The Unending Quest For The Sovereign State Of Biafra

As I stated last week, those claiming that January 15, 1966 largely unsuccessful military takeover of government was an Igbo coup are either ignorant of the counterevidence that refutes their claim or are incendiary Ndigbo haters who endorse the bloody northern revanchist coup six months later as justified revenge for the regrettable death of few prominent northern politicians and military officers in that first coup.

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There is no evidence whatsoever that at least two or more Igbo leaders (civilian or military or a combination of the two) met to discuss a coup to install an Igbo Prime Minister). On the other hand, there is ample evidence that senior Igbo military officers played a decisive role in foiling the so-called Nzeogwu coup, namely, Maj. Gen. J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi and Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu who, incidentally, should be privy to any Igbo coup if indeed there was such thing.

Now, the first military coup was actually intended by its key planners, had they succeeded, to install Chief Obafemi Awolowo who was in prison at the time as Prime Minister. But the myth of Igbo coup would always be peddled by members of other ethnic groups because of their deep-seated resentment of the Igbo.

That said, there is no controversy or ambiguity whatsoever about the bloody revenge coup of July 29, 1966 executed with brutal efficiency by northern soldiers under the leadership of Lt. Col. Murtala Ramat Mohammed. Repeated massacres of Ndigbo in northern Nigeria beginning with the Jos riots of 1945 mostly targeted civilians.

During the revenge coup soldiers were included in the menu, with scores of Igbo military officers tortured and murdered by their northern counterparts. By August 1, 1966, Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon had been selected by the coup plotters to replace Aguiyi-Ironsi killed in Ibadan alongside the military governor of western region by Major T.Y. Danjuma-led detachment of northern soldiers.

It is the ultimate act of betrayal that Danjuma led the soldiers who killed Ironsi after being promoted by the late Supreme Commander. Now, considering what has happened since then, a plausible case can be made that with the blood-soaked success of the revenge coup the northernisation of Nigeria’s power base entered a critical stage when Gowon became military head of state.

It must be observed that Gowon, who in his twilight years founded a phoney lame duck organisation called ‘Nigeria Prays’ – ostensibly to work and pray for the continued existence of One Nigeria which has benefitted him immensely because he is a northerner – wanted to read a speech announcing the secession of the north shortly after his emergence as head of state.

But he was dissuaded from doing so especially by Sir Francis Cumming-Bruce and Elbert Matthews, ambassadors of Britain and the United States to Nigeria respectively. The two diplomats warned Murtala Mohammed and other hawkish northern soldiers present during heated debates between the weekend of July 30 and 31 1966 of the dire political and economic consequences of secession for the region, whereas they were actually more concerned with protecting the economic interests of their home countries.

Federal civil servants invited to the meeting also painted a grim picture of how the north would suffer seriously if the region denied itself the economic benefits from southern Nigeria by seceding from the federation.

Once again, precisely the same economic considerations favourable to Britain and the north which motivated British imperialists to amalgamate the northern and southern protectorates also prevented Gowon and his cohorts from undoing what Lord Lugard and Lord Harcourt had done.

It is ironic that Murtala Mohammed, the most vociferous champion of secession during the turbulent 1960s was later hailed as a statesman by southerners who knew very little about his secessionist, rabidly pro-north, antecedents. Ordinary ignorance is a disease; but ignorance about historical facts is a pandemic.

Because of the deep schism and tension generated not only by the gruesome takeover of the federal military government by northern soldiers, the recurrent senseless murder of Ndigbo living in the north, and political tension in western region, Nigeria’s collapse seemed imminent after the 1964 federal elections.

When frantic efforts within the country to bring about reconciliation of the centrifugal forces [eastern region and the rest of Nigeria] pulling in opposite directions failed, Ghana’s military leader, Lt. Gen. Joseph Ankrah, brokered a meeting between a delegation of the federal government led by Gowon and the one representing eastern region under the leadership of Ojukwu.

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Max Siollun referred to earlier makes a valid point mostly ignored by commentators on the Aburi meeting when he says that “while the federal delegation behaved as if the Aburi conference was a social gathering to reunite former friends who had fallen out in a social tiff, Ojukwu saw the conference for what it really was: a historic constitutional debate that would determine Nigeria’s social and political future.

”Little wonder, then, that when Gowon returned to the country and realised that the eastern delegation got most of what it wanted (which, in a nutshell, was increased regional autonomy tending towards confederation) he and his top civil servants acted as if they never really wanted to implement the Aburi Accord, which probably could have saved the country from the disastrous civil war.

According to Prof. Chinua Achebe, “But for reasons hard to explain other than as egotistical self-preservation, members of the federal civil service [led by H.E.A. Ejueyitchie and Solomon Akenzua who later became the Oba of Benin] galvanised themselves in energetic opposition to the agreements of the Aburi Accord.”

So, Gowon’s claim both that his sickness and Ojukwu’s premature public presentation of details of the Aburi Accord prevented him from implementing it is an afterthought meant to deceive Nigerians who are unaware that the dominant northern military-political establishment did not take the agreements seriously. As usual, the north had willing “useful idiots” from the south to carry out their plan for political domination.

Gowon’s failure to actualise the agreement and subsequent steps both he and Ojukwu took afterwards pushed Nigeria to the brink of disintegration. There is no need to detail all the missteps by both men in this essay since they have been well-documented by scholars.

Yet, objectively considered, it appears that Gowon and the revanchist coup plotters in concert with the ultraconservative wing of the northern establishment wanted to teach the east a very bitter lesson by goading the region into secession and, ultimately, war. And they planned it with remarkable ingenuity.

It appears, in fact, that northern leaders suspected that at some point the battle for supremacy between the north and south would be settled by armed conflict and that in future the military would play the most decisive role in determining Nigeria’s political evolution, considering the speed with which the northernisation quota system policy in the army was implemented by Alhaji Tafawa Balewa with the blessing of Sir Ahmadu Bello and tacit support of Britain.

Source: Vanguard.