HEROISM IN NIGERIA: THE EXPLOITS OF GENERAL MURTALA MOHAMMED IN 198 DAYS

Abstract

Politics is a universal phenomenon. The universality or ubiquitousness of politics rests on the fact that man is innately and intrinsically a political being, for the Great Aristotle once notes that ‘man is by nature a political animal’. Politics, aside from being part of man, produces leaders. Leaders in turn climb the ladder of heroism via their exploits. In other words, not every leader is a hero. There are special things that make a hero different from any other person. Again, it does not take ages for a hero to be made or for heroic achievement to be made. Age – “the number of years a person has lived” is not a barrier to heroism. Thus, a child as well as an adult can be a hero. Worthy of note, Nigerian politics has produced a number of heroes, of which General Murtala Mohammed was among. He became Nigeria’s Head of State in July 1975 at a young age of thirty-seven (37) and was brutally killed afterwards. The crux of this study, therefore, is to bring to limelight the heroic deeds of late General Murtala Mohammed, who manned the affairs of the Nigerian state in just one hundred and ninety-eight (198) days before his assassination on 13 February 1976. In an attempt to achieve this common research objective, data was sought from secondary sources, mainly newspapers, journals and books.