It seems that events which led to the nation’s civil war are yet to receive any forms of closure 53 years after General Yakubu Gowon announced with the chagrin of a sly conqueror that there was No Victor, No Vanquished.

The 33 months war which was fought between the people of the Eastern Region(Biafra)  and the rest of the Nigerian Federation has continued to reverberate through the years resurrecting alongside the yearnings for the Biafran Republic and exposing further the numerous fault lines of this nation called the Giant of Africa.

Thus 56 years after Colonel Emeka  Ojukwu declared that the “territory ( Now comprising of four states of the SouthSouth Region and five states of SouthEast region) known as and called Eastern Nigeria together with her continental shelf and territorial waters shall henceforth be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of “The Republic of Biafra”, the curtains are yet to come to a close on the series of events that led to the declaration and the war itself.

Today, it is reverberating in Abia State as the newly elected Governor, Dr. Alex Otti has come under repeated fire for inviting General Yakubu Gowon to chair a prayer event to kickstart his inauguration as governor.

Nigerians must recall that Umuahia, the capital of Abia is the birthplace of Major General John Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi Ironsi. Nigeria’s first military head of state or Supreme Commander as he was then referred to, who was toppled in a bloody coup that propped up Yakubu Gowon as his successor.

To those protesting, the invitation of Gowon to Umuahia is like inviting Gowon to dance on the second grave of Ironsi ( Recall that Ironsi was initially buried in a shallow grave in Ibadan before his body was exhumed and flown to Umuahia for a befitting funeral) Gowon was also Ironsi’s Chief of Staff who obviously looked the other way while his Supreme Commander was been beaten black and blue and fellow brother officers were senselessly slaughtered only to assume power because according to Ojukwu, he was the head of troops with their fingers poised at the triggers. Gowon was military head of state while the September pogroms raged on, resulting in the senseless massacre of Igbos and other members of the Eastern Region who were all mistaken as “yamirin”, a derogatory term for Igbo. The same Gowon single handedly reneged on the Aburi accord, forcing Ojukwu to secede from Nigeria thus provoking the civil war. The same Gowon presided over a war in which Egyptian flown MIGs were strafing hospitals and markets killing unarmed civilians amidst other forms of atrocities.

Furthermore, many of those irked by Gowon’s invitation have claimed that he may be forgiven for his actions that led to the coup and during the civil war, that given the circumstances in which he found himself in then, he could not have done otherwise, but then has he sought to reconcile with those he did wrong, particularly the family of his Supreme Commander

Has Gowon told Nigerians what actually was Ironsi’s offense? Or the offense of brother officers who were merely slaughtered because they were of a particular ethnic group? Even the abrogation of Decree 34 which was a ruse for the July 29 coup had the imprints of the same Gowon who as Chief of Staff was a member of the Supreme Military Council that deliberated on the same Decree 34 and approved of it.

Gowon also justified the July Counter coup by blaming Ironsi for the slow efforts to put on  January 15 plotters on trial, the same Gowon was however quick to give Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu the popular face behind the coup a military funeral with full honors when his body was discovered during the war. If Ironsi was gruesomely murdered because he somewhat dilly dallied on what to do with the January 15 boys, what then justified Nzeogwu’s military funeral, in the heat of a conflict in which he was on the other side?

What will Gowon be praying about in the hometown of an innocent man he himself personally betrayed and succeeded amidst such display of treachery? Are there no more better Christians from the North or within Nigeria that Otti seeking to commend Abia State to God before he resumes office could have reached out to ? The Kukahs, Adeboye’s , Onaiyekan’s or  Selman’s?

The war, I agree is over, and while I do not begrudge Gowon for a number of his other actions while he served as Supreme Conmander, or share the present day separatist tendencies and inclinations,  I like many other Nigerians cannot pretend to be sangfroid in such circumstances. Make no mistakes, Gowon as a Nigerian citizen is free to move anywhere  within the nation, it is within his constitutional rights to do so but as for the Umuahia visitation, there is then the question of morality and asking Gowon to come and pray in Umuahia cannot effectively answer the moral questions of justice,  a very essence upon which all moral judgements defined by Immanuel Kant  as binding on all human beings no matter what kind of society we live in.