Former Military Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, has defended the post-civil war currency policy of his administration, insisting that the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo should not be blamed for the decision to pay about 20 Nigerian pounds to each Biafran adult after the war.

Gowon, who ruled Nigeria between 1966 and 1975, made the clarification in his memoir, My Life of Duty and Allegiance, where he explained that the policy was a collective decision of the Federal Government and not the personal decision of Awolowo, who was then the Federal Commissioner for Finance.

The former Head of State rejected what he described as the continued demonisation of Awolowo by those who accused him of giving Igbo returnees only 20 pounds despite allegedly having millions in banks before the civil war.

According to Gowon, those who had money in Nigerian banks before fleeing, including businessmen, received the full value of their money with interest after the war once they provided proof of ownership.

The Nigerian civil war began in 1967 and ended in 1970. After the war, Gowon declared “no victor, no vanquished” and introduced programmes of reconciliation, reconstruction and rehabilitation in the former Eastern Central State and other war-affected areas.

He explained that his administration changed the country’s currency because of large-scale looting of the Central Bank in Benin and Enugu during the war, adding that much of what people had accumulated ceased to be legal tender in Nigeria.

Gowon also said the Biafran currency had no value in Nigeria because it was not legal tender and was not convertible anywhere in the world.

He recalled that the Federal Executive Council carefully considered how to alleviate the suffering of returnees after the war, while the Central Bank set up a panel to examine the possible conversion of the Biafran pound.

However, he said the government concluded that exchanging all Biafran pounds at par with Nigerian currency would have risked economic collapse because of the large volume of Biafran notes in circulation and the difficulty in determining the economic basis on which the notes were printed.

According to him, economic experts recommended that the Federal Government limit the payout to about 20 Nigerian pounds for each Biafran adult, irrespective of the amount of Biafran currency returned.

Gowon said the government accepted the recommendation because it could not ignore the advice of economic experts at a time the country was struggling to stabilise after a 30-month war fought without external borrowing.

He lamented that, decades after the war, “pseudo-historians” still blame Awolowo for the effects of the post-war currency control policy.

“This is far from the truth. The final decision was not Chief Awolowo’s, even though he was the Finance Commissioner. It was done in the overall national interest,” Gowon said.

He added that the government made a difficult but necessary collective decision to save Nigeria’s economy from collapse.

Gowon further stated that to support the recovery of the former Eastern Region, the Federal Executive Council allocated a substantial part of the national budget to the rehabilitation of the East Central State and other areas affected by the war.

He said additional measures were also introduced to ensure comprehensive recovery and reconciliation.

The former Head of State disclosed that the Federal Government delayed the commencement of the Second National Development Plan from April 1970 to October 1970 to allow the East Central State to participate meaningfully in the plan and to strengthen the reconciliation process after the war.

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