contact with anti-Amin rebels in Tanzania. He was arrested by the State Research Bureau, and, alongside his protector Adrisi, brought into the President's bureau. There, Amin told them that more evidence had surfaced about Gowon's support for the 1974 coup attempt, and had him ordered out of sight. Gowon believed that he was going to be executed. Adrisi fell on his knees and begged the President to reconsider, claiming that the entire affair was engineered by a clique of Nubians. Amin finally relented, and ordered Gowon back into the room. He then got everyone a cup of tea and told Gowon that he was spared. Regardless, the President also threatened that if the general was accused one more time of involvement in the 1974 coup, he would be executed. Despite this incident, Gowon remained one of Amin's most trusted followers. The general would spy for the President on other officers, while trying to remove his own rivals. His military rivals referred to him as "snake" as a commentary on his apparent deft political abilities which facilitated his rise in the ranks. His political skills did not endear him to his subordinates who held little respect for him. They regarded Gowon as an "uneducated rube", and promoted far above his station. He was even derogatorily nicknamed "the tractor driver" by soldiers due to his past as a farmer. Some officers also disliked Gowon due to his tendency to circumvent them and deal with the lower ranks directly. In contrast, he was popular among the people of his birthplace, Ladonga, because he paid school tuition for local children, and built a primary school and a medical clinic. In early 1978, Adrisi was almost killed in a car accident that was suspected to be actually an assassination attempt. Amin consequently purged several of Adrisi's followers from the government, including Uganda Army Chief of Staff Isaac Lumago. Gowon was made acting Army Chief of Staff, and promoted to major general on 8 May 1978. He was formally appointed as Lumago's successor in June. By this point, the repeated purges had reduced Amin's inner circle to a small number of officers. Gowon's appointment was mostly owed to the fact that he was regarded as loyal to Amin, and lacked a power base in the military to threaten the President. After becoming chief of staff, one reporter described him as the "second-most powerful man in the