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Aburi was the biggest fraud ever conceived, and it was Prince Solomon Akenzua who unraveled it. Gowon was so desperate for peace that he signed away what he had no mandate to give—the wealth he didn’t own and the right to self-determination of Eastern minorities to Ojukwu—who was masking territorial ambition and an agenda of resource control behind the rhetoric of survival and justice.
After the Aburi meeting in January 1967, the agreement was supposed to be codified into a decree by the Federal Military Government. Gowon’s team drafted what became known as Decree No. 8, which incorporated most of the Aburi resolutions. But there was one key difference: instead of requiring unanimous consent from all four regional governors for federal decisions, the decree allowed for three out of four signatures to suffice.
Now, on paper, that’s a practical compromise. Total unanimity in a crisis-prone federation is a recipe for paralysis. But to Ojukwu, this wasn’t a technical adjustment—it was a betrayal of the spirit of Aburi, which had emphasised collective responsibility and equal veto power. He saw the change as a backdoor to central dominance, especially since the Eastern Region was already politically isolated.
But here’s the deeper irony: Ojukwu had already begun asserting unilateral control over federal assets in the East—even before Aburi. So while he insisted on unanimity from others, he wasn’t exactly practicing it himself. His refusal to accept the compromise decree wasn’t just about principle—it was about preserving his leverage, especially over oil and military autonomy.
Why didn’t he push to return to Aburi? Because by then, the myth had already taken root. “On Aburi we stand” had become a rallying cry, not a negotiation point. To revisit it would have meant admitting that compromise was still possible. And by mid-1967, Ojukwu wasn’t looking for compromise. He was preparing for rupture.
It’s amazing that a leader who was demanding absolute consensus from others was exercising unilateral power himself. Grabbing any ship that came into Bonny and Port Harcourt wasn’t federalism. That was a prelude to autocracy. And it cost the country dearly.
Pushing an agenda that conceded nothing to Eastern and Northern minorities—eight months after the killings in the North—was deeply flawed and unfair to all stakeholders. The killings of Northern, Western, and Midwestern leaders had spiraled into the insane slaughter of Southerners in the North—and we should have stopped right there, with everyone keeping to their tents long enough to heal. Seizing federal assets even before Aburi was a sign that justice was secondary.
The oratory—and his lens—didn’t change until he fled. Easterners were traumatized by both Gowon and Ojukwu’s soldiers, as young people fled from forced conscription and hostile occupation, respectively.
While children swelled with kwashiorkor and the death toll rose, why was photography the chosen response instead of negotiation? When aid dropped, rations went to soldiers first. He fed his army, fed the myth, and fed the war. The same mouth that cried justice weaponized hunger—and civilian corpses paved the road to political theatre.
The war should have ended around the time Zik fled Biafra. But pride is a stubborn fire. Two soldiers waiting for who will blink first, while civilians starved to death. I personally think that the mother of the baby should have been more concerned about the sword splitting the baby in halves, but that’s neither here nor there. Pride continued to burn, even as the war became unwinnable. And in those last eighteen months of drift and desperation, more lives were lost than in the frenzy that began it all. The revolution had long since lost its soul. Even Kaduna Nzeogwu—the coup’s idealist—had fallen under circumstances still unclear.
People forget that publicists were paid while villages starved. That oilfields were claimed without consensus, silencing minorities within the East itself. That dissenting Biafran officers were executed for daring to counsel negotiation. They forget that myths are created to manipulate. And history, if left to those who won’t confront the truth, will remember only what bows to power.
I do not speak to erase grief or deny valour. But if we don’t dismantle the myths that made this war seem sacred, we sentence future generations to carry the weight of falsehood and bitterness. What we need now is not reverence—it’s reckoning.
Instead of the black-and-white myth where Gowon has two long horns and Ojukwu wears a halo, we should be able to see two military officers whose pride caused millions of deaths.
One of the underappreciated tensions at Aburi was the asymmetry in command authority between Gowon and Ojukwu.
In the Eastern Region, Ojukwu held consolidated control over both civil administration and military forces. His decisions were largely unilateral, and he didn’t need to consult a higher federal body — essentially, he was a regional strongman with a clear chain of command. Philip Effiong, originally his senior, but frog leapt along the line, being from the minority tribe, was in reality a rubber stamp.
Gowon, by contrast, despite being the Head of State, led a federal structure still entangled in regional interests. He had to navigate consensus-building among other military governors and federal officials. Each region had considerable autonomy at that time, and Gowon couldn’t just issue directives without risking backlash or defiance.
This difference made negotiations tricky. When Ojukwu spoke at Aburi, he often did so with the confidence of someone who could implement decisions swiftly. Gowon, however, was restrained by his need to bring others onboard — which may explain the later pushback on the agreements reached.
So , of the two men sitting at the same table, one was significantly more answerable at home.
For instance, Ojukwu could execute any officer and he did, but Gowon could not do so without risk.
It’s one of the more sobering aspects of the power dynamics at the time.
Ojukwu, operating as the military governor of the Eastern Region with near-absolute authority, did in fact exercise that power with deadly seriousness. One of the most controversial episodes was the execution of Major Victor Banjo, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, and others in 1967, accused of treason during the Biafran conflict. There was no federal oversight or judicial review — just a swift, unilateral decision. That kind of authority, for better or worse, gave him an iron grip over his command structure.
Gowon, on the other hand, though Head of State, was operating within a fragile federation held together more or less by mutual suspicion. Imagine if he ordered a summary execution of Murtala Mohamed without broad military or regional consensus, it could’ve sparked mutiny and further destabilisation. His authority relied more on balancing interests than asserting dominance — a much slower, politically entangled process.
It’s a classic example of centralised versus shared power — and how leadership style often reflects the structure surrounding it.
In this circumstance, it absolutely impossible for Gowon to have endorsed such a far reaching restructure agenda without bringing it to a wider round table of governors and civil servants.
So it’s a no brainer if Gowon says,
“We just went there as far as we are concerned to be able to meet as officers now, and then to agree to be able to get back home and resolve the problem at home. That was my understanding. But that is not his understanding.”
While Ojukwu, despite his rhetorics of liberty and justice, didn’t think to extensively consult the minority stakeholders on whose territory lay the oil resources of the Eastern Region.
Also troubling about Ojukwu’s ‘On Aburi We Stand’ is the idea of a regional army. How’s that even a country? That’s more of a stagecoach harnessed to four horses heading in four different directions.
Now, before you accuse me of hating any group or siding with any of the three tyrant tribes of Nigeria, you need to know I’ve consistently confronted history. Copied.
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