Abstract
In Gowon’s 2015 Convocation Lecture titled “No Victor, No Vanquished” at Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, he still upheld the necessity to keep Nigeria one as a fundamental justice and an incumbent task that he proudly did at all cost. The inevitability of the Nigerian – Biafra war was the out-come. Ojukwu of the Biafran enclave considered his protection of his people as a fundamental justice. The progroms that started in May 1966 made many Igbo people to flee home. According to Achebe C. (2012:95) , “when we noticed that the federal government of Nigeria did not respond to our call to end the pogroms, we concluded that a government that failed to safeguard the lives of its citizens… the victims deserve the right to seek their safety in other ways – including secession”. The justification of the Biafran cause was corroborated by this specific utterance in General Yakubu Gowon’s “No Victor, No Vanquished” (2015:25) : “ I concede, in all honesty, that Emeka Ojukwu could be justified … at the time”. As he justified Ojukwu’s reaction, he justified his by strongly declaring that if Ojukwu were in his (Gowon’s) shoes, he would have done exactly the same. What a war that was waged on principles to a staggering loss of men, materials and money in defence of subjective senses of justice. This study seeks the missing link that opposed objective justice.
Author Information
Omeike Cornelius Agwajobi, Igbariam Campus of Anambra State University, Nigeria
Paper Information
Conference: ECAH2016
Stream: Humanities - Philosophy, Ethics, Consciousness
This paper is part of the ECAH2016 Conference Proceedings (View)
Full Paper
View / Download the full paper in a new tab/window
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress