{{The last may not have been heard of the Nigerian Civil War, as the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief at that time, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, has asked the Federal Government to reopen and investigate the abuse of power committed during and after the war in order “to do justice to the aggrieved.” }}
Gowon spoke Thursday during the launch of the book, The Tragedy of Victory, written by the civil war Chief of Staff of the 3rd Marine Commando, Brig.-Gen. Godwin Alabai-Isama (rtd).
Gowon, who wrote the forward to the book, said it is a “loud statement of the need to rectify what appears to smack of injustice perpetrated against the otherwise innocent.”
According to him, “this is not just an Army problem; it is national malaise that causes people in authority to use the weight of their office and authority to hurt perceived personal ‘enemies’.
“With the firm establishment of democratic governance in Nigeria, wrongs done under the military and civil authorities as a result of abuse of power can and should be reopened and investigated to do justice to the aggrieved.”
He commended the author, who he said “has unobtrusively posed the question whether anyone, however highly-placed, should get away with injustice deliberately perpetrated against the innocent, even under cover of national security.”
Meanwhile, the book reviewer, Kunle Ajibade, said the launch did not only coincide with the birthday of South Africa’s former President, Nelson Mandela, but that the chief presenter, former Minister of Defence, Gen. Theophilus Danjuma (rtd), was one of the actors the author attacked in the book.
In his review entitled “Combatant Chronicle of the Nigeria/Biafra War,” Ajibade said The Tragedy of Victory has rendered former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s memoirs on the civil war, My Command, a “distortion of facts” and “tapestry of inaccuracies.”
Stating that “Obasanjo lied to massage his ego,” he described Alabi-Isama’s memoirs as a book of strategy and military campaign.
Nevertheless, the author, Alabi-Isama, said that two reasons motivated him to write the book.
These, he claimed, were the lie that Obasanjo told in his war account, My Command, and the library of war photographs, which was preserved by his mother many years after the war.
Obasanjo, he said, demonised everyone and ignored the heroic performance of especially the women who helped to end the war earlier than expected.
At the launch were Lt.-Gen. Danjuma, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe (rtd), Brig.-Gen. Mobolaji Johnson (rtd), Lt.-Gen. Alani Akinrinade (rtd), Prof. Bola Akinterinwa and royal fathers, among others.
{NgrGuardian}
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