• Says war was to keep Nigeria united
• MASSOB carpets BRAC, says Gowon’s role in civil war unfair
The apex Northern cocio-cultural group, Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), has told Ohanaeze Ndigbo that the former military head of state, retired General Yakubu Gowon, owes nobody any apology for declaring war against the Biafrans, saying that it was a call to duty to keep Nigeria united.
ACF’s reaction came on the heels of the recent demand by Ohanaeze that Gowon should apologise for the civil war he declared in the country, which claimed the lives of many Igbo.
In a statement by the spokesman of the ACF, Prof. Tukur Muhammed-Baba, yesterday, the Arewa leaders have been deeply offended by the Ohanaeze’s demand, describing it as a “highly provocative statement.”
Muhammed-Baba said that he has taken time to read and digested the comments of the official and representative of the Ohanaeze, Okechukwu Isiguozo, as well as from the self-styled Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), asking Gowon to apologise for some nebulous sin against the Igbo people, emanating from his role as Commander-in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria during the 1969 – 1970 Nigerian Civil War.
“For ACF, the statements were crude, inciting, almost uncouth, underlined by thinly-disguised jealousy and totally uncharitable to the legacy of Gowon, whose records in the role under reference remains, we dare say, yet unmatched in the history of modern Nigeria.”
MEANWHILE, the leadership of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has carpeted a coastal aborigines group from the old Eastern Region for expressing ignorance about Gowon’s role during the civil war, hailing him as a liberator of the region.
The attack was in defence of Gowon by the Coordinator of Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Cross River (BRAC) Coastal Aborigines, Doris McDaniels, who reacted to Gowon’s visit to President Bola Tiunubu in the Villa, describing the retired general as a hero, who liberated them by the declaration of end to the civil war.
But the MASSOB’s leader, Uchenna Madu, condemned BRAC’s exoneration of Gowon’s alleged “genocidal war against the people of Biafra” and heroic tag, accusing the group of being “the greatest enemies of their people.”
Making this known in a statement, yesterday, Madu explained that the war saw the murder of thousands of fathers and mothers of the so-called BRAC states.
