“In the name of the Supreme Council of the Revolution of the Nigerian Armed Forces, I declare martial law over the Northern Provinces of Nigeria. The Constitution is suspended and the regional government and elected assemblies are hereby dissolved. All political, cultural, tribal and trade union activities, together with all demonstrations and unauthorised gatherings, excluding religious worship, are banned until further notice.”
With these words the nation’s political sleep was murdered. It was never to wake up. It remains dead. They were words read by the one and only Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, one of the masterminds of the January 15, 1966 coup. Nzeogwu exhibited gallantry. But he was not also lacking in exuberance. He was just 28. He was not alone. Major Adewale Ademoyega. Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna. Major Timothy Onwuatuegwu. Major Chris Anuforo. Major Don Okafor. Major Humphrey Chukwuka. Captain Emmanuel Nwobosi. Captain Ben Gbulie. Captain Ogbu Oji. These were officers, alongside Nzeogwu that tried to change the fatherland. They were idealistic. Like revolutionaries of old, their belief was that society cannot be changed without sacrificing some souls. To them, the rot in the political system could only be cleansed by the blood of those they suspected of causing the rot. And as a result of this, blood flowed. Families were destroyed. Some kids became orphans. Some women became widows. Some joys were taken away forever. And then, sleep was murdered and peace was sent on vacation.
Many, especially those whose ethnic stock was at the receiving end of the bloodshed, would never accept the excuse of revolution. The deaths were one-sided just like the names of the executioners. The casualties were mainly from the north of the Niger while the putschists were mainly from the east of the Niger. It was not intended. That was the song of the planners but it was one song fit only for the ears of the marines.
It was not a successful coup. But its failure was the pain it was to cause the nation. Nwafor Orizu, the Senate President, surrendered political authority to the military. But not to those who wanted to forcefully effect that change. A senior officer, Johnson Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, a major general, became the Head of State. Death, in certain climes, is the reward for those who want to violently overthrow the government of the fatherland. But the coupists of 1966, though they failed, lived to tell the story. And this only enraged those who felt it was a grand plan by Igbos to dominate the rest of the country. The violent way the victims were killed only worsened feelings of anguish in those who held this view.
That was why the counter-putsch of July 1966 came. It was even more bloody. Unknown to many; covered by the perpetrators, savoured by the beneficiaries, this time, the Igbos were at the receiving end. One by one, they were taken out where they were holding command positions in military formations. This was preceded by killings of Igbos in the North and even continued after. The fact that the then Head of State and his host, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, could not be located did not help matters.
And the civil war followed. Less than twenty deaths on January 15, 1966 had become about a million deaths four years later. The genie was out of the bottle and it had lost its way back.
Fifty years on. The scars have not healed. The pains have not subsided. The ghost of the civil war has refused to rest. A certain Nnamdi Kanu has spearheaded its resurrection. And in some ebullient young Igbos, it is finding a dwelling place. Can Louisa Ayonote (nee Aguiyi-Ironsi) sit together with the daughter of General Yakubu Danjuma? The man who reportedly supervised the killing of her father. Or Bankole Ademulegun, the 12 year-old boy (now 62) who ran for cover when Major Onwuatuegwu visited his parents in Kaduna, say the pain has gone? It might have subsided but it surely will live forever; just like the sleep that was murdered, and has refused to wake up.
And they died…
Sir Ahmadu Bello
Bello was the avuncular Prime Minister of the Northern Region and the Sardauna of Sokoto between 1954 and 1966. A man well loved by many of his followers, Bello was the rallying point of the northern intelligentsia as at that time and a man who set in motion what led to what is known as the Arewa today. He was the leader of the Northern People’s Congress, (NPC) the political party of mainly northerners. He actually started the party as a group called Jamiyya Mutanen Arewa. The party was to win the 1959 elections and Bello’s side kick, the late Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, became the Prime Minister of a newly independent Nigeria.
Bello never hid the fact that his primary concern was the protection of northern interests within the Nigerian federation. That was why many believed he preferred to stay as premier of Northern Region rather than becoming that of the federation. During his time as premier of the Northern Region, he set up the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria and this was despite the fact that he was a man of limited education. He had attended the Sokoto Middle School between 1917 and 1926, which was the only modern school at the time in the Sokoto province. He then proceeded to the Katsina Teacher’s Training College (which later became the famous Barewa College, Zaria) where he was a school prefect and class captain. Bello became a teacher in 1931 and after spending five years at Katsina, he was appointed a teacher in his own former school in Sokoto where he worked from 1931 to 1934 before his full foray into politics in the 1940s.
His political and earthly journey ended on Saturday January 15, 1966 when he was killed alongside some other prominent politicians and top military officers.
Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa
He was the Prime Minister of the country as the nation was running a parliamentary system of government then. This was until around 2am in the morning of Saturday January 15, 1966, when army officers led by Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, kicked down the door to his room and led him away and never to be seen again.
Balewa started his education at the Koranic School in Bauchi while he studied at the Katsina College for further education and later became a trained teacher. He returned to Bauchi to teach at the Bauchi Middle School. He was sent abroad for further training as a teacher at the University of London’s Institute of Education. When he returned to Nigeria, he became an Inspector of Schools for the colonial administration. In 1946, he was elected to the colony’s Northern House of Assembly and later to the Legislative Assembly in 1947. He later joined late Sir Ahmadu Bello to start the Northern People’s Congress (NPC).
In 1952, Balewa was appointed Minister of Works in Northern Nigeria and later Minister of Transport. In 1957, he was appointed Chief Minister, forming a coalition government between the NPC and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC). He became full Prime Minister when Nigeria gained independence in 1960. He held the position until he was felled by coupists’ bullets in that night of January 1966.
