Babangida’s truths and half-truths: Almost 60 years after, Ndigbo are still being made to pay a steep price for a crime – Igbo Coup – they never committed. The flip side is that ultimately, Nigeria is worse for it. Is anything likely to change even with Babangida’s uncommon candour? I doubt! But for summoning the courage to say this inconvenient truth, while the likes of Gowon are still playing the ostrich, even if it changes nothing, Babangida has done Nigeria a good turn.
By IKECHUKWU AMAECHI
To be sure, there is no earth-shaking revelation in General Ibrahim Babangida’s 420-page autobiography – A Journey In Service. Nigerians have always known about the issues he treated, even as tons of literature have been written on them. For instance, unless for the foolhardy who revels in self-deceit for pernicious reasons, many have come to the inevitable conclusion, based on empirical evidence, that the Nzeogwu-led bloody putsch of January 15, 1966 was not an “Igbo coup.”
Also, before the June 12, 1993 presidential election was officially annulled, Nigerians were already aware that the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief MKO Abiola, won. It was a real shellacking. In fact, Alhaji Bashir Tofa, candidate of the National Republican Convention (NRC), had reportedly congratulated Abiola before the military threw a spanner in the works by stymying the process.
So, why is public attention riveted on a book that does not pack any new punches? The author – Babangida, the self-styled evil genius – has made all the difference. And for his efforts, he raked in over N17 billion, a fulfilment of the Bible verse which says: For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away – Matthew 25:29.
I am particularly interested in what Babangida, who spent his entire military career plotting coups, said about the January 15, 1966 putsch, and, of course, the June 12, 1993 election annulment. I intend to examine, starting this week, what I consider the truths and half-truths in his memoirs.
First, the truth. I salute Babangida’s courage in saying the truth about what happened on January 15, 1966, not necessarily because he said anything new, but because by his audacity, he shamed the many devils, some of them were there at the book launch, who have decided to eternally deploy the unconscionable lie of “Igbo coup,” that willful distortion of history, to perpetuate the injustice against Ndigbo.
Babangida wrote: “As a young officer who saw all of this from a distance, probably, ethnic sentiments did not drive the original objective of the coup plotters.” Having joined the Army on December 10, 1962, Babangida was a Lieutenant in 1966 and barely 24 years old. His reason for believing that the coup had no ethnic motive bears restating. “The head of the plotters, Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, was only Igbo in name. Born and raised in Kaduna, his immigrant parents were from Okpanam in today’s Delta State, which, in 1966, was in the old mid-western region. Nzeogwu spoke fluent Hausa and was as ‘Hausa’ as any! He and his original team probably thought, even if naively, that they could turn things around for the better in the country.”
Which explains why, when he was killed on July 29, 1967 in Nsukka fighting on the Biafran side, his body was taken to Kaduna by federal troops where he was buried with full military honours. In his 2009 article titled, Who killed Major Nzeogwu, Max Siollun, a Nigerian historian, recounted: “The corpse was sent to 1 division headquarters in Makurdi where the commander Colonel Mohammed Shuwa informed the head of state Major-General Gowon. Despite the fact that Nzeogwu was now technically an enemy soldier killed in combat against the Nigerian army, Gowon ordered that Nzeogwu’s body should be flown to Kaduna and buried with full military honours – even as the war raged on in the Eastern Region.”
Even in death, Nzeogwu, the man who led an “Igbo coup” was respected in the north. They considered him their own. He was one of them. General Domkat Bali said he was “a nice, charismatic and disciplined officer, highly admired and respected by his colleagues… we believed that he was a genuinely patriotic officer who organised the 1966 coup with the best of intentions… If we had captured him alive, he would not have been killed. I believe he probably would have been tried for his role in the January 15 coup, jailed and probably freed after some time. His death was regrettable.”
Yet, because of a coup organized by a genuinely patriotic officer, who was more Hausa than Igbo, with the best of intentions, 42 officers of Igbo extraction, including the head of state, Major General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, and over 130 other ranks were massacred in one day and over 50,000 civilians were slaughtered in the ensuing pogrom in the north.
As Babangida correctly pointed out, it was “heinously callous for Nzeogwu to have murdered Sir Ahmadu Bello and his wife, Hafsatu, because not only were they eminently adored by many but also because they were said not to have put up a fight.” But even if they were not adored by anyone and even if they had put up a fight, there was no justification for the killings. That said, the killings neither conferred any advantage on the Igbo nor were they killed on behalf of Ndigbo. It was simply an impulsive act by idealistic, young military officers who felt that the country was drifting dangerously and needed to do something to halt the drift. Nzeogwu was only 30 years when he was killed.
