A radio broadcast by an unknown Army officer speaking from the northern
city of Kaduna. Confidence exudes from his voice as he lays out a new order to
every corner of the nation. It is tabula
rasa, a fresh start away from disaffection that many in newly independent Nigeria
were feeling and muttering under their breaths while riding their bicycles to
work, or at beer parlours, and around the dinner table in just five years of
independence.
Although uncertain what this new government order was, the listening public
felt anything but their present crop of civilian “political profiteers” will do.
All were unaware at the time of this broadcast that top officials of the ousted
government, objects of public cynicism: a perceived overtly corrupt Finance Minister,
Festus Okotie-Eboh; an ex-school teacher and proxy Prime Minister, Tafawa
Balewa; the northern region Premier, Ahmadu Bello, whom had undermined the PM by
referring to him as his “lieutenant”; and western region Premier, Samuel
Akintola, whom had paved way for the emergence of Balewa as PM by entering into
a coalition, had all been killed shortly after their arrests, along with senior
military officers, Shodeinde and Ademulegun.
By evening of that day, on January 15, 1966, the coup d’etat was
thwarted.
This was over a decade before I was born and found out that I am Nigerian.
And learnt Igbos eat human beings, Hausa-Fulani are born to rule, and of course, that we Yorubas are victims of these two evils.
*****
It would be profound hesitation on mom’s and dad’s faces in 1985, when on
that fateful Sallah Day, another coup was announced on the radio. Having paused
to listen for a while, my parents and other adults present casually returned to
eating Ileya meat and other dishes
that had been brought over to our house by Muslim neighbours, as is the
tradition of Muslims after their long Ramadan Fast to merry with all. The day
continued as if what was said on radio had no effect on any of our lives.
I learnt this was the fifth announcement of its kind since that first
one in 1966, and by now has lost its element of surprise and purpose,
especially with citizens’ quality of lives unimproved. Rather, a gulf of
irreconcilable depth had opened up between the people of Nigeria and the
leadership by that 1985 Sallah morning. Cynicism had become national
disposition towards government.
More journeymen would announce their coups, in 1990, and again in tail-end
of 1993. But for that first blow in 1966, no other military coup in Nigeria was
again defined by ethnicity of some of the mutineer Army officers. Perhaps, lessons
had been learnt from mishandling the first one. Or, it is simply down to BBC subsequently
unable to fix the narrative of the Nigerian society, anymore.
*****
Day 1 after the January 15, 1966 coup. Mother country, Britain, was
clear that the Cold War had arrived Nigeria. It was a Communist revolution undertaken
by a so-named ‘Revolutionary Council’, a group of University graduates who consumed
Marxist-Leninist literature before joining the Nigerian Army, pre-independence.
There was no way Britain would allow these anti-capitalist radicals
erode neo-colonial arrangement orchestrated to secure Britain’s interests in
Nigeria before departing five years prior. Nor, would allow this be a precedent
other of its former colonies follows. More so, when Britain was still economically
and psychologically devastated from a World War II, hence, unable to push back
demand for independence from its colonies, like Nigeria, in the decade past.
Opportunity to purge these Communist influences in the Nigerian Army who
were of southern Nigeria extraction (Yoruba and Igbo), would be presented when
it began to filter that eastern region Premier, Michael Opara, was spared, and his
counterparts: the western region Premier (Yoruba); the Prime Minister (Fulani) and
the northern region Premier (Fulani), killed. Latter doubling as Sardauna of
Sokoto, also great-grandson of Sheikh Usman Dan-Fodio, the founder of Fulani
Empire. British soft-power – BBC and diplomatic envoy in Nigeria – was
deployed.
In the next hundred days that followed, British High Commissioner to
Nigeria, Sir Francis Cumming-Bruce toured northern Nigeria to speak with Emirs
and other State actors. Simultaneously, a British Army officer had begun counter-insurgency
training on the premises of Ahmadu Bello University. Idea that “Igbo
aggression” had brought about an Igbo Head of State clogged the Nigerian air.
This was despite fact that on morning of January 16, 1966, Alhaji Zana
Buka Dipcharima (Hausa-Fulani), and Acting-President, Nwafor Orizu (Igbo) had
asked General Aguiyi Ironsi — giving legitimacy to form a government — to
reunite a fractured nation, whose “nationalists”, within short years of independence,
had polarised with lazy slogans: North
for Northerners; East for Easterners; West for Westerners during
political campaigns.
By Day 130, it had been firmly christened in minds of the public that it
was an “Igbo coup”. Enough was not done to dispel this myth. Igbo communities
in the north were indeed in jubilatory mood for what they, like many others in
the country, saw as overthrow of an oppressive and corrupt elite government. It
would then on no longer matter that Lt. Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, Lt. Colonel
Victor Banjo and Major Ademola Ademoyega, all Yorubas, were side by side
Compadres: Majors Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna, Okafor and Onwuatuegwu in planning and
executing the coup that was to handover initiative to the proletariats to shape
their own lives. That, an Igbo, Lt. Colonel Arthur Unegbe, was felled. Also,
senior military officers, Shodeinde and Ademulegun, who are Yorubas. That
General Ironsi, had only escaped by a life saving phone-call from Lt. Colonel
James Pam.
Day 135. May 29, 1966, to be precise. Simultaneous Anti-Ironsi riots
erupted in the north killing Igbos in their hundreds at different locations; some
persons of other tribal extraction were caught up in it too. A conservative
number of one million Igbo children and many more non-combating adults were
recorded killed in the Civil War that ensued after a “revenge coup” by northern
military officers (Araba Group), in July of same year, 1966.
Though the Head of State, General Ironsi, had been killed, along with the
western region Military Administrator, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, the revenge coup
was unrecognised in the eastern region of Nigeria. The Igbo instead authorised
Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, the region’s Military Administrator, to declare their
land a sovereign State, named Biafra. Taking a cue from Colonel Yakubu Gowon’s
August 1, 1966 “…political, economical as well as social, the basis of unity is not
there…” speech, which
was intended to announce northern Nigeria’s breakaway (See: The Nigerian
Civil War, by John de St. Jorre; and Revolution in Nigeria:
Another View, by Joseph Garba). Earlier in same year, a
month after the first coup, a militia “Delta Volunteer Service” led by Isaac
Boro, had on February 23, 1966, announced Delta People’s Republic, a minority
ethnic group in the eastern region, independent.
*****
It is fifty years today that the Communists ‘Revolutionary Council’ struck
to create a “just” society, though expressly discriminating against homosexuals.
And like all ill-thought-out revolutions, what they heralded was worse than the
bourgeoisie civilian government that they sought to replace. Fear of “the
other” has heightened among ethnic groupings of Nigeria ever since, the Igbo
being the worst affected and still agitating for a ‘Biafra State’. Indeed, the political,
economical and social union of Nigeria is still shaky. Many still find
it strange that a pupil in Sokoto, has to score 7 to pass a “National” Common
Entrance Examination, and their counterpart in Imo, needs score 66 to pass.
Perhaps the cement required to bond — trust — can organically form when
we so-named Nigerians understand the past. That the “Igbo coup” was not. That
Biafra seceded from an illegitimate government. That politics, like
international relations, is about creating public disaffection for votes, or to
protect interests. That who you are, what part of Nigeria you are from,
your family ties, should not determine your status in society.
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