Background
He was born on October 19, 1934, in the Lur Pankshin division of the northern plateau in the “Middle Belt". His father, an Anga, was an early Christian convert and a keen evangelist.
He was born on October 19, 1934, in the Lur Pankshin division of the northern plateau in the “Middle Belt". His father, an Anga, was an early Christian convert and a keen evangelist.
Educated at St Bartholomew’s School, Wasasa, Zaria from 1939 to 1949, he got his school certificate at the Government College, Zaria in 1953.
Early in 1960 he was on patrol on the Cameroon border and became the first Nigerian to be appointed adjutant of his battalion in November 1960.
He served for two spells with Nigeria’s peace keeping mission in the Congo in 1961 and 1962. Injunc 1963 he was promoted lieutenant-colonel. Out of the country during the January 15, 1966, coup, he was appointed by
the new leader General Aguiyi-lronsi as Chief of Staff to the Nigerian army and member of the military government.
Not involved in the second military coup of July 29 (momentarily taken prisoner by the rebels) he was chosen as leader by the Northern officers, being one of the most senior army officers and coming from the Middle Belt which provided most of the rank and file of the Nigerian army.
Young and inexperienced, he had a burning desire to preserve Nigerian unity. His first priority was to restore army discipline and allay the fears of civilians. A popular act was the release from prison of the veteran politician Chief Obafemi Awolowo on August 3, 1966.
But, almost exactly two months after he took over, a violent massacre of Ibos took place in the North in October, causing them to flee home starting the inexorable movement towards the secession of Biafra.
He met Colonel Odumcgwu Ojukwu, the Ibo leader, at Aburi in Ghana on January 4, 1967, and made some concessions towards confederalism which he found were impracticable on his return to Lagos. Gingerly he had to accommodate the wishes of his own divided supporters, but he spent the next seven months trying to persuade Ojukwu to drop his secessionist ideas. He failed; the Eastern parliament endorsed secession on May 26. Immediately Gowon declared a state of emergency and divided the country in 1 2 states, abolishing the old regions.
This master stroke united the rest of the country, removing the fear of Northern domination from the West, while giving the Eastern minorities in Calabar and Rivers hope of freeing themselves from Ibo rule. But it made war inevitable.
Hostilities did not start before July when Gowon called for “a police action" to end secession. The war was to last two and a half years. Gowon issued a “Code of conduct” to his troops and insisted that Biafran civilians were to be treated as Nigerians who had to be won back to the Federation. He allowed an international observer team to keep an eye on his own troops’ conduct. Throughout the war he was a moderate, not believing in starvation or the quick kill. He turned a blind eye to the illegal night flying of relief supplies into Biafra for over 15 months.
On January 5, 1968, he pledged a ceasefire if Biafra dropped its secessionist claims and repeated this promise at successive peace talks throughout the war. He personally presented Nigeria's case at the Niamey peace talks held under OAU auspices on July 16, 1968.
He pursued the war vigorously, absorbing the early Biafran drive into the Mid-west and West and directing the commanders of the three divisions in the gradual encirclement of the Biafran heartland. By August 1968, with no negotiated peace in prospect and many thousands of Biafran civilians dying daily, he reluctantly concluded it would be more humane to end the war quickly than starve the Biafrans to death. But the Federal initiative became bogged down after the capture of the main Biafran towns. In January 1969 a second “final offensive” was ordered but the war was to drag on for another year, with the Biafran collapse coming suddenly in the first few days of 1970.
He kept his word and prevented a bloodbath despite serious clashes with relief organisations over methods, he allowed mercy missions to proceed and starvation and disease were reversed in Eastern Nigeria within a year.
On October 1, 1970, Nigeria’s tenth independence anniversary, he explained why he thought it necessary to extend military rule until 1976. Meanwhile there would be new elections, population census and a new constitution.
Although keeping the army at wartime strength, he has entrusted much of the country’s civil reconstruction to a new generation of younger civil servants. In March 1972 his Nigerian Enterprises Promotions decree excluded a major proportion of the private sector from foreign business and ordered its transfer into Nigerian hands by March 1973.
Africa’s youngest Head of State when be came to power at 32. A sincere Christian, non-smoker and teetotaller with a charming and open minded personality, he emerged in 1966 to lead his country riven by coups and in danger of disintegration. His popularity with his fellow officers and following among the rank and file made him an automatic choice as leader. His problem was to restore order in a mutinous army and hold Nigeria together. He succeeded everywhere except in Biafra which declared secession. In the war he was a moderate, pursuing a humane line against his hawkish advisers, insisting that Biafran civilians were misled Nigerians, not enemies.