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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