Former military leader Yakubu Gowon has opened up about the desperate measures his government took to keep Nigeria from falling apart during the civil war, revealing that Britain and America left him with no choice but to turn to the Soviet Union and a shadowy Lebanese arms dealer.
In his newly launched autobiography, Gowon recounted how Western powers refused to sell weapons to Nigeria at a time when the country’s ammunition stock had dropped to dangerously low levels.
By late 1968, the entire federal army had only half a million rounds left, a situation Gowon said made it impossible to continue fighting without external help.
“I could not, in clear conscience, commit my troops to further advance knowing that the ammunition to sustain the effort was in short supply,” he wrote.
But when he appealed to British and American ambassadors for support, he left the meeting empty-handed.
That rejection, Gowon said, forced his hand.
As the diplomats prepared to leave the State House, he warned them that he would do whatever it took to protect the nation’s unity.
“I will go to any devil to get what I need,” he recalled telling them.
That threat became policy.
Gowon’s government quickly reached out to Moscow. A delegation was sent to the Soviet Union, and soon Nigeria was receiving MiG fighter jets from a new ally.
But even that was not enough to solve the immediate ammunition crisis. For that, Gowon turned to a Lebanese businessman named Ali Jamal, who operated in the murky world of black-market arms trading.
Jamal, according to Gowon, believed in Nigeria’s survival. He offered to bankroll the purchase of weapons himself, asking only to be paid back later without interest.
The arrangement worked, but it nearly fell apart when Finance Commissioner Obafemi Awolowo objected, insisting that proper financial procedures had been bypassed.
Gowon admitted he overruled the objection using the full weight of his office as Head of State.
“Although I used anger and the power of my office to win the argument,” he wrote, “I felt proud of my team that always insisted on following due process.”
Jamal was eventually paid in full.
The autobiography, launched in Abuja on Tuesday with President Bola Tinubu represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima, spans 859 pages and covers Gowon’s entire life, from his childhood in Plateau State to his years in exile after the 1975 coup that removed him from power.
