By Douglas Anele
Why did Major Danjuma and his murderous band of soldiers
humiliate, physically assault and kill Ironsi based on the unsubstantiated
allegation that he was either complicit in theJanuary 15 coup or was unwilling
to deal with Nzeogwu and his group because an overwhelming percentage of the
prominent coup plotters were Igbo? What exactly was the role of
Lieutenant-Colonel Gowon, Ironsi’s chief of army staff, in the revanchist coup?
For the first question, our response is that Ironsi paid the
ultimate price for the ill-advised adventurism of those who carried out the
first bloody coup in January 15, 1966. Virtually all the malice, mistrust and
anger of northern soldiers resulting from that tragic event were directed at
Ironsi and Ndigbo generally.
Ironsi tried hard to calm frayed nerves and animosity
generated by the coup, but he underestimated the intensity of simmering grudge
and pent up hatred among a group of northern soldiers and politicians who felt
that high-ranking military officers and political leaders from their region
were eliminated by Igbo Majors so that one of their own, Ironsi, would emerge as
supreme commander.
From July 13, 1966, Ironsi embarked on a nationwide tour to
assure everyone that his administration intended to serve the interests of
Nigerians as a whole, not the interests of the eastern region alone.
While he was on tour of the defunct western region, Danjuma
led a group of soldiers who teamed up with northern guards at the Ibadan state
house where Ironsi and his host Fajuyi were staying to arrest and eventually
murder the two men. Concerning the second question, from my researches no
definitive or conclusive answer is available.
Frederick Forsyth, inThe Making of an African Legend: The
Biafra Story, argued that although Gowon had denied involvement in the revenge
coup, “the tenacity of the hunt for Eastern officers and the duration of it
long after Colonel Gowon had taken over supreme control in the name of the
mutineers…cast doubts on both the political aspect of the coup and Gowon’s
innocence of events.
Isawa Elaigwu’s
Gowon: The Biography of a Soldier-Statesman, suggests that Gowon was not part
of the coup plot but was pressured by the mutineers to assume the office of
supreme commander. In Ironside, Chuks Iloegbunam agrees with Forsyth that there
is strong circumstantial evidence linking Gowon to the bloodthirsty coup.
To begin with, Illoegbunam wondered why Ironsi was unable
after several attempts to reach Gowon, his chief of army staff, on telephone in
the morning of the coup, whereas that same morning, according to Joe Garba, in
his book, Revolution in Nigeria: Another View, Gowon was “on the telephone
rousing all commanding officers, including me, to say that there was trouble in
Abeokuta and that all troops were to be readied to counter it.” Again, when
Gowon eventually telephoned Ibadan, he did not get through to the government
house proper but to the adjoining guest house, and one of the ringleaders of
the coup, Danjuma, picked the call. Perhaps that is coincidental; but if Gowon
really intended to speak with his supreme commander, he should have ordered
Danjuma to link him up with Ironsi immediately.
More tellingly, during the conversation between the two,
Danjuma informed Gowon that he and the northern soldiers with him had
surrounded the state house and were going to arrest Ironsi. Now, instead of
Gowon to order the junior officer to make sure that Ironsi was safe and drop
the idea of arresting him, he betrayed the head of state by endorsing the plan
and merely pleaded that there should be no bloodshed.
Of course, there was bloodshed all right; however, Gowon
never lifted a finger against those who killed Ironsi and Fajuyi. In his own
account entitled Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup
Culture(1966-1976) that we cited earlier, Max Siollun suggested that although
there are variations in different accounts of what transpired after Danjuma and
his men abducted Ironsi, Fajuyi, Lieutenants Andrew Nwankwo and Sani Bello
(Ironsi’s air force and army ADCs respectively), they all agree that Danjuma
was not present when Ironsi and Fajuyi were assassinated.
But it is evident that he deceived Gowon when he told the
latter that he and his soldiers merely wanted to arrest Ironsi. If Danjuma was
genuinely loyal to Ironsi as the call of duty demanded, he could have done
something to save him even if it meant risking his own life in the process.
At this juncture, let
us clear up a mythology originated by the western region’s publication, Fajuyi
The Great, which was further hyperbolised in Fajuyi: The Martyred Soldier,
written by one Sanmi Ajiki. According to the story, Fajuyi was taken captive
and killed together with Ironsi because he refused to be separated from the
latter, insisting that he would stay with Ironsi until the end.
From my investigations, the conversation in which Fajuyi
declared absolute loyalty to Ironsi never happened. In fact, there are reasons
why Fajuyi would have been a target for elimination by the mutinous northern
soldiers as much as Ironsi. Number one, many of the soldiers who took part in
the July 29 coup believed that Fajuyi assisted the majors who organised the
botched January 15coup or, at the very least, was sympathetic to their cause.
Second, in September 1965, Fajuyi commanded an all arms
battle group course in Abeokuta, which northern soldiers suspected was a
pretext for recruiting and training those who eventually carried out the
January coup.
Thus, the murder of Fajuyi was a deliberate act triggered by
grievances from the first coup, not because of purported refusal by Fajuyi to
be separated from Ironsi. Debunking the myth of Fajuyi’s alleged heroic act of
loyalty to Ironsi does not in any way belittle the act of immense courage he
might have displayed when both men were savagely brutalised by Lieutenant Walbe
and others before they were finally killed.
The events that followed the revenge coup remain, in my
opinion, one of the darkest periods in Nigeria’s chequered history. Rather than
hand over power to the most senior military officer after Ironsi’s death in
line with established military protocol, the mutineers handed it to one of
their own, Gowon, who was the highest ranked northern soldier at that time.
Although, as I have argued earlier, there is circumstantial evidence connecting
Gowon to the revanchist coup, Murtala Mohammed, who was its arrowhead, lost out
in the power chess game that played out afterwards. Mohammed eventually got his
pound of flesh nine years later when he engineered a coup that kicked out
General Gowon in July 29, 1975.
The main negative
repercussions of the revenge coup of July 1966 were the bloody overthrow of
Ironsi and the systematic decimation of Ndigbo in the officer cadres of the
Nigerian army leading to domination of the military by northerners, a situation
that still obtains today. Since Nzeogwu and his group failed to capture power,
it can be justifiably argued that the emergence of Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu
Gowon as head of state after the coup ahead of his seniors (such as Brigadier
Babafemi Ogundipe, Commodore J.E.A. Wey, and Colonel Robert Adebayo) introduced
a dangerous precedent in the political ecology of Nigeria with respect to
governance.
Seniority began to play second fiddle in deciding who was to
become head of state, and political power rested with any group which had first
access to, and use of instruments of violence, not with the titular leader or cabinet
ministers.
Having taken over power, albeit illegitimately, the young
Gowon was saddled with the responsibility of unifying a deeply fractured and
divided country. Part of the reasons why the situation degenerated afterwards
was because Gowon himself was inexperienced in statecraft.
Moreover, northern hardliners who spearheaded the coup,
especially Murtala Mohammed, were more interested in secession of the north
than in building a united Nigerian nation. Still, Gowon tried his best to
manage the situation, but pogroms by northerners against Ndigbo and the
outbreak of the Biafran war conclusively proved that his efforts were
unsuccessful. With the benefit of historical hindsight, the naively optimistic
coup of January 15, which was a grossly flawed but plausible excuse for the
group of northern soldiers who unleashed savage attacks on their eastern
colleagues, marked a turning point in the evolution of Nigeria as a
geopolitical entity.
To be continued
