Duty & Allegiance: Gowon’s memoirs, an exercise in self-justification! By Olu Fasan

In the Acknowledgements section of his recently published memoirs My Life of Duty & Allegiance, General Yakubu Gowon, a former military head of state, writes: “Let me begin by saying that I was not anxious to document my memoirs, but the calls for me to do so kept coming.” Well, I am one of those who kept urging General Gowon to write his memoirs. I did so in three interventions in this column, the last of which, in March last year, was daringly titled “A plea to General Gowon: Sir, write your memoir before you die!” (Vanguard, March 13, 2025).

So, when Gowon published his memoirs in May this year, I did not hesitate to spend £29.98 (about N54,000) to buy a copy from Amazon. I read the 760-page book with great interest! First, congratulations are in order! General Gowon truly deserves commendation for writing such a historically significant book. His was the last voice everyone wanted to hear on the most epochal events in the annals of this country: the 1966 coups and civil war, during which he was head of state.

Gowon addresses those thorny issues in the memoirs, a masterpiece. The book starts with General Gowon’s removal from power in July 1975. Chapter 1, titled “Our Boys Are Up To Something”, deals with the coup that toppled him while he was attending a summit of the then Organisation of African Union, OAU, in Kampala, Uganda. This is instructive because the memoirs, divided into 36 chapters, are almost entirely Gowon’s ripostes to various allegations and criticisms against him.

He leaves virtually no allegation or criticism unaddressed. And on each, he admits no wrong, no fault, no error! It was entirely an exercise in self-justification, without a single mea culpa! It is impossible to discuss Gowon’s comprehensive memoirs in one column, and I won’t do so here. In other columns, I would address the quality of governance and the public service ethos under General Gowon’s regime, as well as the 1966 coups and the civil war.

In the present intervention, however, my focus is on what I regard as the memoirs’ general flaws, one being its somewhat weak evidential base. Reading the book, it struck me that, in some places, much of what General Gowon says is based on conjectures, insinuations and assertions. Of course, unlike an autobiography, which requires research, dates and facts, a memoir is usually based on memory and subjective interpretation.

Nevertheless, the recounting of significant events in Nigeria’s past by one of its key dramatis personae should not be devoid of historical accuracy. To be fair, General Gowon explains the paucity of evidence, saying: “I want to emphasise that I am telling my story without access to my crucial personal records, since many important documents taken from my desk after my removal in July 1975 were discarded by those who succeeded me.” Of course, in doing so, those people denude Nigeria’s historical narrative of richness.

The documents that survived, Gowon says, “were destroyed by two serial fire incidents.” So, it’s understandable why such a historically important book lacks good citations or references. Yet that’s no justification for some of Gowon’s assertions. For instance, General Gowon asserts that the Ghanaian government under President Kwame Nkrumah gave “support and some measure of assistance” to the January 15, 1966 coup plotters.

Why? Because Nkrumah did not like Sir Tafawa Balewa, the prime minister! Gowon gloats at Nkrumah’s overthrow on February 24, 1966, barely a month after the Nigerian coup, saying: “Poetic justice took its course”! Making damaging allegations against another country’s leader without strong evidence is not the stuff of good memoirs. In another example, when General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, then head of state, approved a plan for Gowon to attend a course in the UK, shortly before the July 1966 coup, Gowon speculates: “Was this another plan to keep the only surviving senior Northern officer away from the scene?” He adds: “Again, I do not know.” He had earlier suspected Ironsi of being complicit in the January 1966 coup.

Given the role speculations and rumours played in fuelling the events of 1966, it’s strange that General Gowon himself harboured them! Then, there’s the naivety and hypocrisy. Gowon proclaims his “faith in democracy and belief in the subordination of the military to civil authority.” As a result, he found incredulous the story that Dr Nwafor Orizu, as acting president, had voluntarily invited General Ironsi to run the country after the January 15, 1966 coup.

Gowon argues: “In my view, it would have been more appropriate to have allowed the Parliament to choose one of its members to act as Prime Minister and then to organise elections in about six months so that whichever party won the highest votes would appoint the substantive Prime Minister and other principal officers of State.” Recall that there had just been a brutally violent coup in which prominent politicians and military officers were killed.

The genie was out of th