I read an article by Chuks Iloegbunam with enthusiasm, admiration, appreciation, and resounding agreement. As is characteristic of all his writings I have come across and read, it was a masterpiece. In this recent article titled ‘Senator Umeh, The Lying General & A Fallen House,’ he addressed issues that have unfortunately become the rule in our society rather than the exception.
Mendacity, hyperbole, hypocrisy, egotism, shameless temerity, mobilization of resentment against the truthful, and ignorance masquerading as arrogance have unfortunately pervaded our society like a plague. What we are dealing with in our once beautiful Nigeria appears to be the normalization of selfishness, eccentricity, narcissism, brutality, lack of the love and compassion characteristic of the Muslim and Christian faith, aberrant behavior, and what was once taboo. We are witnessing the preference of tyranny to benevolence, personal interest to general wellbeing, heartlessness to being our brother and sister’s keeper, preference of German Sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies’ social concepts of Gesellschaft (impersonal relationships) to Gemeinschaft (close-knit community living), and falsehood to integrity.
As if the deplorable and repugnant situation in Nigeria was not pathetic enough, General Gowon showed up with lies, shamelessness, and depravity of his own. The man who reneged on the Aburi Accord with General Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu as brokered by General Joseph Arthur Ankrah of Ghana, under whose watch millions of Igbo Indigenes were slaughtered across Nigeria in 1966 and during the Biafra-Nigeria War from 1967–1970, and who also endorsed policies inimical to the Igbo ethnic group tells us that these facts were only a figment of our collective imagination run amok. Let me state here and now that General Gowan’s memory loss should not be mistaken for a record of actual events.
That was how he squandered opportunities afforded him to come clean and remorseful on National television. Oranaeze, the premier socio-cultural organization of the Igbo ethnic group denounced General Gowon’s insensitivity to the Igbo pogrom, saying that “such claims are not only gross misinformation, but also a blatant misrepresentation of historical fact while describing the representation as an affront to the collective memory and dignity of the Igbo nation.”
Still under the protection of those with ulterior motives that put him up to overseeing the worst massacre ever in Nigeria of Igbo Indigenes from 1966-1970, General Gowon came on national television on more than two occasions to add insult to injury to the Igbo he treated as persona non gratae in their own country. As Oranaeze put it, “General Gowon’s military aggression toward the Igbo was not merely a reaction to secessionist desires, but a strategically calculated action driven by British economic interests in the oil-rich Eastern Region of Biafra and the retaliatory motives of the Fulani Oligarchy.”
While the General stays secure in the protection of his masters, the agents of his masters armed with AK-47 rifles, are running rampage, wantonly killing unarmed and innocent legitimate citizens, destroying their farms and means of livelihood. Ironically, these killings have been worse recently in Benue State, in Plateau, the home state of General Yakubu Gowon, and in Taraba, the home state of General Theophilus Y. Danjuma, his partner in crime against humanity. It was General Danjuma who oversaw the killing of General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, a veteran of the Congo crisis and the first Military Head of State and Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, the man they killed to install General Yakubu Gowon as his successor in Office.
General Theophilus Danjuma, protected by those he worked for when he killed General Aguiyi-Ironsi and his host, Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, the then military Governor of Western Region who opted to die rather than abandon his guest, is urging his people of Taraba state and by extension, the entire Middle Belt region, to defend themselves. He wants them to defend themselves with muskets and machetes against AK-47 wielding agents of the masters he once killed for. Easier said than done of course.
Meanwhile, buoyed by pusillanimity, General Yakubu Gowon has persisted in inundating his television interviews with lies. According to him, he didn’t share the Aburi Accord as he was supposed to with the nation before General Ojukwu did, because he was stricken with lumbago; or was it malaria? Who does he think he’s talking to, Angelina the babysitter?
The truth is that what he allowed to happen to the Igbo ethnic group is beyond the call for him to apologize. An apology cannot atone for his crime against the Igbo nation. What he did on behalf of the British and the Fulani Oligarchy was hellish and in defiance of God the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. His longevity at 91 years of age shows him that truly what goes around comes around. In his case, the evil that people do not only lives after them, but it also lives with them alive. Karma is certainly not a myth!
Anthony Akubue, St. Cloud, MN Wednesday July 2, 2025
