At the age of thirty-one, Gowon was selected to be the head of state in 1966.Gowon had up until that point only been a career soldier, having had no political involvement at all. However, the events of the year suddenly forced him into a leadership position, as his unique background as a Northerner, devoid of both Islamic and Hausa ancestry, made him an especially safe choice to lead a country where ethnic tension was roiling.
When Gowon assumed leadership of the newly established Federal military government of Nigeria on August 1, 1966, he was a Lieutenant Colonel. Nevertheless, Gowon found himself in an awkward position due to the presence of other senior military officers in the government, including Commodore Joseph Wey, Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, and Colonel Robert Adebayo. Prior to the commencement of hostilities in the civil war in 1967, Gowon elevated himself to Major-General, and then to full General upon the conflict’s conclusion in 1970, in an effort to solidify his position as Head of State. During General Yakubu Gowon’s presidency, corruption peaked in the summer of 1975 with the infamous “cement armada” affair.
This tragedy made the detrimental impacts of unbridled corruption and grave mismanagement within the Nigerian government clear. The main port of the nation, Lagos, was overrun by an extraordinary number of ships trying to offload cement, which sparked the scandal. Unbelievably, representatives of the Nigerian government inked deals with 68 different foreign vendors to provide an astounding 20 million tons of cement in a single year. Lagos’s port could only handle roughly one million tons of cargo annually, a long cry from this magnitude. The contracts had provisions for demurrage that greatly benefited the suppliers, but they were badly written. When a ship is delayed at the port—either while waiting to unload or even while awaiting authorization to leave their home ports—the importer is required to pay demurrage charges. The Nigerian government had to deal with rapidly rising expenses as the number of ships increased, which were made worse by the fact that many of the ships were left idle for long stretches of time. The situation worsened to the point where the port of Lagos could no longer handle basic supplies and commodities, thus paralyzing it. It was too late to turn things around by the time the authorities grasped the full scope of the catastrophe.
Nigeria attempted to renounce the cement contracts and placed an emergency embargo on all incoming shipments in a last-ditch effort to lessen the harm. But these actions resulted in lengthy legal disputes with foreign suppliers, drawing Nigeria into a multiyear legal battle. A notable legal consequence of the affair was a 1983 ruling by the United States Supreme Court, which brought to light its extensive ramifications. The “cement armada” incident serves as a wake-up call regarding the perils of administrative ineptitude, corruption, and the significance of doing due diligence while bidding on government contracts. Because the port’s congestion had a knock-on effect on Nigeria’s general trade and development during that time, it also serves as an example of the wider effects of bad governance on the country’s infrastructure and economy.