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Olugbemi. Adeyinka Ogunleye
2 days ago
Overview
JANUARY 15th 1966: A MORNING OF MURDER, MAYHEM AND CARNAGE - Part 6
...I repeat with greater detail, this included the Northern 'Revenge' coup of July 29th 1966 in which 300 Igbo officers and an Igbo Head of State (Gen. Aguyi-Ironsi) were killed, the pogroms in the North in which over 30,000 Igbo civilians were killed and a civil war in which 3 million Igbos (including 1 million children) and hundreds of thousands of Nigerians were cut short.
What a tragedy!
Coups may have happened in other countries in Africa but that did not mean that it had to happen here.
In any case the amount of blood that was shed on the morning of January 15th 1966 and the number of innocent people that were killed was unacceptable.
It arrested our development as a people and our political evolution as a country.
Had it not happened our history would have been very different. May we never see such a thing again.
Yet regardless of the pain of the past I believe that we should do all we can to put these matters behind us.
We must not allow ourselves to become prisoners of history. Rather than being propelled by pain and bitterness and becoming victims of history, we must learn from it, be guided by it and move on.
We must learn to forgive, even if we do not forget and, equally importantly, we must first establish the truth about those ugly events and understand what actually transpired.
What happened that night traumatised the nation. None of us has been the same since.
I can identify with that because I was a part of it, I witnessed it and i was a victim of it.
Yet by God’s grace and divine providence my father’s life was spared: not because he was special but simply by the grace of God.
Every day I think about those that were killed that night and I remember their families.
We share a common bond and we are all partakers of an ugly and frightful history.
I tell myself: “were it not for divine providence, my father would have also died and I would not have been what I am today, because he was the one who educated me and did everything for me.”
If nothing else I know there was a purpose for that.
We must resolve among ourselves that never again will people be attacked in their homes, dragged out, abducted and shot like dogs in the middle of the night.
Never again will women, wives, children and the unborn be slaughtered in this way.
Never again shall we witness such barbarity and wickedness in our quest for power.
Never again must any Nigerian suffer such brutality and callousness.
May the souls of all those that were murdered on January 15th 1966 continue to rest in peace and may God make Nigeria great again.
(FFK)
