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Opinion

Danjuma: Nigeria’s Silent Movie @83

Words can sometimes be expensive. The man who knows so much speaks so little. In silence, men and women are made heroes and those who bear the traits of dignity are born. While some may cover the grounds with their words, people who are determined to leave footprints on the sands of time are always clothed in garment of quietness, far away from the maddening crowd of those in love with the floodlight.

So it is with General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (retd) who turned 83 last Wednesday December 9, 2020.  He communicates more in his silence than when he speaks. Edgar Allan Poe, an American poet and literary critic argues that the “true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.”

The kernel of Poe’s assertion is that men and women of great minds will continue to influence human history through deepening their knowledge by resorting to silence and not seeking ovations from the public. This fact is succinctly demonstrated by another writer, William Burroughs, who says that “Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”

Always stern-looking and maintaining a reclusive disposition, the taciturn General has never acquiesced to falsehood. In perilous times of national history, the former Chief of Army Staff has never gone under bed to escape danger. Never penitent over past roles when he served in the military, he led a group of soldiers in Ibadan to arrest the Head of State, Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi during the counter-coup of July 1966. Amidst obvious conclusions that the January 1966 coup had ethnic coloration and may have been executed to enthrone the supremacy of one ethnic group over others, some military officers, including Danjuma, saw no justification in the killing of senior military officers by the coupists. If the intention of the January 1966 was to deal with corrupt politicians of the First Republic, why kill military officers that were never politicians?

The near collapse of camaraderie among the military rankled many officers, including Danjuma, thus setting the stage for the revenge coup that consumed General Aguiyi-Ironsi. Warts and all, the South-east that was at the receiving end of the July 1966 counter-coup has continued to see Danjuma as the arrowhead in the killing of the former Head of State. Though many insiders have come out with their versions of what happened that night in Ibadan, but Danjuma remains unperturbed, though promising to come up with his own account. But, will he?

 When he took command of the Enugu sector during the civil war, he predicted that the federal troops would capture Enugu, then the capital of Biafra in nine days. Before launching an attack on Enugu, he had spent three days, according to some accounts, drilling his men for the planned attack.

After the collapse of Enugu, the man in charge of the Enugu sector would reach out to the Biafran warlord, Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, to surrender in order to stave off heavy casualties. Ojukwu was said to have responded by telling Danjuma that he was determined to fight to the last man.

According former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Danjuma’s brilliant military career “will be a text book reference material for all young Nigerians in the Nigerian Armed Forces, and his epoch-making tenure at the helm of affairs of defence policies remains unparalleled.”

To demonstrate his unalloyed faith in his inviolable adherence to the military’s respect for hierarchy, the man who former Military President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida describes as the ‘Father of modern Nigerian Army’ refused to succeed General Murtala Mohammed despite pressure from Obasanjo and other military officers. Attempts by a cabal to elongate the Murtala/Obasanjo regime hit stormy waters when Danjuma, who stabilised the army after the civil war, opposed such a repugnant plot.

The former Secretary to the Government of Federation, Alhaji Adamu Fika, recalls how Danjuma had told his colleagues to perish the thought on tenure elongation as it was morally reprehensible to pursue such line of action since General Yakubu Gowon had been thrown out of power over the indefinite postponement of handing over power in 1975  to civilians.

Out of the military at the age of 41, Danjuma would shift attention to business where he learned early business lessons. With his integrity as his capital, the man who retired from the army with only his pension and gratuity established the biggest shipping company in West Africa known as the Nigeria America Line Ltd. He would later broaden his investments to include manufacturing, insurance, banking, oil, among many others.

Not a politician, but a consummate patriot who is too truthful to endure the shenanigans of some politicians in doing what they don’t say and never doing what they say, Danjuma is at pains seeing the grinding poverty ravaging his fellow citizens. Perhaps, that may have been the reason he established the multi-million dollar TY Danjuma Foundation to assist the less privileged and expand the frontiers of assistance and development.

More than any Nigerian, dead or alive, the multi-billionaire has been involved in promoting worthy causes and donating whopping sums of monies for the improvement of structures in some of the nation’s academic institutions.

The cascading poverty that has dehumanised the populace, coupled with the absence of political will of national leadership to emancipate the country from the quagmire of hopelessness and despair once made Danjuma to lament: “The masses of our people are chained down in dehumanizing and grinding poverty while we continue to maintain few islands of prosperity in a turbulent ocean of penury and squalor”.

It is for the promotion of the welfare of his fellow citizens that the former Chief of Army Staff is forced to speak up on issues in the hope of alerting slumbering leadership to act fast and save the situation. Despite being a close ally and supporter of former President Goodluck Jonathan, the retired man of war flayed that administration for not doing enough in the war against Boko Haram and other criminal elements threatening the corporate existence of the country.

In 2018, three years after General Muhammadu Buhari was inaugurated as President, General Danjuma sparked off  a reverberating national discourse, following his appeal on Nigerians to rise up and defend themselves from unprovoked attacks unleashed on defenceless communities by bandits.

Unlike many prominent Nigerians, Danjuma, who is described by Bishop Hassan Matthew Kukah as ‘Prometheus unbound’, is never afraid to walk alone in defence of the overall good. He may not be the richest man in Nigeria, but he remains a consistent colossus that has left awe-provoking trails in the military, business and philanthropy.

Danjuma’s life seems not have been defined by the various positions he held; his continued relevance is predicated on his humanity and good intentions to all, irrespective of ethnic and religious divides. Though never a president or Head of state, he is a mentor to three former Nigerian leaders, including President who refers to him as his boss.

What more, General Danjuma has been able to be relevant both in the North and  South, and at the same time engaged in rallying a rainbow coalition of patriots  towards resolving the dialectics that has suspended the dawn of a new day for Nigeria.

Considering the ravenous clouds that surround our nation’s skies, the place of General Danjuma would always remain indispensable. For the General who has become the silent movie working noiselessly for the good of Nigeria, may the future be full of abundant prosperity and good health in service to humanity.

Simon-Reef is a journalist

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