Gowon:
Date
1985
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ibadan: West Books Publisher Limited
Abstract
Leadership style and the political system; Wusasa: from Tuwan to toil; From Barewa to barracks; The meteorip upshot: The creature of crisis; Bullets and political convulsion; The political eclipse; The crisis of political engineering; The blast and the salvage; The dawn of peace and rising expectations; Gowon: the state-builder; Dilemmas and frustrations; The curtains fall; Lagos to London through Kampala; The Dimka affair; A laugh at last.
Description
This book, Gowon: The biography of a soldier-statesman, adds to the stock of publications on the political history of Nigeria in the fluid period 1964-76, of her trials, uncertainty and struggle for survival as a nation-state. The strength of this book lies in the author’s approach. In unravelling the events of this period through political
analysis of the activities of Yakubu Gowon rather than a mere catalogue of the roles played by certain individuals in that period. Yakubu Gowon was called upon to lead Nigeria from the brink of disintegration which was consequent upon a series of coups and the civil war. Undeterred by the possibility of elimination like his predecessors in office, and determined to build a new Nation free from sectionalism, corruption and drift, he accepted the challenge. In the circumstance of the situation, Nigeria needed a leader with military firmness but who was humane, a leader with a sense of purpose and selfless ambition to build a new Nation-State, and a leader determined to consolidate the integrity of the nation. In other words, Nigeria needed a reconciliator who could mobilize the people to construction, but such mobilization must be predicated by intense moral principles and humanism. Gowon provided this leadership.