new book. But alas, most had not seen let alone read a copy of the book. But all seemed primed to argue about its contents and disagree or even exchange blows on some issues raised in the book. The book is about war, killings, divisive peace and deeply rooted causes of present inequalities.

I try to give a balanced view of the narrative of the new book. I try to drive the point that in matters of war and peace, a sense of balance demands a sense of equanimity from both victors and the vanquished. Someone said they should ignore me because I am a combination of the “trouble with Nigeria”- an academic egg head who is also a Nigerian journalist. We are the people who rationalize everything and try to balance the unbalanced reality of our nation. I raise a voice of protest for my calling and profession. But no one has time for me. Then more customers enter the barber shop. Both the audience and cast of debaters swells.

An elderly professor customer of the shop comes in to trim his grey beard. He is predictably clutching a copy of Gowon’s new book.  His face lit up when he discovers we are arguing and shouting over controversial aspects of the Gowon book. People quieten down as they prepare to listen to the professor.

He disarms us with his initial observations. “A memoir written and published nearly sixty years after leaving office must be about something bigger than setting the records straight.” He insists that a memoir that long in coming is ‘an opportunistic intervention’. Most of the actors are dead. Most of those in a position to disagree with the facts portrayed were either not born or infants at the time of the drama. “No honest autobiographer writes to argue with himself or with the dead. It means the writer is shy to have active engagement. A memoir that comes out that late is usually 70% revision, 20% fact and 10% fiction.” The professor has destabilized us!

The professor drew parallels from elsewhere to enlighten us further. It was Abraham Lincoln who ended the civil war in America by signing the Emancipation of slaves into law and ending the military part of the war. After his assassination, Andrew Johnson took over and liquidated the Confederate forces. “Imagine Lincoln, if he survived, publishing his memoirs sixty years after!” Gowon was toppled in 1975. From then till now, Nigeria would have had 13 presidents at an average of 4 years each. And he is just now publishing his memoirs? Haba! Gowon is a mischief maker, an author is confusion.

Someone in the now crowded barber’s shop screamed at the professor’s distant and esoteric historical references. We do not need to go as far as America to see how belated this memoir is. Gowon is an opportunistic old man in search of cool retirement cash!

Many voices joined the debate which had now degenerated into a rowdy shouting match. There were too many questions that Gowon either left unanswered or glossed over. Ojukwu is dead and would have been in a better position to respond to Gowon from the Biafran side. Most active Biafran officers have died or are now too old and poor to summon a response to Gowon. Phillip Effiong is dead. Alexander Madiebo is also gone. Tim Onwuatuegwu is no more. ‘Hannibal’ Achuzia is dead as well. The survivor combatants from the Nigerian side are either too old or too compromised to respond to their former commander in chief. Obasanjo has said so much of nothing substantial over the years. Babangida has avoided Gowon’s side of the tale, having restored the man’s military ranks in spite of his overthrow.

Other voices rose in the shop. Questions climbed over each other with scarcely any answers. “If Gowon was conciliatory towards the Igbos, why did he hedge on the Aburi Accord which would have granted limited confederal sovereignty to the East?” What was the content of the joint submission by Federal Permanent secretaries to Gowon on the Aburi Accord which led to his reneging on the accord and instead opted to create a 12 state structure thereby scuttling the confederal aspirations of Ojukwu and  the traumatized eastern population.

More questions still flowed as the shop broke into a lively cacophony of voices. It was as though something had touched the raw nerves of previous injuries. “Who instructed Chief Awolowo to order the payment of a uniform miserly stipend of twenty pounds to all Igbos who had accounts before the war but did not operate them in the war years?” This policy was one of mass impoverishment of the Igbos after the war and a crippling of the economy of the region for many years afterwards. 

If indeed there was a genuine desire to reintegrate the Igbos back into the commanding heights of the Nigerian economy, what was the essence of promulgating the Indigenization Decree so soon after the war when hardly any Igbo business person had more than the paltry twenty pounds handed out to them after the war? The Decree incorporated Nigerian paid up ownership of leading businesses into the board of directors of companies operating in Nigeria.

I tried to chip in some words for poor Gowon now on the crucifixion cross. After all, when Ojukwu died, he wrote a moving tribute in salute. But what does that matter? Saluting a dead antagonist whose courage and Oxford English elocution you feared means nothing. Sixty years after the war, a good number of ex-Nigerian soldiers who fought for  Biafra but were promised conciliatory arrears of remunerations have died without receiving a dime even till this moment! What does it mean to be so loved and left to die in instalments?

Another angry and shrill female voice rose from the now crowded shop floor. Some people had been attracted by the commotion of voices into the shop over and above its normal capacity of clients and service personnel. Some were angry. Most were aggrieved about a collective injury they heard about in the Gowon book. Most of them had not felt the hurt directly but learnt of them from their parents and older relations in the war zones.

A woman raised her voice above the commotion. “I thought there was something called the Geneva Convention that was supposed to guide the behavior of combatants in a war situation? Who ordered the complete blockade of Biafra, including the blockage of humanitarian relief supplies? Why was there no humanitarian relief corridor into Biafra. Who was the  commander in chief that ordered the regular bombing of relief planes flying supplies into Biafra? Above all, why did it become necessary to fly plane loads of orphaned Biafran kids to places like Gabon and Cote d’Ivoire for safety instead of being sent to safe zones in Nigeria? Most of these children belong to the “lost generation” of Biafran children who never returned to Nigeria after the war.” The woman was now unstoppable.

A man who had sat quietly at one corner of the barber shop all along finally decided to join the loud debate. He was elderly. He looked healthy probably from regular physical exercise. His eyes were blood shot. He seemed to harbor an inner bitterness which the passage of time had not wiped away. He cleared his throat and began: “Jack Gowon was my commander in various locations before he became head of state. I also fought in the war and was present among the troops both during the first coup and the counter coup. I wish I could interrogate Jack Gowon on the pile of lies in his book…  

\I have just a few questions for him : “Why did Gowon discuss and approve the arrest and murder of Ironsi by Danjuma and other personal staff of the Head of State? Why did Danjuma seek and obtain Gowon’s approval to undertake an operation that was clearly an insurrection or mutiny or even a high treason? So, Gowon inspired the arrest and murder of the then Commander-in-Chief? On whose behalf was he leading this heinous mutiny and crass indiscipline?

He still had more incisive questions: “What paper did federal Permanent Secretaries submit to Gowon on the Aburi Accord? What was the position of Akenzua, then Permanent Secretary and later Oba of Benin, on Aburi and confederation?” The old soldier’s eyes shot with more blood with visible  anger on his face as he raised yet more questions: “What was the punishment for the mutinous field commander who ordered the Asaba genocide?”

The old soldier prepared to walk away in anger and great bitterness. Before he left, he left us a final word, speaking mostly to himself: “Our country is a minefield of cruel questions haunted by angry ghosts of injustice. Until we elders develop the honesty to begin providing truthful answers, the curse upon this land will not be lifted…People like Gowon are part of the problem, not the solution. When an elder literally at his grave side cultivates lies in return for filthy treasure,  far is the distance that we have to travel to find the truth that will save us all…”

Grave yard silence returned to the shop. People began to file out in requiem silence as if they were leaving a funeral. I, too, left in silence, weighed down by something I dare not name.