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Aburi Accord: It's Implication On The Nigerian Civil War
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Incompatibility among the various groups was further
aggravated by political disturbances that engulfed the Nigerian
especially the early post-independence years. Threatened by a state of
total collapse after a period of bloody military coups the Nigerian Army
went to Aburi in search of peace. Aburi, Ghana and the failure to
implement Aburi ratifications regarding the country’s unity, resulted in
the 30 months civil war. Many years after the war the present leaders
of the nation ought to have learnt a great lesson of history. But
religion politics and the economy have remained virtually unchanged and
in almost the same guise as in the pre-civil war years, the country seem
also to be on the part of disintegration The obvious pointers to these
assumption are the general state of insecurity and political instability
characterized by regular abrogation of the rule of law, official
corruption and incompetence, kidnapping, armed robbery, militancy,
vandalizing of crude oil flow stations and pipeline that almost crippled
the economic mainstay of Nigerian economy, the unabated
religious/ethnic conflicts in Jos. More recently, a new form of crisis
reminiscent of the 1966 pogrom is engulfing other states in the north
including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja (Amamkpa:2012:6). A
Muslim fundamentalist sect going by the name Jama’atahl al-sunna
li-da’wawa-l-quital, popularly known as Boko Haram (Western Education is
forbidden), has gained a stranglehold on the region unleashing terror
most especially on non-Muslim indigenes of the North. Very
unfortunately, 46 years after Aburi and the civil war, the current trend
of insecurity still cast shadows of doubts on national unity prompting
plethora of demands for national conference, sovereign national confab,
true federalism, political autonomy, restructuring Nigeria into six
geo-political zones, financial autonomy to local government and a
resistance to any change of status quo.
In a build-up to Aburi and
the Civil war, 1967-1970, scholars and experts have reeled out a number
of factors responsible for crises of those ominous years. These factors
which include: political, social, economic, religious, etc are
interwoven and could not be considered as terra incognita as far as the
geo-political developments in Nigeria are concerned. Amidst the myriad
of political sub-factors, the role of Aburi Accord in starting the war
was, more often than not, considered the last straw. One of the
oft-quoted statements of this period was reflected in Obasanjo’s My
Command: [Aburi]…was the last ditch of effort to save Nigeria from
collapse (Obasanjo, 1980:145). This statement was corroborated by
several other scholars who pointed to the Aburi Accord as the last gap
in that circle of conflict.
In a build-up to the Aburi conference,
Nigeria was dragged to the brink of the abyss by two military coups in
1966. One of the far-reaching implications was a stalemate between two
military leaders (Gowon and Ojukwu). The reason for the face-off, which
invariably dominated the agenda of the Aburi conference, was predicated
on the following:
The leadership and restructuring of the Nigerian Army
The compensation and relocation of victims of the 1966 Pogrom
After
several unfruitful attempts to bring (Gowon and Ojukwu) to the
negotiating table, Aburi, a more secured venue, in Ghana, was mutually
agreed.
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