(By Katdapba Y Gobum)
Some thirty years ago (1996) at the Multipurpose Hall of the University of Jos, an institution he initiated during his forty years walking this earth as a man; a book telling his story was launched.
The book, JD Gomwalk: A Man of Vision, written by Chief Anthony Goyol is a sign post on the road to recovering the essence of a man whose real place in Nigerian history remains subject to partisan consideration and conclusions.
That afternoon, when Joseph Dechi Gomwalk and others allegedly found guilty in the attempted February 13, 1976 overthrow of the Murtala government climbed down from the Black Maria that brought them to the execution ground, it is doubtful that the powers that be thought his memory would in any way still be alive, well and incandescent so many years after.
That a book went into the four ends of the world for everybody to read, based on the life and times of the son of a District Scribe who made a mark as a pathfinder for his peoples aspiration, is testimony that there was more to late Commissioner of Police JD Gomwalk, the first governor of Benue-Plateau than the official attempt to ensure the obliteration of both his physical body and his ideas from the consciousness of the Nigerian nation and especially the Middle Beltan tendency.
Those who have as their concern the upliftment of the lives of the people of the geo-political zone called the Middle Belt are certainly in Chief Goyol’s debt for his attempt to place the records straight and entrench the memories of one of their own as a historical personage.
To grasp the persistence of the myth of JD Gomwalk, a clear 50 years after his death; it is important to understand the historical forces that shaped his perception of Northern Nigerian society and politics within the larger context of Nigeria’s evolution.
When he was born in the fifth year of the third decade of the 20th century, he inherited a cultural ethos shaped by the on-going compact family rule of the Northern Nigerian Emirate system with prospects for meaningful advancement as a minority Ngas, Christian man only possibly through a missionary aided western education.
If today, the people of the Middle Belt area are still basking in the creation of six geo-political zones in the country, it is because, for as long as modern political consciousness can serve them, they remember mostly the hegemonic control exercised over their attempt at independence by the majority Hausa-Fulani with whom they had more geographically than history in common.
The oft told story of how THE NIGERIA STANDARD newspaper was established illustrates the fact that little had changed from 1935 to 1972 in the fundamental relations of power between the dominant group and the minorities of the Middle Belt area.
In the programme booklet of the 20th Anniversary celebration of the newspaper in 1992, the following statement can be found. “The circumstances that led to the establishment of the newspaper are indeed interesting. Being the man of vision that he was, late Joseph Gomwalk recognized and accepted the power of the media in a developing community like ours. At the time, only few newspaper houses existed; in the North in particular, to which the then Benue-Plateau belonged, there was only the New Nigeria and its Hausa version, Gaskiya Ta fi Kwabo.
'Being part of what was then the regional North and one of the owners of the New Nigeria through the instrument of the Interim Common Services Agency (ICSA), late Joseph Gomwalk rightly expected that these two newspaper houses would give the then six states in the north equal and adequate coverage. He was however disappointed during a visit to his state by one of the military governors.
'Col (then) Samuel Ogbemudia of Mid-West State paid an official visit to Benue-Plateau State. Given the importance the late governor attached to that epoch making visit, he expected adequate coverage from the New Nigeria.
'This he did not get. And he was deeply irked by this act, which he considered as not meeting the standard of the profession, especially for a paper financed by the public and which was supposed to give prominence to activities that centred on national unity at a time the nation was smarting from a civil war.
'Late Joseph Gomwalk did not hide his anger and impressed same on the New Nigeria reporter. A few days after the visit of the then Col Ogbemudia, late Gomwalk conceived and gave birth to THE NIGERIA STANDDARD. But lacking the infrastructure to start printing the newspaper with the urgency he wanted it done, he found an ally in the Nigerian Observer, the then Mid-West owned newspaper. And his colleague whose visit in fact promoted the idea of the paper, readily accepted to have the new baby printed in Benin City.
'By July 8, 1972 the first copy of THE NIGERIA STANDARD was on the newsstand. Iliya Audu, who was drafted from Benue-Plateau State Ministry of Information to edit the paper, had the unenviable task of shuttling between Jos and, Benin City on a weekly basis to print the paper in Benin and circulate it mostly in Benue-Plateau State”.
The same factors that informed the establishment of THE NIGERIA STANDARD also loomed large in the setting up of structures which though existing with headquarters in Kaduna as part of ICSA but did not pay attention to the peculiar needs of minorities who were not in the mainstream of a Northern body polity; and subservient to the needs of the emirate and oligarchic classes.
