Obasanjo On Benjamin Adekunle

Olusegun Obasanjo, the man to whom Biafra surrendered, was of the view that Benjamin Adekunle was mentally and physically jaded

In one of the several weekly meetings with Gowon as the Chief of Army’s Corp of Engineers, Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo told the head of state that Colonel Benjamin Adekunle (Black Scorpion), Commanding Officer of the 3rd Marine Commando, was “tired mentally and physically” and “need to take a rest,” said the US documents.

Adekunle commanded the brave Bonny Island Landing on 26 July 1967. He captured Escravos, Forcados, Burutu, Urhonigbe, Owa and Aladima, Bomadi and Patani, Youngtown, Koko, Sapele, Ajagbodudu, Warri, Ughelli, Orerokpe, Umutu and Itagba, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Aba and Owerri before it was recaptured by Biafra’s Colonel Joe Achuzia.

According to the US confidential documents, aside being the Chief of Army Engineers, Gowon initially kept Obasanjo in Ibadan as the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Area Command to check the activities of Western State Governor, Brigadier Adeyinka Adebayo. Adebayo, described as “politically ambitious” was so much involved in the political rivalry in Ibadan that Busari Obisesan and other NNDP politicians planned to assassinate him for being too pro-Awolowo and pro-AG in November 1966.  Obasanjo did not have any political inclination or he did not make such obvious, unlike his predecessor, Lt Colonel Olufemi Olutoye, said the document of 7 August 1967.

Obasanjo was the most senior Yoruba officer in the army, whose loyalty to the Federal Government and the war, Gowon counted on very early. Gowon made Adebayo go through Obasanjo whenever he wanted escorts for Lagos visit, even though he was his senior.

In separate secret document, Obasanjo told the American Defence Attaché office map officer that: “ Gowon had told him to leave Adebayo alone as long as Adebayo stayed completely clear of the military. As soon as Adebayo interfered in the military in anyway, he was to let Gowon know and Gowon would move in on Adebayo.” Obasanjo was largely responsible for committing the loyalty of Yoruba soldiers in the army to Lagos first, healing the division and increasing their cooperation with northern officers. As Obasanjo himself told Mr. Strong, the American consul in Ibadan, “he personally locked up any deserting Yoruba officers in Agodi prisons, gave them 24 strokes of the cane each before sending them back to the frontline.” Obasanjo also told Strong that “Yoruba Officers Group was no longer the grievance committee it used to be. It was now an informal group, which occasionally meets Adebayo to keep him in line.”

Benjamin Adekunle, the commander of the 35,000 strong Marine Commando, on the other hand, had an insubordinate, flamboyant, outspoken and temperamental personality.  He never refrained from criticising Gowon or the army hierarchy in public and even to the foreign press. He rejected the Supreme Military Council’s efforts to delegate some of his duties to Lt Col. John Ariyo, the Calabar Garrison Commander and his second-in-command; and Lt Col. Godwin Ally. When Umuahia fell  on 22 April 1969, Gowon, who got married three days before, returned to Lagos from his honeymoon in Kaduna, boasting that the fall of Owerri and Umuahia, the Biafran capital, was his wedding present, only to hear on BBC Radio that Owerri had been recaptured.

Adekunle had to go.

The transfer of command to Obasanjo took place at the Ikeja Airport on 17 May, 1969, and the same plane that brought Adekunle from Port Harcourt took Obasanjo back.  Speaking to the press, Adekunle re-assigned as Director of Planning and Training at the Supreme Headquarters, said Nigerians were too “fractional to recognise the truth and had no sense of objectivity.” He said: “There were factors unknown to the public” responsible for his re-assignment.

However, according to the conversation between Ralph Nwakoby, Biafra’s Deputy Special Representative in New York, and Raymond J. Wach, the US State Department’s Assistant Country Officer for Nigeria, “when Adekunle later travelled  to the US in September of 1969, he was stripped of his possessions at the Ikeja Airport by the commandant of the airport, Major S. Paul Dickson. It was Deinde Fernandez, the wealthy businessman, who took Adekunle out to buy him clothes when he arrived the USA”. Adekunle, said Nwakoby, bluntly reiterated his disloyalty to the Gowon regime and that once it was obvious that Umuahia, where Ojukwu was, was about to be captured, Adekunle was deprived of troops so  that Colonel Mohammed Shuwa’s First Division could do so.

When Wach asked him how he knew this, Nwakoby said he knew Adekunle when he was still as second lieutenant and ADC to Sir Francis Ibiam, the Eastern State Governor. Although he had not established contact with Adekunle since he started living in the Nigerian Permanent Mission to the UN in New York as the guest of Edwin Ogbu, Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, but it was Ogbu’s American wife that told him. Nwakoby also said the Federal Government’s security detail in the mission, an Igbo from Nnewi, also supplied him sensitive information.

According to a confidential document of 11 October 1969, Obasanjo as the Commanding Officer of 3rd Marine Commando, told the American consul in Ibadan that he had prepared a paper for Gowon outlining his views of the army requirements in men and material to defeat Biafra. Gowon rejected such as too great a drain on the economy. Obasanjo said he told him to forget the economy for a while and put everything necessary into winning the war, which could be done in three months. Once the war was over, he argued, the economy would recover.

But Gowon continued worrying about the economy.  Brigadier Philip Effiong, acting head of the Biafran High Command, later surrendered to Obasanjo when what was remaining of the 77,000 square kilometres Biafra had shrunk to a 13,000-square kilometre enclave and Ojukwu had fled. Mohammed the Second Division was reported to have criticised Obasanjo thus:  “We told you not to end the war the way you did so as to sort things out, you went gaddamgaddam and finished it.”

Nwakoby also said Adekunle was told that it was unwise for the Igbo to surrender to a Yoruba, because “the Yorubas in Lagos would eat “the Ibos still living there.” That did not happen. He also told the American diplomat that Ogbu intended to resign from the Nigerian government service on 23 December, 1969. Ogbu never did. However, he said Ogbu, an Igbo, and Nigeria’s Ambassador in Washington, Joe Iyalla, an Ijaw, were both enemies. Chief Simeon Adebo, whom Ogbu took over from, and who was then Director of United Nations Institute of Training and Research, UNITAR, vowed never to return to Nigeria as long as Awolowo was Deputy Chairman of the Federal Executive Council. Adebo was the principal prosecution witness against Awolowo in the 1962 treason trials.