The regimes of the late Major General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi Ironsi and General Yakubu Gowon were unique and changed the course of Nigerian history in an unpredicted but unstoppable direction for good. Next to the Interim Government of Chief Ernest Shonekan which lasted only 82 days, Ironsi’s regime was the shortest in that it barely remained in power for six months.
Ironsi, the first Nigerian to attain the rank of General in the Army, became its first military Head of State when the elected regime of Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the first and only Prime Minister of Nigeria, was overthrown in the first military coup d’etat on January 15th 1966 by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu.
Gen. Aguyi Ironsi
Even though the coup succeeded in eliminating the Prime Minister and key elements of the ruling Northern People’s Congress (NPC), its attempts to assume the powers of the Federal Government of Nigeria were aborted by Ironsi leading loyal forces.
Many people have opined that Ironsi’s leadership abilities were suspect, perhaps because the Nigerian military establishment was not groomed to play political roles.
Perhaps because of the ethnic and regional complications arising from the Nzeogwu coup and killings of political and military officers by the coup makers, Ironsi’s efforts to resolve the political ensuing crisis through dialogue were simply not sufficient to assuage the feeling of people from the Northern Region.
Ironsi appeared to play into the hands of his opponents when he promulgated on May 24th, 1966 the controversial Unification Decree No. 34. This military law banished political parties and transferred the legislative powers of the regions to the centre. It, in effect, changed Nigeria from a federal to unitary system of government.
This was interpreted in some quarters as a further ploy to weaken the North, which was so powerful that it could produce the leader of Nigeria unilaterally given its official population and geopolitical size granted by the British colonialists.
This obviously help to fuel the passions that led to the pogroms of 1966 and Ironsi’s eventual overthrow and murder in Ibadan by military officers whose primary loyalties resided with the Northern Region.
Ironsi’s enduring contribution to the structure of Nigerian politics was that he set up the centralised system of government in which the Federal Government assumed almighty powers over the constituent states or units, while the section that produces the leader at the centre remains the dominant political force. Virtually nothing is known about the future political or economic agenda of that regime.
When Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, former army Chief of Staff under Ironsi was appointed by his military colleagues to replace him as Nigeria’s Head of State in July 1966, his primary challenge was to douse the ethnic turmoil between the North and East.
Many conferences were held, but following the failure of the peace efforts and the rivalry that emerged between him and the Military Governor of the Eastern Region, Lt. Co. Emeka Ojukwu, who favoured a secession of the Region from Nigeria as a means of ensuring the safety of his people, the Igbo, Gowon decided “overturn” Ironsi’s unitary arrangement.
He announced the abolition of the regions and the creation 12 states. This, in effect, helped to weaken the political integrity of the Eastern Region and isolate the Igbo in the breakaway Republic of Biafra led by Ojukwu. Gowon then embarked on the campaign to stop the secession of the East.
After thirty months of a bloody civil war that claimed over a million people, the secession of Biafra came to an end officially on January 15th 1970. Gowon emerged the hero of the war.
Gowon’s regime left not just the legacy of winning the war to “keep Nigeria one” but also founded the subsisting culture of centralised federalism in which the centre still retains overwhelming power over the units, a federal system some have described as a sham. He pioneered the creation states.
The Sandhurst-trained soldier still holds the record as the only ruler of Nigeria who led for nine unbroken years. This was because he rescinded his promise to hand over Nigeria to a civilian elected regime in 1975, which led to his overthrow in July 1975.
Gowon thus became the first Nigerian ruler to attempt “tenure elongation”, something most of his successors also tried but which none of them succeeded in getting.
Gowon thus left with his record in tatters and without a clear-cut future political agenda for which the nation would remember him. However, many people have hailed Gowon as a great nation builder and statesman whose patriotic handling of the civil war’s aftermath helped in the speedy healing of wounds.
Gowon was also a great Reconstructionist in that he used the proceeds of the first crude oil boom in Nigeria’s history to lay the infrastructural foundation that is still the mainstay of the nation, since his successors chiefly engaged themselves in rapacious misrule, power struggles and corruption.
General Gowon’s National Development Plans were consistently implemented and represented the first and only genuine attempt to create a long-term economic roadmap for Nigeria. General Gowon has gone into history as arguably the best leader Nigeria ever had.
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