Word: yakubu
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...four years ago this week, the Ibo people of rebellious Biafra feared that defeat would bring genocidal vengeance from the victorious Nigerian army. Instead, the Ibos are prospering as citizens of a federated Nigeria. The credit goes in large part to the young head of state, Major General Yakubu Gowon, who decreed a policy of "no victor and no vanquished" after the savage civil war that took at least 1,000,000 lives...
Thus, as usual, no important issues were resolved. Nigeria's Yakubu Gowon, the conference chairman, summed the situation up in his closing speech: "We have concluded our differences in a matter that baffles advocates of conventional diplomacy." Far from being "concluded," those differences remain perfectly real, papered over though they may be. That seems to be the O.A.U. way: consensus without clout...
...strongest character in the narrative is the Jefferson Davis of this civil war, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the sophisticated and somewhat theatrical Ibo colonel who led the Biafran revolt. But the real hero is Yakubu Gowon, who eventually succeeded in holding the country together...
...somewhat painfully, the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Africa's richest, most powerful and most populous nation (about 60 million), is pulling itself together after the devastating civil war that ended two years ago. A reconciliation of sorts has taken place between the federal government, headed by General Yakubu Gowon, and the secessionist republic of Biafra, now Nigeria's East Central state. The scars of war, physical as well as psychological, have mostly faded. The sole reminders of the airstrip at Uli-Biafra's only gateway to the outside world during the long federal siege-are the rusting...
...chief of state is enough to make protocol officials nervous. Thus there was more than a little Israeli concern last week when four self-styled "Messengers of Peace"-Senegal's Poet-President Léopold Senghor, Cameroun's President Ahmadou Ahidjo, Nigeria's Chief of State Yakubu Gowon, and the Zaire Republic's President Joseph Mobutu-flew almost simultaneously into Lod International Airport outside Tel Aviv. They had been dispatched by the Organization of African Unity to help bring peace between Arabs and Israelis "by means of a dialogue," as Senghor...