Felix Okotie-Eboh
The flambouyant Minister of Finance was a prominent member of the Balewa government. A man of means who knew what good life was, Okotie-Eboh was born Samuel Festus Edah as an Urhobo man but changed to an Itsekiri man after marrying his wife, Victoria, in 1942. A successful business man, he joined Bata Shoe Company in 1937 as an 18 year-old. This was after his secondary education at Sapele Baptist School. He rose through the ranks before setting up a rubber exporting concern which he made a huge success of. He later diversified into shoe making and also made a kill. After persuasion by the late Nnamdi Azikiwe, he joined politics and was elected into the Western Region House of Assembly in 1951. He was later elected into the House of Representatives three years later. When the National Council of Nigerians and Cameroons, (NCNC), went into an alliance to form the first government after independence in 1960, he was named the Minister of Finance. Before then, in 1955, he was named Minister of Labour and Welfare. It was that finance portfolio he was holding until he met his death in the hands of young military officers on Saturday January 15, 1966.
Samuel Ladoke Akintola
He was the prime minister of the Western Region. He had succeeded the late Obafemi Awolowo, who was before then Leader of Opposition at the Federal House of Representatives but in jail for treasonable felony as at the time of the January 1966 coup. Before Awolowo, Akintola had been Leader of Opposition and head of Action Group Business at the same Federal House of Representatives.
A man with a massive gift of the garb, Akintola trained as a lawyer at the United Kingdom and joined Awolowo in funding the Action Group with the late sage as the leader. The two were getting on well until Akintola started feeling that the party should go beyond the South-west and align with other parties so that the region could attract needed development from the centre. He was also said to have been opposed to adoption of ‘democratic socialism’ as the party’s doctrine. Akintola was to fall out with Awolowo and after a vote of no confidence on him by the Region’s House of Assembly, crisis broke out and the federal government took over the region, appointing the late Dr. Moses Majekodunmi to replace him. Though he later returned in 1963, he was to win election as premier on the platform of Nigerian National Democratic Party, (NNDP), in 1965.
It was this post he was holding until the night of January 15, 1966, when he was killed by coup plotters.
Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun
He was the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the Nigerian Army in Kaduna. A fine officer that was trained in the best military institutions in the world, Ademulegun was one officer who would never think of overthrowing a democratically elected government. That was why he was very angry with Major Kaduna Nzeogwu’s military exercises code-named “Exercise Damisa” which required him doing military patrols with some men of the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, where Nzeogwu was the chief instructor. To Ademulegun, the exercises were too close to the house of the premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello. Ademulegun had called Nzeogwu to take his exercises far away from the residence of the premier. But little did he know that the exercise was nothing but a reconnaissance for the coming coup.
On the night of January 15, 1966, Maj. Timothy Onwuatuegwu led some army officers to Ademulegun’s official quarters and they made their way to his bedroom where he was lying in bed alongside his wife. Before Ademulegun knew what was happening, Onwuatuegwu and his men had opened fire and killed him and his wife. His then 12 year-old son, Bankole, who was in the adjacent bedroom, was too scared to come out as gun shots rent the compound. By the time the smoke cleared, he discovered he had become an orphan.
Colonel Ralph Shodehinde
Colonel Shodehinde was the head of the Nigerian Military Training School, Zaria. It was not clear how life was snuffed out of him alongside his wife, but the team that killed him was led also by Major Onwuatuegwu. Shodehinde was another fine officer who was trained abroad. He was said to be a man who took his military duties very seriously and was so shocked to even do anything when junior officers stormed his official quarters to attack him on the night of January 16, 1966. He never lived to tell the story.
Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari
Had Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari had known before hand what was actually going and who and who were involved in the putsch of January 15, 1966, chances are that he might still be alive today. He was the commanding officer of the Second Brigade Division of the Nigerian Army. He had escaped arrest when Major Don Okafor led some young army officers to his official residence. The intruders were not so lucky as the senior military officer escaped through the fence. Little did know he had only escaped to a certain death. Major Ifeajuna, one of the ring leaders of the coup had taken some troops from the same Brigade to go and take out the Prime Minister Balewa, was the first person Maimalari met upon his escape. Ifeajuna was inside a car which the embattled military commander flagged down. On recognizing Maimalari, Ifeajuna did not waste time. He shot him dead.
Colonel Abogo Largema
Colonel Abogo Largema was another fine officer from the present day Borno State. He was a Kanuri and was the commanding officer of the 4th battalion of the Nigerian Army in Ibadan. Largema, just like other senior military officers of that time, trained at the best institutions in the world. On Friday January 14, Col. Largema had lodged at the Ikoyi Hotel. Little did he know it would be his last night on earth. The coup plotters had arrived at the hotel. They were led by same Ifeajuna. They had asked the front office desk officer, at gunpoint, to inform Largema that he had a phone call. By the time Largema emerged from his room, the coup plotters emerged from nowhere and snuffed life out of him.
Colonel Kur Mohammed
Colonel Kur Mohammed was another Kanuri officer who was with the Prime Minister on the night of the coup. He was abducted alongside with the premier and no one heard anything about them until their bodies were found six days later.
Lt. Colonel James Pam
Late Lt. Colonel James Pam was Berom from the present day Plateau State. He was the one who informed the then supreme commander of the Nigerian Army, General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, of the coup that was taken place. Colonel Pam was the adjutant general of the Nigerian Army then, a position he was handed by the Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon. Pam, on the night of the coup, had been alarmed by what was going on and he placed a call to Ironsi but little did he know that he was one of those penciled down for elimination.
His own death was around 3am on the wee hours of January 15, 1966.
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