Share
Olugbemi. Adeyinka Ogunleye
2 days ago
Overview
JANUARY 15th 1966: A MORNING OF MURDER, MAYHEM AND CARNAGE - Part 5
....The coup affected the country in an equally profound manner because the events of that night led to a counter-coup six months later. It was a devastating and disproportionate response.
Sadly after that came the horrendous pogroms and slaughter of the Igbo in the North which eventually led to the civil war in which millions of people died, including innocent children. This was also horrendous and deplorable.
Yet the bitter truth is that if the new Head of State, General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi who himself happened to be Igbo, had done the right thing and actually prosecuted the ringleaders of the coup namely Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, Major Anufuro, Major Ademoyega, Major Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Captain Emmanuel Nwobosi, Captain Okafor, Captain Ben Gbulie and all the other young officers that planned and executed the mutiny of January 15th 1966 after it was crushed, there would have been no northern revenge coup six months later.
I have not added Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna (who was actually the leader of the coup) to the list because he could not have been locked up or prosecuted by General Aguiy-Ironsi simply because he ran away to Ghana immediately after the mutiny in Lagos failed and after he and his co-mutineers were routed by Lt. Col. Jack Yakubu Gowon and his gallant officers.
For some curious reason after the coup was successfully crushed, General Aguiyi-Ironsi just locked these young mutineers up and he refused to prosecute them.
This bred suspicion from the ranks of the northern officers given the fact that Aguiyi-Ironsi himself was an Igbo.
The suspicion was that he had some level of sympathy for the mutineers and the fact that they did not kill him during the course of the mutiny only fuelled that suspicion.
The northern officers also felt deeply aggrieved about the wholesale slaughter of their key political figures that night.
In my view that, together with Aguiyi-Ironsi’s insistence on promulgating the Unification Decree which abolished the federal system of government and sought to turn Nigeria into a unitary state, made the revenge coup of July 29th 1966 inevitable.
The revenge coup was planned and led by Major Murtala Ramat Mohammed (as he then was) and it was supported and executed by other young northern officers like Major T.Y. Danjuma (as he then was), Major Martins Adamu and many others.
This is the coup that was to put Lt. Col. Jack Gowon (as he then was) in power & when they struck it was a very bloody and brutal affair.
The response of the northern officers to the mutiny and terrible killings that took place on the night of January 15th 1966 & to General Aguiyi-Ironsi’s apparent procrastination and reluctance to ensure that justice was served to the mutineers was not only devastating but also frightful.
300 hundred Army officers of Igbo extraction who were perceived to be sympathetic to the January 15th mutineers were killed that night including the Head of State General Aguiyi-Ironsi & the Military Governor of the old Western Region who was hosting him, the courageous Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi. This was very sad & unfortunate.
What happened on the night of January 15th 1966 was indefensible, unjustifiable, unacceptable, unnecessary, unprovoked & utterly & completely barbaric.
I beg to differ with those that believe that there was anything good about such a mutinous bloodbath & this is especially so given the fact that it was carried out by a small handful of ungrateful, cowardly & treacherous men.
Blood calls for blood: when you shed blood other people want to shed your own blood as well & sadly this is the way of the world.
The minute the shedding of blood in the quest of power becomes the norm we are all diminished and dehumanised: and this applies to both the perpetrators and the victims.
The January 15th coup set off a cycle of events which had cataclysmic consequences for our country & which we are still reeling from today.
Credit: Femi Fani-Kayode
