The Indigenous People of Biafra on
Thursday asked a former Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, to stop making
provocative and false statements against the late Dim Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu- Ojukwu and the civil war.....
Gowon had recently in an interview with a
private television station said Ojukwu’s lies caused the civil war in
the country between 1967 and 1970.
The former Head of State added, “We
agreed to put our heads together, to regain the trust and confidence of
Nigerians. We went to Aburi, to agree to deal with the situation of our
country; by ourselves. We did not go with any prepared position on the
federal side, but Ojukwu came with a paper he prepared. His prepared
position was on a pink paper. Usually, a pink paper at the staff college
means directing staff solution to the problem.”
He alleged that the civil war broke
because Ojukwu went on television and gave his account of the Aburi
Accord, which was at variance with what was agreed upon; thereby
deceiving the people of Biafra to going into war against the Federal
Government.
But IPOB in a statement by its Media
and Publicity Officer, Emma Powerful, described Gowon’s comment as “
total falsehood from the mouth of a hater.”
The group accused Gowon of having the penchant of distorting history, especially as it concerned the civil war.
The group expressed worry that Gowon, at
83, could lie against the dead (Ojukwu) who could not defend himself in
the circumstance.
The statement partly read, “At the ripe
old age of 83 and with the little window God has left open to him to
repent and show remorse, Yakubu Gowon has chosen to continue to deceive
himself with his bouquet of falsehood.
“It was the Labour Party government of
Britain that cleverly convinced the Arewa North to put pressure on Gowon
to feign illness, thereby making it difficult for him to tell the
country what was agreed in Aburi because they were not comfortable with
the agreement.
“Today, Gowon, whom we are led to
believe is a prayerful Christian, has said he wasn’t able to speak when
he returned from Aburi because he was ill. Question is: Was his
information minister also ill? Were all government’s spokesmen in Lagos
also down with illness at the same time, that made it difficult for
Lagos to make a pronouncement on Aburi Agreement several weeks after the
meeting?”
The group said Gowon’s attempt to rewrite history would have worked had IPOB not been in existence.
“This day and age, any attempt to
rewrite the history of the Biafra-Nigeria war will be intellectually
resisted and objectively dismantled. Fake history is at the core of why
Nigeria will never be united. Gowon must come clean, apologise and make
atonement.
“We are IPOB, we won’t allow distortion
of historical facts and neither will we allow the denigration of the
revered memory of our all-time hero, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. He
remains, till date, the only man that tried to bring genuine
independence, not mere flag independence, to an African nation.”
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