An Interview with General Gowon
The air-conditioned office of Nigeria's leader, Major General Yakubu Gowon, is on the second floor of a villa in the Obalende quarter of Lagos. A well-thumbed copy of Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln--The War Years lies amid a clutter of radio equipment and six telephones. A devout Methodist in a largely Moslem and animist nation, a member of an insignificant tribe in a federation of tribal giants, Gowon clearly sees himself in the Lincolnesque role of healer of his nation's divisions. TIME Correspondent Charles Eisendrath recently talked with the general. The subjects discussed and Gowon's replies:
On the War's End
I hope it will end within a year. But if it doesn't, I assure you that this country will continue to prosecute this war until we have dealt with the problem of secession.
On Nigeria's Reasons for Fighting This is a war with a difference. We do not take the Ibos as our enemies; they are our brothers. As far as I am concerned, I'm fighting a war to keep the country one and united. I therefore cannot afford to be callous in the way I prosecute this war. I have got to think of the problems of reconstruction, reconciliation and winning the heart, if we are to have a happy country in the end. It would be quite an easy thing to say, "All right, we will call them enemies, and we will fight them as enemies." But then, honestly, it would remain with us for quite some time that they really are enemies.
On Biafra's General Ojukwu While we do not take the Ibos as enemies, we are enemies of evil. Anybody who is the embodiment of evil, of course, will be an enemy. This man [Ojukwu], fighting total war with Nigeria, is a typical Hitler, and he will fight with everything he has in hand. He does not mind killing, eliminating, destroying anything to achieve his end.
On Mastery of the Skies Honestly, there is no magic about our downing a Red Cross plane. Right from the beginning we told all those who broke into our airspace that they were doing so at their own risk. Unfortunately, because of the limitations of our air force, we were not in a position to seal off the air completely. It was the Joint Church Aid group that once said: "We don't care what you say. We're not going to obey your instructions to respect territorial airspace." They told us that if we dared shoot down one of their aircraft, world opinion would be against us. But now people see that we can shoot, and I hope it will be a lesson to any wild gunrunner.
On Relief Flights
God knows, we will do whatever we can not to endanger a relief aircraft. But this means no flights day or night without clearance. Relief services have been offered facilities from Nigeria for either time of day, but nobody was interested in our offer. Now anything they do, they do at their own risk.
On Aid from the Soviets Going to the Soviet Union, I assure you, was just a way of dealing with Ojukwu's threat. After all, Ojukwu started the air war. Even Abraham Lincoln went to Russia for help to win his own Civil War.*
On the West
Our friends' doors have been shut to us and opened to Ojukwu, even though we offer to pay cash for help, and he doesn't have an economy. Where is the morality of this world? We remove the word hate. We remove the word victory. We remove the word enemy. What we get back is poison.
On Civilian Government I have given my word that we will return this government to civilian rule, but I will not hand it over in chaos. I'll hand it over to a democratic government when I am sure that anyone can move about freely and that, irrespective of your ethnic origin, color or religion, you can express your opinion without being intimidated.
* Lincoln, through Bayard Taylor, the U.S. minister to St. Petersburg, in 1862 sought and obtained a pledge of Russian support for the Union, should either Britain or France intervene on the side of the South. The Russians actually dispatched warships to the U.S. to demonstrate their support.
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