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Monday 22 April 2013

Yar’Adua wanted Gowon dead over 1976 coup. (Goyol,Dimka’s aide)



Goyol
Mr. Anthony Goyol, who was detained along with some of the plotters  of the February 13, 1976 coup tells JUDE OWUAMANAM that the plan of the northern oligarchy, then, was to exterminate all officers of Middle Belt origin either involved or remotely involved in the coup

WHO was Joseph Gomwalk, the first military governor of Benue-Plateau State, who was executed in 1976 due to his connection to Buka Dimka’s attempted coup against Muritala Mohammed’s government?
From all I have read, heard and know, he was a very straightforward person. He was a hardworking and very intelligent man. When he was in school, he was always first in exams. He loved sports so much and he had this attitude of making a change in whatever situation he found himself. He was not a selfish person. During his days as a governor of Benue-Plateau State, he made sure that he touched the lives of every district and local government in the state. Go to any of those places, his legacies still stand out. From Benue to Nasarawa and all those areas that were under Benue-Plateau, you still find his imprint. In all those areas, he was able to do something, no matter how little, because he believed in justice and fairness.

How did you meet him?
I first knew him when I was a student at Bukuru Technical College. My roommate and classmate was a younger brother to one of his wives.  So, we used to go to his house and spend weekends with his family. After that, I joined the army but I did not stay in Plateau. After he was removed from office, he relocated to Pankshin. So, each time I went to Pankshin, I would go and see him. This was for a short period. We met again after the (1976) coup took place. I was a small boy then. We related like father and son. We later met in different detention centres in Lagos before we finally ended up in Kirikiri.

How were you linked with the coup?
My link with the coup was not because of him but because of Lt. Col. Buka Suka Dimka, the architect of the coup. I was the closest man to Dimka, besides his two wives. I was not in the same station with him when the coup took place because he was in Lagos and I was in Enugu. I was transferred from Lagos to Enugu then. I left for a course at the Kaduna Polytechnic. So, it was not that I was physically present when the coup took place. I was arrested because of my association with Dimka. In fact, everybody who had had one association with him or the other was arrested. When we were in Enugu, we were always together, we took our annual leave together, we would go home together and return to our base together. Because I was a sportsman, he singled me out of the bunch of people from my area. I was then playing for Enugu Rangers Football Club.  He was very interested in me and we became very close. When the coup took place, I was a thought to be a natural accomplice because of my association with him. They picked me up from Kaduna where I was attending the course.

What was your rank then?
I was a staff sergeant and I retired as a staff sergeant. Dimka went through the officers’ corps and became a lieutenant colonel while I went through the tradesman. I was a technician in the army workshop. I was a technician while he was a combatant officer. While I was in workshop, he was in the battalion, but our mother’s tongue brought us together.

From your association with Dimka, was he really involved in that coup?
It was after the coup that I learnt of his involvement. He was not the architect of the coup. The real masterminds were Maj. Dabang and others. They actually planned the coup. Dimka was closer to junior officers than senior officers.  He was very close to lieutenants, captains, majors and the rank and file. When the plan was going on, he heard about it because that he was close to the masterminds, they felt comfortable with him. Maj. Dabang is from Shendam. I got to know these pieces of information later on. It was after the coup took that I put all the pieces of information together.

So during the planning stages, you were not privy to it despite your closeness to Dimka?
No, I was not privy to anything. The bits and pieces I put together made me know the extent of Dimka’s involvement. We went to Jos and Kaduna together and we were to part ways in Kaduna. He was to proceed to Lagos while I was to remain in Kaduna.  When we got to Kaduna, the captains and majors were writing their promotion examination in the Nigeria Defence Academy, Kaduna. We went to Kakuri because we needed to drop one of our sisters there. When we got to the house, Dabang came around and he was complaining to Dimka about the treatment being meted to them. It was my first time of meeting Dabang. He told Dimka to see the brigade commander on their behalf. He said the brigade commander should know that they were not cadets that could be asked to fetch water and do other menial jobs. He asked Dimka to let the brigade commander realise that they were officers and only came to write promotion exams and that it was wrong to ask them to be fetching water. When Dabang left, we went to see Bako, who was then a major. When we got there, Dimka told Ibrahim Bako to talk to the brigade commander about the treatment being meted to the officers taking their examination at NDA. Bako asked Dimka if he knew about a petition written by one major against Maj. Gen. Muritala Mohammed, who was then the head of state. Dimka said that he had not seen it.  It was in that house that I learnt that a serving soldier had written a petition against the head of state.