Thus for the first time, Benue-Plateau State saw the creation of a marketing board, a transport service, a university campus, a lottery board, a television station and other institutions which were pioneers in the fields at the time.
For example, the then Benue-Plateau Television (BPTV) broke the control of television programming in the North which hitherto was the turf of the Radio Television Kaduna (RTK) and whose signals in any case were not strong enough to reach all areas within the Middle Belt.
Consider then that at that time, the extent of Benue-Plateau included the present Wukari division of Taraba State, Nasarawa State, Benue State, the Igala speaking areas of Kogi State and part of the present Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The path breaking stride of the BPTV reached a crescendo when in 1975 it became the first Television Station in Sub-Saharan Africa to beam signals with colour. This feat was achieved on the foundations set by the government of JD Gomwalk.
If however the reaction to Northern hegemonic tendencies by Gomwalk was characterized by creation of new structures parallel to those serving the dominant majority as THE NIGERIA STANDARD, BPTV, BPMB etc the home front was nevertheless also fraught with internal contradictions for even within the Middle Belt itself the contention amongst the various ethnic groups at that time reached less than healthy levels.
The creation of Benue State in 1976 by the Murtala administration was an answer to increasing undercurrents of real and perceived differences in socio-economic position and even political power.
The affidavit which Godwin Daboh had unleashed against fellow tribesman Joseph Tarka as Federal Commissioner for Communication in 1973 and which led to his resignation moved on to Jos the next year.
Aper Aku, that year swore to an affidavit against Gomwalk which alleged official corruption and was to be used by elements in the army like Joseph Garba, Shehu Yar’adua and Abdullahi Mohammed to justify the July 29, 1975 overthrow of General Gowon.
It is part of the strength of Chief Anthony Goyol’s biographical effort that, looking at the career of JD Gomwalk, he has not dodged the issue of whether Aper Aku was correct in his allegations. He lays bare all the facts and most importantly, has published both the Aku affidavits and Gomwalk’s defence.
The reader has all the fact at his disposal to make his own conclusion. What needs to be said, which is purely conjectural is that, perhaps, if the contradictions that were apparent in the affairs of Benue-Plateau State were not published along ethnic lines, events would have taken a different turn and a different story would have ensued.
But history is not made by thoughts which occur as products of hindsight. The forces of history-social, political economic and personal are too interwoven and dialectically meshed to permit of only one way of coming to grips with events. Invariably, the truth that we get to know is filtered by available facts and through the values and limitations of historians, biographers and journalists.
Joseph Dechi Gomwalk was a man of his time in so far as he mirrored the aspiration of his people and his environment. It was however in his attempt to cultivate a new path for the flowering of their capacity for hard work, study, civility and self-starting development within the Nigerian state that he came into his own.
He was lucky in that he had the support and friendship of his boss, the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. He was ahead because he had the comradeship of such brilliant and progressive people like Paul Unongo who even in the midst of divisive incitement occasioned by ethnic ambitions still maintained the general good as more paramount.
He was blessed with charisma, energy and humility which afforded him the gift of communication and rapport with those he went to school and he worked with, whose assistance he called on at each step of the way in carrying out epochal projects and shaping the world around him.
For the family of nine children, two spouses and mother that he left behind, Gomwalk’s life ought to be a remainder about how the world really works, about the fact that despite a sad end, the verdict of history is on the side of this giant of a man who’s life has transformed his society for good in so many ways.
It is not for naught that men who have attempted to follow in his footsteps in the governance of our people, Chief Solomon Lar and Chief Joshua Dariye named the tallest building in Jos and the state Secretariat Complex after JD Gomwalk. Da Jonah David Jang took similar position in establishing the essence of his place in history.
By the sheer mercy of God, the work of his hands; after these long years, some of the times dreary, desolate and grey are now been established.
The tangent at which JD Gomwalk touched and continues to affect lives are so nuanced that they pass for the ordinary. The thousands of students who have passed through the University of Jos scarcely would imagine that if the man had not lived they would have gone to school elsewhere.
The millions of people thrilled by programmes from NTA Jos are beneficiaries of his vision and astute planning. The work of civil servants in the state is made easier by the facility of the secretariat complex as the monument that is the burnt Jos Central Market owes to his sense of a befitting environment for enterprise.
The children who enjoy the sights and sounds of the Jos Wildlife Park and the Pandam reservation owe their entertainment to the steps taken all these years by JD Gomwalk in preserving these endowments of nature for recreational and environment friendly purposes.
