1966 coups: 50 years after, no lessons have been learned

The July 29, 1966 coup, which countered the January 15, 1966 military incursion into the Nigerian politics and inducted the nation into the ‘Infamous Hall of Coups’, provokes the debate, whether the echoes of such event have faded across the landscape.

It was tagged a grudge coup to settle scores and balance an equation; and when the last shot was fired, Lt.-Gen. Theophilus Y. Danjuma, the ‘circumstantial’ ring leader of that putsch, who arrested the Head of State, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Maj.Gen. Johnson Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, assessed the outcome, and declared it ‘a draw’.

In an interview, Danjuma: My Role In Arrest And Killing of Aguiyi-Ironsi with The Guardian, which was published on Sunday, February 17, 2008, Danjuma claimed: “The Igbos who killed our senior officers (all over the place) created the problem. They sowed the wind and reaped the problem…

“What would you do when you went to bed and woke up and found that all the people from your area in the Army, innocent people were killed in their beds, some of them even with their wives – all done by Igbo officers? We bottled up this for six months from January to July. Then, the opportunity came for revenge…“If it was necessary that the Army should take over, why was it that this same Army should eliminate the cream of that Army and leave us with absolutely useless people, like Ironsi who was a desk-clerk Head of State?”

Fifty years and several coups later, the anger at all levels hasn’t abated. Millions of Nigerians died in the 30-month war of attrition, one immediate outcome of the July coup; the commencement of an era of distrust and sectionalism in the nation’s polity. And while the nation survived the threat to its unity, cracks have never ceased widening. Ethnic based militancy has kept its tug on the nation’s brotherhood and unity; ethnic dominance still prevails in more atrociously; corruption has gained a dizzying height, the electoral process has been compromised by blood and lucre and clueless leaders have thrived on the stage, buying up support and offering poor performance.

Second Republic lawmaker, Dr. Junaid Mohammed, bemoaned: “I had imagined that after the coups, the Army was going to bequeath a better electoral system, but that didn’t happen. And the question is of what use was the shedding of blood. Those coups sent Nigeria’s democracy at least two and a half decades backwards; it sowed the seed of distrust, and impunity among some political class.”

At the 50th memorial colloquium, in January, of Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, a victim of the nation’s first coup, former President Olusegun Obasanjo said, “the 1966 coup brought darkness to Nigeria and one of the events that shook the country.”

Elder statesman and one time Minister of Transport Chief Ebenezer Babatope lamented: “Nigeria has not learnt any lesson from those coups and the civil war and that is why some young men are saying they want the revival of Biafra. I support them; during the war I was pro-Biafra. I pray that Nigeria learn the lessons from the coups and remain united and ensure that we do not have a repeat whereby a group of Nigerians will take it upon themselves to murder innocent people, because Ironsi and Francis Adekunle Fajuyi were murdered by fellow Nigerians.”

Managing The Lessons Of 1966 Coups
THE outcome was revenge after the January 15 coup, seen to have organized by mostly Igbo officers led by Chukwuma Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna, in which several officers from the North were killed.Northern officers were aggrieved primarily in because most of those killed were from the North, secondly, that the coup plotters were only detained, had not been tried for treason and were being pampered in prison. This situation was further poisoned by rumors of an impending structural adjustment against the North following rumors of Ironsi’s ethnic favoritism toward Igbo.

Of the list of northern officers that plotted the coup, four finally became heads of state through coups. They are Sani Abacha then a Second Lieutenant; Ibrahim Babangida, then a Lieutenant like Muhammadu Buhari and Murtala Muhammed who was a Lieutenant Colonel.

A retired Army Colonel, who does not want to be named said: “The July 1966 coup was not just a coup to take power. It was a coup that stressed the North’s quest for power. Since then, they have not relinquished that political power; when they lose it they go back for it and they want to retain it by all means. Subsequent coups were carried out by their soldiers against themselves and they rotated themselves and retained political power. No other tribe has such influence in the Army.

“That power bloc has remained even up till now and its role in installing every successive government has never been disguised. But they will always deny it. Even during the twilight of the late president, Musa Yar’Adua it was this same core of northern army officers who did everything to maintain the secrecy around the president, even closing down airports and putting up the scheme that kept former president, Goodluck Jonathan in the dark. When it became inevitable, they had to relinquish and after that, they sat back and plotted and got it back through Buhari.

“If the PDP presidential candidate had been a northerner in 2015, and not Jonathan, the party would have retained power on behalf of the North.“The Civil War stamped the mentality of victors and the vanquished and segregation in the army. It is now a part of the army showing up in the deployment of troops to war zones, where the Army has participated from Liberia to the Sambisa Forest. After the war, those recalled to the Nigeria Army were treated not only as enemies, but a defeated enemy. They were not quite absorbed into the Army. Many were not recalled immediately after in the war in 1970; they were laid off for about two years and were recalled in 1972. They started off on their last rank before the war. For those who were lieutenants for example, by this time, their mates and even juniors were already Majors. Most never got the benefit of their service and never rose above the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

“The war tore the fabric of unity in the army, polarisation came in and the army became ultra political. The Igbo didn’t benefit like the others and those running things considered anything they benefited an act of benevolence. And this is why some people have regarded the war as a continuation of the July coup. The thinking then was that the Igbo man had nothing anymore to do in the Army and they should be crushed. Long after all that, it took a Jonathan in 2010 to browbeat the political glass ceiling for Igbo officers in the army to appoint an Igbo the chief of army staff, the first time after the war. Has that solved anything?”

