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Gowon's central commitment after taking power in the 1966 counter-coup was to preserve Nigeria as a single country against the threat of secession.

Nigeria survived the 30-month civil war (July 1967 – January 1970) as one state. The human cost was enormous — an estimated one to three million dead, mostly from famine in the blockaded East — but the unity objective was achieved.

Declared 'no victor, no vanquished' at the war's end and launched Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation to reintegrate the East.

There were no mass reprisals and formal reintegration proceeded, which was significant. But measures such as capping every Biafran bank account at £20 regardless of prior balance, and the treatment of 'abandoned property' in Port Harcourt, left lasting Igbo grievances about the sincerity of the reconciliation.

To break the domination of the three/four large regions by creating smaller states.

On 27 May 1967, days before the war, Gowon split the four regions into twelve states — a move that gave minorities their own units and undercut the Eastern Region's secession base. The twelve-state structure held for the rest of his rule and set the template for all later state creation.

Gowon set 1976 as the date for handing power back to elected civilians.

On 1 October 1974 he announced the 1976 date was 'unrealistic' and postponed the return to civilian rule indefinitely. The broken promise, together with drift and corruption, was a principal reason cited for the coup that removed him ten months later.

The sharp rise in crude prices from 1973 gave the federal government revenues on a scale it had never had; Gowon promised a great leap in development.

Reconstruction and public-sector expansion were funded, and the Udoji salary awards raised wages sharply, but the windfall also drove inflation, import dependence and the port-congestion fiasco, and much of it was poorly spent — Gowon's own remark that Nigeria's problem was 'not money but how to spend it' became a byword for the era.