Prof Chris Kwaja, a regular name around Intervention, has penned a tribute to Senator Jonah David Jang at 80. It is a welcome piece but Kwaja took only the serious side of the becoming, thereby denying his readers the more entertaining aspects of the elder. Elders did not become elders like that. There was a time when today’s elder was a young officer and behaved in tandem with that status. Intervention can recall one.
Before becoming an elder nko?
Once upon a time, the military establishment picked on Jonah David Jang to be the military governor of Benue State. He was an air force officer. During a hot conversation with the Benue detachment of the NLC, Jang drew on an analogy, comparing himself to a moving train capable of crushing anyone standing on his way.
Gov Jang and labour came to understand themselves subsequently but writing anonymously under Maigani in The Sunday New Nigerian, the late A. B. Ahmed promptly nicknamed him Jaga-Jig Jang, an onomatopoeic re-inscription of the incident which people of that generation cannot have forgotten. Other parts of Nigeria may have different memories of Group Captain Jonah Jang (rtd) but very unlikely on the same scale as those living in Benue State around the mid-1980s.
Between 1985 and today, Jang has moved. He has been a Senator, a civilian governor and a party elder. Other than Jaga-Jig-Jang, today’s elder also reminds us of Prof Bayo Adekanye’s book, The Retired Military As Emergent power Factor in Nigeria. From taking over government through coups, they have widened into politics, to literature (remember Gen Mamman Vatsa), to diplomacy (remember Gen Joe Garba), to business (remember Gen T Y Danjuma) and what have you.
It is interesting to hook into that theme through one signifier of it: Senator Jonah David Jang at 80. From this few recollections, it is clear Jang’s biographer has a serious job to execute or to rework! Meanwhile, Prof Chris Kwaja who served under Jang as a Commissioner has an appetiser here in Intervention.