While the returnees in the army suffered, civilians and property owners were caught in the abandoned property saga in many parts of the country, where Igbo had properties. The indigenes of the areas took over the properties as the Igbo departed. Dr. Junaid Mohammed, who was involved in the management of abandoned property in Kano, noted that this was not the case in the most northern cities, but rather was the case in Port Harcourt. He said: “For every house, kiosk, we had a file and that is why we didn’t hear of any Igbo man who lost his property in Kano. It was so in most cities in the North where Igbo were in reasonable number like Kaduna, Jos, even Maiduguri, Bauchi and Makurdi. The Federal Government paid compensation for properties in Port Harcourt three times; so no one can blame the Federal Government. Rather, the blame should be on the interrelationship between the Igbo communities and their neighbors in the South South areas.”

According to Professor Ihechukwu Madubuike: “It is time Nigerians used the lessons of history to build the future we need. We need justice, we need equity, we need inclusiveness. It is painful that the contradictions are all over the place but the nation cannot move forward without building on that.“The aim of the July coup was not only to eliminate Igbo military officers in the Nigerian Army, restore power to the North but also to conduct a pogrom against the Igbo, perceived as an obstacle to Northern hegemony. About 30,000 Igbo civilians living in the North were killed. Add the estimated loss of another two million persons killed during the war, and the systemic policy of exclusion and you will begin to understand the plight of the Igbo since the end of the war.

“Can you quantify the cost implications of the denial of a sixth state to the South East? There is a calculated attempt to reduce the Igbo to a second-class status through lack of access to the various levers of power. It is not just a matter of material loss such as basic infrastructural deficits, motorable roads and highways, hospitals and industries, but more importantly, there is the loss of the sense of worth and pride, which should come through a policy of inclusiveness.

Ironsi (middle), Major Hassan Usman Katsina (first left), Fajuyi, Lt. Col Odumegwu Ojukwu and Lt. Col David Ejoor

“The message of the subsequent coups is that nobody has a monopoly of coups. To talk about Igbo coup is malapropism and a disingineous black mail. Implicated in that so-called Igbo coup were non-Igbo names like Major Adewale Ademoyega, Lt. B.O. Oyewole and Lt. G. Adeleke. It has become convenient to forget by Igbo traducers that no less a person than Aguiyi-Ironsi, stopped and foiled the insurrection, at the risk of his life. He also saved the life of Yakubu Gowon who ironically took over from him after he had been murdered. There have been no less than six or seven coups or attempted coups d’etat in Nigeria, all carried out by non-Igbo. They were not given any ethnic or sectional labels.”

Said retired army Colonel, Justin Ezeoke: “The army is apolitical but the whole system makes it look political because all other parts are really political and politicized. If the army were politicized, then it will not bode well for the country. And the Army must resist an outright politicization otherwise the country will speedily disintegrate because of the dangers such political interferences would foster.” “So far and despite what anyone feels, the professional core of the army is apolitical. Once the Chief of Army Staff is appointed by the president, and in spite of every seemingly political considerations that propels the appointment, he returns to the barrack, his primary constituency, to run the army, remaining loyal to his call.”

The Executive Director and founder of the Dan Ukwu Leadership Foundation, Mr. Daniel Ukwu noted, “it is obvious that the proper foundation for the restoration, reconstruction and reconciliation after the war wasn’t laid and this is why the nation is still in the throes of the aftermath of the war. So far, there is no agreement by the nation’s leadership on how to move the country forward, which is why the recommendations of a national constitutional conference cannot be implemented.

“Our leaders have failed to unite the country and it seems that Nigerians thrive better when sectional or tribal interests are threatened than when Nigeria is at risk. Even the election of president today is not based on the larger interests of the nation, but is based on the primordial desires of a section.”

The Secretary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Dr. Joe Nwaorgu, noted that the July coup “cast a dark shadow on the glory that Nigeria had attained. It was the day; a sword was pierced through the heart of the Nigerian nation and set the ball rolling on the fracas known as the Nigeria-Biafra War. I condole with the families of Ironsi and Fajuyi, and with Nigerians for being where we are today, in the doldrums. “The history of Nigeria would have been different from what it is today, where there is gloom and despondency. And where doubts and suspicion are the order of the day. As a result of the hostilities of the civil war, patriotism for the nation was derailed and replaced by sectionalism, wickedness, and downright exclusionism. The country was condemned to walk sideways like a crab. A lot of work needs to be done to rekindle patriotism, love and trust among Nigerians. Since the civil war ended, no concrete steps towards unity have been sustained. Only slogans are heard. Nigeria needs patriots, who will serve the country as a whole to ensure that Nigeria rises again.”

Ezeoke concluded thus: “Those coups manifested as a total disaster particularly to the Army as it were. Many were murdered in indescribable gruesome manner. Recollections such as these bear the stains of those coups on the Army. “As to lessons learnt? Who is the teacher and who the student? The military is a Nigerian institution so, if the education ministry for instance has learnt any lesson pertaining to the performance of the decrepit state of our educational system, then the military must also have learnt. I think we all are in a bind and there is an urgent need to undo that.”