What was the petition about?
The petition was about the way the head of state was treating his fellow officers and the way he was governing the country. The petitioner was not happy and so he wrote to the military high command. If you have this book, Just Before Dawn, by Prof. Kole Omotosho, he wrote about that petition. It was later on that I read the book and I remembered that somebody mentioned something about that petition many years ago in Kaduna. Then I left with Dimka. At that time, my house was in Kaduna and my family was staying there. So Dimka dropped me in my house and he intended to visit some of the officers he knew. But to my surprise, he spent more than two days in Kaduna. It was after the coup that I linked all these events together; that it was those captains and majors who told him about the coup. It was all the captains and majors that went for the promotion examination at NDA that planned the coup. People like Maj. Gagara, Captain Wakyes, Maj. Dabang and so on. None of them was above the rank of a major. But when Dimka came into the coup, Dabang was sick and he asked them to shift the date for the execution of the coup. But they told him that it could leak if they waited. So he was in the hospital when Dimka and the rest executed the coup.

So how did Gomwalk get involved in the coup?
Gomwalk was in no way involved in the coup except in one small incident that they wanted to confirm, but could not. Gomwalk was staying in Pankshin after he retired and Abdullahi Mohammed was the military governor.  Soldiers were being sent to Gomwalk’s house in Pankshin because the military wanted to take over Gomwalk’s personal house. Gomwalk was not comfortable with that. Even when one of his wives gave birth to her last child, the military decided to move them out of the house. So, Gomwalk wrote to his friend and classmate, Illiya Bissalla, who was then the Chief of Defence Staff. He told Bissalla that he had contacted the governor over his predicament, but the governor did not do anything.  He told Bissalla that he was being harassed and about to be thrown out of his house. It was that letter that they saw that they used against Gomwalk. This is what I know very well. Again, because Gomwalk’s elder brother, Clement, married Helen, who is an elder sister of Bissalla’s wife, Bisalla, too, was said to be involved in another coup.  Even Gomwalk’s wife was arrested because she was on holiday in Bissalla’s house on holidays. They alleged that Bissalla at that time was also planning his own coup, but they could not prove that. And so they picked Helen from Bissalla’s house and got the letter Gomwalk wrote to Bissalla after they searched the house. But the main thing was that Gomwalk was not liked by the northern oligarchy because most of them said he was a rebel in the North. They accused him of trying to create another North out of the North by bringing so many projects to the Middle Belt; cutting off from New Nigeria Newspapers and establishing the Plateau Printing and Publishing Company; cutting off from Kaduna Television and establishing the then Benue-Plateau Radio and Television and so on.

Are you saying Gomwalk was set up?
They said Gomwalk was trying to do things independently and they set him up. That was one of the main reasons. But during the trials in Lagos, while we were all in detention, and knowing that Gomwalk had nothing serious against the head of state, they gave him a life jail term. A few others also got life jail terms. I learnt of Yakubu Gowon’s perceived involvement in the coup when I was in detention. Some people with him in London came told me stories of what happened. What happened was that in December 1975, Dimka went to the UK for a sports festival. On his way back, he made a stopover in London to see one of his kinsmen, late Kasuwa, in whose house he stayed. He told Kasuwa he would like to see Gowon before he returned to Nigeria. Kasuwa agreed but said he had no vehicle to take Dimka to Gowon’s residence. Kasuwa then called Anthony Kama, who was then at the High Nigerian Commission in London, to take them to Gowon’s residence. So they went together to see Gowon. All the people in that group were arrested after it was revealed that they went to Gowon’s house. There was this Capt. Ibrahim, who grew up with Gowon in Wusasa, who was among them. He had lived with Gowon in Zaria and was Kama’s friend. All the conversation was in English because neither Gowon nor the captain understood Ngas, our language. When these things started happening, Kama was transfered back to Nigeria. Then he shipped some equipment and as they were coming, Dimka gave him a box to put in the consignment. When they saw Dimka’s name on the consignment, they asked after the owner of the consignment. That was how Kama was arrested. He told them that he saw Dimka for the first time when they went to see Gowon and that as he was about to return to Nigeria, Dimka gave him the box to bring to Nigeria. That was all I knew and I confirmed that from the captain and Kama. When they had wound up the sitting of the tribunal, Gomwalk, Isaiah, Gowon’s younger brother, who was a close friend of mine, and some others, were jailed.  They tried to get Gowon to come back to Nigeria to come and testify. Gen. Shehu Yar’Adua, who was then the Chief of Army Staff, wrote a letter, on behalf of the government, to the British government that Gowon was not under any threat and that all his brothers arrested in connection with the coup had been released.  But Gowon called later and learnt that none of his brothers had been released. At the end of the day, when they were bombarding the British government with letters signed by Yar’Adua, asking for Gowon’s extradition, the British government had to write a letter and sent it to Nigeria through a British Foreign Office Minister, Mr. Ted Rowlands. Rowlands was accompanied by a Deputy Under Secretary in charge of African Affairs, Anthony Duff and other officials. The letter was emphatic and the British government said it was not going to release Gowon because he had been prejudged guilty and sentenced even before appearing before the tribunal. That same day, a new tribunal was put in place headed by Brig. Gen. Eremebor, who was a junior officer to the man that headed the former tribunal. And you know this is against military tradition. So, Eremebor now sat and that same day, the Supreme Military Council met and just to ensure that they went through the semblance of a process they handed down death sentence on those earlier given life jail terms. Dimka was in jail because they said he was not involved in the coup at the initial stage, but came in half way. The plan was to kill all senior military officers from lieutenant colonel and above. Dimka came in, saved the situation and that was why they gave him life sentence. So, he was serving his life jail with Gomwalk, Shayaen and the rest of them. But that same day that the British minister came with the letter, they constituted another tribunal, sentenced them to death and executed all of them. Seven of them were killed.

