1966: When the rain began to beat us  (II)

The killings of the midnight of the 15th of January 1966 in Kaduna, Ibadan and Lagos, turned out to be a Pandora’s box for the country. It was the night when a wholesale murder of Nigeria’s political and military leaders, mainly of Northern and Western regions origin, took place, leaving us, till today, battling to live with […]

The killings of the midnight of the 15th of January 1966 in Kaduna, Ibadan and Lagos, turned out to be a Pandora’s box for the country. It was the night when a wholesale murder of Nigeria’s political and military leaders, mainly of Northern and Western regions origin, took place, leaving us, till today, battling to live with the repercussions. These events culminated in the revenge coup of July 1966, followed by a series of upheavals that perpetuated military rule until the end of the 20th Century.

The urge to avenge those killed in the initial January coup, and the fury with which the retaliation was pursued, triggered far-reaching consequences, including the exacerbation of ethnic tensions, civil war and persistent political instability. These divisions became so deeply entrenched within the Nigerian polity that even the devastating civil war that ensued has so far failed to heal the rifts. To begin with, let’s see what happened to those who engineered and carried out the January 1966 murders.

The mutineers were a coterie of majors and captains with a doubtful nationalistic agenda. I say a doubtful nationalistic agenda, because they mouthed patriotic motives for the coup. Still, they only ended up killing political leaders and military officers of the Northern and Western Regions. The Premier of the Eastern Region, Michael Okpara and the Premier of the Mid-Western Region, Asaba-born Denise Osadebay, were unscathed. The President, Nnamdi Azikwe, was conveniently out of the country. The GOC of the Nigerian Army, Major General Aguiyi Ironsi, was untouched.

Now, out of the number of the mutineers, those who actually went on the killing spree were Majors Chukwuma Nzegwu and Tim Onwuatuegwu in Kaduna, Captain Emmanuel Nwobosi in Ibadan and Majors Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Chris Anuforo and Donatus Okafor in Lagos. The law of karma played its dark side in the fate of all these soldiers. In the first place, they failed to capture power. However, it fell into the hands of their kind, Aguiyi-Ironsi, who bullied the headless federal parliamentarians into handing power to him. Probably, he was not directly involved in the insurrection, but was appeasing the bulk of the Nigerian Army, which was mainly populated with northerners, when he corralled the mutineers into detention and distributed them to various prisons.

However, Aguiyi-Ironsi lacked the will to prosecute the mutineers. Because of that tardiness, he ran afoul of the northern elements in the Nigerian Army, who were agitating for swift prosecution. The agitators who later became the organisers of the July 1966 countercoup were Lt. Col. Murtala Mohammed, Majors T. Y. Danjuma and Martin Adamu. Aguiyi-Ironsi, unfortunately, lost his life in the counter-coup. In the melee that followed the counter coup, many of the mutineers lost their lives to avenging soldiers of the Nigerian Army. Only those sequestered in the prisons in the Eastern Region escaped.

Chris Anuforo, the most bloodthirsty among the mutineers, who killed Col Yakubu Pam, Lt Cols Unegbe and Kur Mohammed as well as Finance Minister Okotie-Eboh, was in Benin prison when soldiers of the 4th Battalion broke in, captured him and tortured him to death. Don Okafor met an equally grisly end. He was the leader of the team that laid siege to his commander’s residence. The commander, Brigadier Maimalari, escaped but later lost his life at the hands of his Brigade-Major, Ifeajuna. Okafor was in Ibadan prison when soldiers of the 4th Battalion broke in and captured him. He was said to have met the same fate as Anuforo. Some accounts say that Okafor was made to dig his grave before he was shoved into it.

Major Ifeajuna, who killed the Prime Minister, Brigadier Maimalari and Lt Col Largema, initially escaped to Ghana, where President Kwame Nkrumah sheltered him. A month later, in February, Nkrumah was also overthrown in a military coup, and Ifeajuna had to return to Nigeria. He returned to Enugu at the time Col. Ojukwu was preparing to proclaim the State of Biafra. He was sucked into the rebel army. In a short while, he was accused of treason by Ojukwu, tried and shot by a firing squad in September 1967.

Nzegwu, who killed the Sardauna and callously murdered his wife Hafsat, was in Enugu prison during the counter-coup and escaped the fate of Anuforo and Okafor. He was equally sucked into the Biafran Army and met his death early into the Civil War in July 1967, in the Nsukka Sector. Onwuatuegwu, who killed Brigadier Ademulagun and Col Shodeinde in Kaduna, was also in Enugu prison and escaped being killed by soldiers seeking revenge. He, too, was sucked into the rebel army and was a leading commander up to the end of the war.

He was killed on the same day the war was declared over on 15th January 1970. Some accounts say he was summarily shot by soldiers avenging the killing of Brigadier Ademulegun and his wife. Nwobosi, who killed Akintola in Ibadan, was also in Enugu prison when Col Ojukwu released him and incorporated him into the Biafran Army. He worked closely with Ojukwu as his Chief of Staff and went into exile with him when the war ended. When Ojukwu was pardoned, he returned along with him. He lived in Obasi, Idemili LG, Anambra State, and died in 2020 at the age of 82.

We conclude the discussion next week.