Yakubu Gowon (19 October 1934-) was President of Nigeria from 1 August 1966 to 29 July 1975, succeeding Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and preceding Murtala Mohammed.
Biography[]
Yakubu Gowon was born on 19 October 1934 in Lur, Plateau State in central Nigeria to a Christian family. From 1955 to 1956 he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom, and in January 1966 he was appointed as the youngest Chief-of-Staff of the Nigerian Army in history after the 1966 Nigerian coup d'etat by Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu. Northern anger was inflamed when the new president Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi planned to arrest all coup plotters in the north, leading to Gowon leading the July Counter Coup against Aguiyi-Ironsi in 1966 and having him killed. From 1 August 1966 to 29 July 1975, Gowon served as president, and he created twelve states to replace the four regions of Nigeria. In the thirty-month Biafra War of 1967 to 1970, Gowon put down an uprising by secessionists in Biafra and accepted a ceasefire with Biafra to prevent any side from winning or losing, ending the war and rebuilding Biafra with money gained from booming oil prices as the OPEC embargo against the United States began. However, in 1974 he declared that a civilian government could not take power within two years as promised, leading to Murtala Mohammed leading a coup against him. Gowon went into exile in the United Kingdom until 1983, and he founded his own disease control center.