Former Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon (retd.), has revealed that his entire life savings after his overthrow in the July 1975 coup stood at ₦41,000.
Gowon said the desperate financial situation that followed his removal from office almost left him, his wife, Victoria, and their children homeless in London.
The revelations are contained in Chapter 29 of his 859-page autobiography, My Life of Duty and Allegiance, titled, “The Search for a Home: Victoria’s Ordeal.”
Gowon said the reality of his removal from office dawned on him in Kampala, Uganda, shortly after the coup that ended his nine-year rule.
He wrote, “The reality that I was out of office dawned on me early enough when I left the conference hall and had a few moments alone with myself in my hotel room in Kampala.
“This gave me a relatively brief time to contemplate the future. I immediately began to weigh the various options available to me and my family regarding where to settle. I was not short of offers from my sympathetic former colleagues.”
He said that although President Ahidjo of Cameroon offered him accommodation, he declined because he feared his presence in a neighbouring country could unsettle Nigeria’s new military rulers.
He later chose to stay briefly in Togo because of his friendship with President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, with whom he had worked closely during the formation of ECOWAS.
Amin Gave Me $50,000 — Gowon
Gowon said he lived in Togo for two weeks before travelling to the United Kingdom. Before leaving, he said Eyadéma gave him $20,000.
He also recalled receiving a separate gift through Cameroon’s former ambassador to Nigeria, who visited him in Uganda with a briefcase full of money.
Gowon wrote, “He handed me a lovely and well-crafted briefcase full of money, as he stood to take his leave.
“When I opened the briefcase and saw what was in it, I exclaimed, ‘Goodness gracious me! All this for me?’
“Oh well, you can open it and see,” the ambassador responded.
Gowon said the briefcase contained about £25,000, or $50,000 at the time, which he described as a gift from then Ugandan leader, Idi Amin.
He wrote, “As I made to empty the briefcase of its contents and return it to the ambassador, he told me not to worry; that I could keep it, as it was also a part of the message to me.
“After his departure, I counted the money, which came to about £25,000 or $50,000 at that time. We promptly paid the amount to the property owner.”
Gowon said Victoria and the children arrived in London in late July 1975 and were lodged at the Savoy Hotel by the Nigerian High Commission.
He said his wife immediately became worried about how the hotel bills would be paid.
“When I spoke with her from Kampala after the coup, her first concern was how her bills at the Savoy would be paid,” he wrote.
“I shared her fears, more so as no one did not know how the situation would look if the government denied us the honour of decent treatment.”
According to him, as Head of State, he never personally handled cash because official finances were managed by the Protocol Department.
He said he did not access public funds for personal or official reasons.
‘My Life Savings Was ₦41,000’
Gowon disclosed that his total savings from 1954, when he was commissioned as a young officer, to 1975, when he was removed as Head of State, amounted to ₦41,000.
“My life savings from when I was a 2nd Lieutenant (backdated to 1954) to when I was overthrown as a General and Head of State in 1975 was about ₦41,000,” he wrote.
He said the amount was further affected by the deduction of a ₦5,500 housing loan he obtained from the government of Northern Nigeria in 1966 to build a two-and-a-half-bedroom bungalow in Kaduna.
He added that his monthly pension of £700 was stopped after the coup amid allegations linking him to the failed counter-coup of February 1976, although it was later restored.
“My paltry savings in Naira in Lagos, where I could not have access to them. In all my professional life, I never directly handled any cash as a young officer other than the estacode for paying salaries to the troops,” he wrote.
Gowon said after Victoria rejected accommodation offered by the Nigerian High Commission at 6 Park Square West, the family began searching for a house in North London.
He said they struggled to find a place until a friend, Emmanuel, husband of Dupe Oti, offered them a newly renovated building at 472 Finchley Road in Childs Hill, London, free of charge.
The family later found a property at 32 Broadgates Avenue, Hadley Wood, Herts, in North London, owned by an Irishman, Mr Mangan.
Gowon said Mangan agreed to sell the house after hearing about his situation.
He wrote, “He heard about me and my predicament and was somewhat sympathetic to my situation.
“He allowed us to buy the property if we could produce the deposit, which came to about £5,500 or 10 per cent of the total cost.”
Gowon said the family raised the deposit through savings made possible by Victoria’s discipline and financial management.
He added that they had to sell several personal items over six months to raise the remaining £25,000.
Wrote Buhari For School Fees
Gowon said by 1984, his financial situation had become so difficult that he wrote to the then Head of State, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, to seek help with his children’s school fees.
He wrote, “I wrote to the then Head of State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, to ask for help, particularly in respect of paying my children’s school fees. He obliged.
“My story, strange and as unbelievable as it sounded in the wake of my removal from office, became a cautionary tale for many of my successors in office. If the way things turned out for me out of office was the gratitude one got for serving with honesty and integrity, none of my successors in office wanted to suffer the same fate.”
Gowon said his family survived the period “but for the grace of God and the goodwill of trusted friends.”
The autobiography contains 36 chapters and covers his life from his Angas origins in Plateau State, military career, the Civil War, his 1975 ouster, exile and academic life abroad.