This means that Gowon would have been killed if he had come back to Nigeria?
That is what I am saying. If Gowon had come back, they would have killed him. He would not have been alive today. They were annoyed because of that letter from the British government, which sealed their hope that Gowon would not be extradited. That was the day a new panel was set up and that was the day they were executed.

Why did they want Gowon dead?
The fact was that they perceived it to be a Plateau coup since the majority of those involved were from Plateau. They believed that Gowon would have been part of it and obviously, since the head of state who is one of them from the far North, was one of the casualties, Gowon too, as a former head of state, must go. That was all I knew. But the fact is that Gowon did not have any prior knowledge of the coup. Those people that were arrested because of their chance meeting with Gowon met me in the prison and told me the story one after the other.

What saved you from the hangman’s noose?
It was Dimka that saved me. When we were before the tribunal, we all gave testimonies of our involvement.  In all their investigations, they discovered that I was very close to Dimka and felt I must have known a lot about the coup. Even though I was of a junior rank, they thought that my involvement must have been very deep. From the statements I made, I said I could not deny the fact that I knew Dimka because he was my close friend. He was my in-law and he did a lot during my wedding. I could not deny him, but I always restated the fact that Dimka did not tell me about the coup. Dimka did not tell me because I was not around after we parted in Kaduna. I went to school. So when they called Dimka, he was given all the files containing my statement and he went through them. He said yes, all that I said were true. Then they asked him why he did not tell me about the coup since I was so close to him. Dimka said, ‘I did not want to disturb him because he was in school and I did not want to disrupt his studies, that was why I did not tell him.’ That was my saving grace, but it took them time to set me freed after that because they thought they could get fresh evidence against me. But at the end of the day, there was nothing.

You were with Gomwalk in detention, what did he tell you?
He told me that he was yet to be told why he was detained. He said he was at a loss at why he could be associated with any coup to overthrow a government.  They took him through one interrogation or the other; from one desk to the other. Till I parted with him, nobody came to tell him that what his offences were. It was only that letter he wrote to Maj. Gen. Bissalla to complain that soldiers were harassing him in his house in Pankshin.

Now that there are agitations for pardon, do you think that Gomwalk is qualified for any pardon by the Federal Government?
Gomwalk is qualified to be pardoned. He was innocent; he served this country very well. Both in the police and as a military governor of old Benue – Plateau state, he discharged his duties to the best of his abilities. He performed better in government than any of these people being given presidential pardon. He was innocently executed. Up to the time we left Kirikiri, he never mentioned anything about the coup. But we knew that it was because of the northern agenda. All they wanted was to get rid of Gomwalk.

Was Gowon privy to all these information?
I cannot tell because Gowon did not come back to Nigeria until 2003. I can however confirm that the first time Dimka visited him was in company with all those people I mentioned earlier. And Dimka told me that. When Dimka came back to Nigeria, he came to Pankshin and we sat together and he told me of his chance meeting with Gowon in London. Whether Gowon was privileged to know these details, I don’t know, but I know that he was not involved in that coup. They just wanted to rope him in and get rid of him. The Federal Government was annoyed because the British government refused to hand him over to Nigeria. The second tribunal was just set up to fulfil all righteousness; Gomwalk was the prime target. So I can say that Gomwalk was killed because they couldn’t get Gowon. They just brought them out from the prison and executed them. And that was why in his last letter to his family, before he was executed, he told them not to blame anybody. He said his killers might think that they had gotten rid of him, but that they had only succeeded in taking him out of this wicked world to meet his Lord. Gowon read the message to a congregation when he was launching a book on Gomwalk.

by Jude Owuamanam, Jos

source:punchng

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