Another lie that has been told over the years to justify the “Igbo coup” tag was that only northern officers were killed. Babangida punctures that. “It should be borne in mind that some senior officers of Igbo extraction were also victims of the January coup. For instance, my erstwhile Commander at the Reconnaissance Squadron in Kaduna, Lt-Col. Arthur Chinyelu Unegbe, was brutally gunned down by his own ‘brother,’ Major Chris Anuforo, in the presence of his pregnant wife, at his 7 Point Road residence in Apapa, for merely being a threat to the revolution.” General Yakubu Gowon was not only Unegbe’s course mate, but also his best man at his wedding. He hailed from Oraifitte, Anambra State.
Another lie from the pit of hell to justify the “Igbo coup” label is that all the plotters were Igbo. As at January 15, 1966, there were 40 Majors in the Nigerian Army, out of which 24 were Igbo. Going by the accounts of one of the key players, Captain Ben Gbulie, who joined the army in 1960, Major Adewale Ademoyega, a Yoruba, born in Ode Remo, Ogun State, a graduate of history from the University of London, was one of the Majors that included Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Chris Anuforo, Don Okafor and Humphrey Chukwuka, who initiated the plot in August 1965. There were many other non-Igbo officers as Babangida noted. This is aside the fact that the so-called Igbo coup executed to entrench Igbo hegemony was quelled by Igbo officers. That sounds contradictory, an oxymoron.
Then, the big elephant in the room – motive for the coup!
“Those who argue that the original intention of the coup plotters was anything but ethnic refer to the fact that the initial purpose of the plotters was to release Chief Obafemi Awolowo from prison immediately after the coup and make him the executive provisional president of Nigeria,” Babangida wrote. But this is not a fact known to him alone. It is a fact engraved on the pages of many books, including Awolowo’s My March Through Prison, Gbulie’s The Five Majors and Ademoyega’s Why We Struck. Captain Gbulie reiterated that fact at the Oputa Panel in 1999.
Weighing in on the “Igbo coup” bugaboo in an interview, the inimitable Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, ticked exactly the same boxes as IBB. “The young officers had within Igbos, Yorubas and Hausas. The way the Nigerian army was structured, you could not escape a preponderance of Igbo officers. These were at the middle level because they were essentially Majors.”
Ojukwu, who was then a Lt. Col. and already commanding a battalion in Kano, further said: “… the whole aim of the coup was to halt this apparent drift in Nigeria. But significantly you know what they wanted to do? To create a presidential commission of army officers as a safeguard of the people who would guard the nation and hand over government to Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The idea was to release him from prison and make him Prime Minister with the hope that Nigeria will become a better place. And not only that, who actually halted the coup? Aguiyi Ironsi in Lagos – an Igbo; Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu in Kano, an Igbo. The Igbos halted the coup. How can it be at the same time an Igbo coup, halted by Igbos?”
Nzeogwu, himself, alluded to that fact. In a June 17, 1967 letter to his friend, Olusegun Obasanjo, he agonized, “You have no doubt heard a lot of rumours about my relations with Ojukwu. We obviously see things quite differently after what he did to my supporters in January 1966.”
Significantly, Babangida heaped the blame for the civil war that ensued on the doorstep of the then head of state under whose watch heinous crimes were committed against Ndigbo. “Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s failure to secure and protect the lives and properties of the Igbos in the North forced Col. Emeka Ojukwu to declare the secession of the Eastern Region from Nigeria in May 1967, leading to the fratricidal Nigerian-Biafran civil war.” Sadly, till date, Gowon, at 90 years, has refused to own up and apologise to Ndigbo. Instead, he goes about praying for Nigeria. He needs to be reminded, once more, of Uthman Dan Fodio’s immortal admonition: “Conscience is an open wound. Only truth can heal it.”
Truth is, there was absolutely no reason for an “Igbo coup” in 1966 because Eastern Nigeria was already a global economic powerhouse, with Harvard reviews ranking it as the fastest-growing economy in the world between 1954 and 1964. Not only had the region prioritised education, infrastructure, and business, it was already boasting of the largest electricity supply, best hospitals, and the highest number of registered businesses and cars in Nigeria, with 60 per cent of the Nigerian civil service made up of Igbos.
The deliberate mischaracterization of the unfortunate coup was a sinister ploy to halt and possibly reverse that quantum leap. It was a premeditated gambit. The “Igbo coup” bugaboo only provided a perfect alibi to execute an ethnic cleansing project to halt “Igbo domination” which the Northern Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, spoke about in 1964, when he said: “The Igbos are more or less a type of people whose desire mainly is to dominate everybody. If they go to a village, a town, they want to monopolise everything in that area. If you put them in a labour camp as labourers, within a year they want to emerge as the headman of that camp.”
Of course, they succeeded. And almost 60 years after, Ndigbo are still being made to pay the price for a crime they never committed. The flip side is that ultimately, Nigeria is worse for it. Is anything likely to change even with Babangida’s uncommon candour? I doubt! But for summoning the courage to say this inconvenient truth, while the likes of Gowon are still playing the ostrich, even if it changes nothing, Babangida has done Nigeria a good turn.
