The date of Gen. Murtala Ramat Mohammed’s death and 16th American President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday almost coincided. The former was killed by an assassin’s bullet February 13 1976, while Lincoln was born Feb. 12 1809. Both successfully put down rebellion in their countries and both were felled by assassins.
However, this piece isn’t a comparative political thesis on these two great historical figures. No, it’s more about what we still recall of Murtala and how much space we still are willing to give him in our hearts today and even tomorrow. Murtala became head of state after the coup d’etat of July 1975. He personally led the coup that overthrew the government of Gen. Yakubu Gowon, who had been head of state since 1966. Murtala accused his government of unmitigated corruption and Gowon’s vacillation over when to return Nigeria to civil rule. The takeover some saw as Murtala’s idea of taking back a position he believed was his. Remember after the July 29 counter coup of 1966, he had expected to be named successor to Gen. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi who was killed in the coup. Murtala would, however, later show an uncommon side of the military man when, according to Col. Umar Danjuma, he pleaded with Gowon, who had begun a university degree programme in the UK, to return to Nigeria, saying he would be safe. He reportedly told Gowon what he was doing in Britain wasn’t good for him as former head of state and Nigeria. Gowon, however, didn’t return until 1981 when Murtala was long gone and Nigeria had become a democracy again. Shehu Shagari was the elected president then.
As head of state, Murtala began as an absolute despot.This is what Wikipedia says of the initial style of Murtala’s rule, “[He] ruled with more power than Nigerian leader before or since and developed a charismatic authority and cult of personality.” But as his regime stabilized, he started to open up the space. He formed a triumvirate of himself, Olusegun Obasanjo as Chief of General Staff, Supreme Headquarters and Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma as Chief of Army Staff. It allowed for consensus decision making. This softening included plans for returning the country to democratic rule. Gowon’s dithering on this was one of the main reasons for Murtala moving against his fellow northerner in 1975. The high points of his domestic policy included his decision to move the administrative seat of government out of congested and crime-infested Lagos to a centrally located place, a ” virgin land”, it was said. Abuja was chosen. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see his plan through. It would take Shagari and Ibrahim Babangida two decades later to build Abuja to be what it is today.
Murtala’s foreign policy thrust was to finish the decolonization of Africa. He announced to the world that his government had made “Africa the centre piece” of its foreign policy and who to drive it but the young, dynamic and populist military officer Joseph [Joe] Garba. Murtala focused on ending white apartheid rule in South Africa and the liberation struggles in Portuguese speaking Angola and Mozambique. He made Nigeria a member of the Frontline States where liberation wars were raging. Nigeria’s petrodollars were pumped into the struggle and Nigeria trained many young men who would become leaders of their independent countries.
The 1970s were the zenith of the Cold War between the United States and the old Soviet Union. Murtala decided that Nigeria would align with neither. He preferred to go with the Non Aligned Movement. However, when it came to the decolonization of the continent Murtala had no hesitation in accepting Soviet help to get rid of white colonial rule. Your enemy’s enemy is your friend was the predominant notion at the time. It was just as happened during the Civil War. The West refused to supply the Nigerian government weapons, so Gowon went to the Soviet Union which was only too willing to help. Murtala’s robust, no-no sense, take-no-prisoner foreign made him quite popular at home and abroad. He enjoyed a well deserved cult worship with the country younger population. Wherever Nigerians went outside Nigeria’s shores they held their heads high. With oil wealth and a leadership that possessed a purposeful sense of mission why not.
Murtala’s handling of domestic affairs was just as dynamic. His government, though autocratic, was strangely adaptable, enabling wide-ranging socio-economic reform that led to improvement in the quality of life of Nigerians. However, Murtala made a blunder in his attempt at reforming the federal bureaucracy. Towards the end of 1975, the administration carried out a mass purge of the civil service. It was viewed as undisciplined and lacking a sense of purpose. A retrenchment exercise was implemented as part of a strategy to refocus the service. However, because of the drastic nature of the purge, allegations that malice and revenge were used by heads of department in recommending people for the sack surfaced, and as it appeared little was done to scrutinize the details and reasons staff were disengaged. This sense of injustice provided the under current in the coup that killed Murtala. His administration survived though but the strident tenor of the short Murtala regime was lacking in the succeeding Obasanjo government.
This month, February, makes it 49 years since Murtala’s killing. Regrettably, the nation’s memory of his nationalistic zeal appears to have receded to near forgetfulness. No National Day has been declared in his memory. Few national monuments bear his name. Apart from the Murtala Mohammed International Airport at Lagos, nothing more. Some states have named schools after him like Ramat Polytechnic in Borno State, Murtala College in Adamawa and the Murtala Square in Kaduna. The annual Memorial Lecture is no show now. The bubble of student activism that the killing provoked has gone burst. As a nation we need to recover from this vertigo. Now that our nation is clearly lost on the high sea, we must invoke the memories of those who were “a lamp to our feet and a light to our path” – such as our Murtala – to regain our bearing.
