The Director of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts, Dr. Sam Amadi, has claimed that Nigeria’s former Military Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, could have averted the Biafra civil war if he had taken decisive actions against the perpetrators of violence against Igbos.
Amadi made this assertion in a post on X (formerly Twitter), where he criticised Gowon’s leadership during the period leading up to the civil war.
“The war came out of Nigeria’s faulty identity-based politics, which led to mass violence against Igbos,” Amadi said.
He argued that Gowon and his colleagues failed to uphold the rule of law by not prosecuting those responsible for the killings of Igbos.
“If Gowon and his colleagues had acted decisively on behalf of the rule of law and openly prosecuted those who killed Igbos, there would have been no demand for secession and no war,” Amadi wrote.
In his remarks, Amadi painted a complex picture of the former leader, describing Gowon as neither a “great leader” nor a “grave villain,” but rather “a rookie stooge of grossly incompetent and hegemonic leadership that walked Nigeria into a stupid and avoidable civil war.”
Amadi further stated that although Gowon bears responsibility for the genocide that occurred during the war, it was not an intentional act on his part, saying: “He’s RESPONSIBLE for GENOCIDE but did not WILL it.”
