Whenever the issue of the putsch of 15 January 1966, is raised, there is no way it will not awaken emotions and ugly memories for its horrors. Equally merciless and even more bloody and horrendous is what has been referred to as the revenge coup, given the number of deaths, and the rage that swept through parts of the Northern Region. This is why deliberate efforts must be made at reconciliation from deep our hearts, springing from our souls. Careless and impassioned pronouncements cannot be tools of reconciliation and the balm to heal wounds.

The question that has been asked for nearly six decades is what was the objective of the coup? The question could not have been answered better than by those who planned it. Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, the leader of the coup makers, said in his broadcast that the aim of the putschists he called the Revolutionary Council was to clean up the country and “establish a strong, united and prosperous nation free from corruption and internal strife.” On the indignity to which Nigerians were subjected internationally, he said: “We promise that you will no more be ashamed to say that you are Nigerians.” They were poised to fight those who made the country “look big for nothing… “Our enemies are the political profiteers…those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least…”

Was it an Igbo coup? Major Adewale Ademoyega, one of the three masterminds of the coup answers the question in his book, “Why We Struck”: “Contrary to the load of wicked propaganda that had since been heaped upon us, there was no decision at our meeting to single out any particular ethnic group for elimination or destruction. Our intentions were honourable, our views were national and our goals were idealistic. We intended that the coup should be national in execution so that it would receive nationwide acclamation. We planned that the use of force should be minimal so that our methods could at once be seen as superior to those of the politicians, who simply went on killing the very people that they were called upon to govern.”

The Daily Times which was the leading newspaper at the time reflecting the relief and joy of the nation in its issue of 18 January 1966, said in its Front Page Comment: “For some time now—almost right from the day we came onto our own, the country has been, as it were, at the sick bay. We have been groping along—rudderless, hesitant, unsure which foot to put forward first. For some time now—almost right from that day in October 1960 when we put out flags and bunting in celebration of the dawn of a new era—our experiment in parliamentary democracy, Westminster fashion, which we watched our old masters practice may have flourished, but it certainly did not appear to flourish. Opposition was virtually reduced to a position of nullity.

“For a long time, instead of settling down to minister unto the people’s needs, the politicians were busy performing a series of seven days’ wonders as if the art of government was some circus show. John Citizen was not amazed, but he was powerless, he was helpless.

“Indeed, at one period, it seemed as if the country had reached the famous last days about which Paul wrote to Timothy—the days when men become lovers of selves, covetous, proud, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, fierce, despisers of those that are good, heady, high-minded.

“Still we groped along as John Citizen watched politicians scorn the base by which they ascended. We groped from one trouble to another; from one calamity to another. It was too much, it was enough, but none there was to bell the cat, until the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Today, there is a new regime in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a new military regime. About time, too.

“Something just had to be done to save the Federation. Something has been done. It is a surgical operation which must be performed or the patient dies. The operation has been performed. It has proved successful. And it is welcome.”

Ethnic consideration did not cross the minds of the initiators of the coup. Ademoyega made strenuous efforts to convince the world that it was not an ethnic agenda. It began with him sleeping and waking up thinking about revolution and he found himself, in accordance with the Law of nature, drifting towards kindred spirits. When he appeared before the Selection Board of the Nigerian Army to be enlisted, he met Uche Chukwumerije. It was only both of them that came from outside and were to be tested and interviewed to join the Army. The others were already cadets who had gone through the Military Training College in preparation for further training overseas.

Both were eventually selected and were to be trained at Mons Officer Cadet in Britain. They were meeting for the first time and instantly took to each other as if they had grown up together. Chukwumerije hinted him that he wanted to join the Army to stage a revolution. Both met Ifeajuna who had joined the Army in 1960. In their interactions, Ademoyega found that the three of them were birds of the same feather who were to flock together. Indeed, Ifeajuna and Chukwumerije had been together at the University of Ibadan. The latter meeting Ifeajuna was a pleasant reunion. To Ademoyega, too, Ifeajuna’s name rang a bell. He recalled his feat at the Commonwealth Games of 1954 in Canada where he won the gold medal in the high jump. When he got to Zaria to be enlisted in October 1961 he was met by Kaduna Chukwuma Nzeogwu who was the training officer. Lt. Nzeogwu as he then was, gave him a rousing welcome. Ademoyega was touched by what he described as his humbleness and humanity. And immediately they struck a lifelong friendship. Through their interactions, it did not take time for him to discover that he had found another kindred spirit. The four of them in separate discussions found that they shared the same vision of the political, social, and economic life of Nigeria and that revolution was the answer.

That was how the seed of revolution was sown which was to bear fruit albeit unsuccessfully on 15 January 1966. Chukwumerije was later to abandon his ambition to join the Army. He was successful in the selection test and interview in Kaduna quite alright. However, when he was making preparations to resume, he hinted a British professor at the University of Ibadan that he was going into the Army so he could launch a revolution using the Army platform. The Professor shocked him saying that the Army was a most conservative institution. If he wanted to realise his dream of a revolution he would advise him to look elsewhere. The conversation poured cold water on his spirit. Consequently, he backed out; he did not report for the flight with his colleagues to London, and his seat at the cadet college remained vacant. In other words, what was on the minds of the three principal coup plotters was how they could set off a revolution in Nigeria and from where any prospective participant in their operation came did not matter to them, especially at the last minute.

Mass education was top in their ideology and programme. They believed that mass education, formal and informal, was the answer to mass illiteracy in the land. “This was deemed essential to lift the vast majority of our people out of the bog of ignorance and disease, to make every individual a productive… liberate the minds of our people from darkness… Students and teachers must be made aware that they had a common cause “to destroy a common enemy—ignorance.”

One can begin to sense why they were rooting for Chief Awolowo, the chief driver of mass and free education in Nigeria. Nzeogwu said: “Neither I nor any of the other lads was in the least interested in governing the country… Chief Obafemi Awolowo was, for example, to be released from jail immediately and to be made the executive President of Nigeria.” Nwobosi was to say: “We planned after the coup, none of us was going to be Head of State. Awolowo was in Calabar prison and in our own minds this was the man we wanted to put at the helm of affairs of the Federal Government…We wanted to put somebody who was sincere. I don’t think he was even the best friend of Igbo. He wasn’t but we wanted the job done and we knew that the man who would do it well was Awolowo. You know Zik? Zik is from the next door to my place, from my town Obosi, but I wouldn’t trust Zik to do the type of things we had in mind. I’m telling you the honest truth.” The plan was kept to their chest, Awolowo did not know about it.

If a group had a programme meant to be of immeasurable benefit to the whole country and her peoples, such cannot be said to be an Igbo agenda, and therefore an Igbo coup. What was more, they preferred Awolowo, a Yoruba to Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Igbo, to be President to superintend over their programmes. They had arranged for an Air Force aircraft to be on standby to go to Calabar and fetch Chief Awolowo in the hope that their coup plan would succeed.

Law and order had broken down in the country, particularly in the Western Region following the Federal elections of 1964 and the Western Region elections of the following year, 1965. Both elections were regarded as a farce. Following frustrations with Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa’s administration there were party alliances to have him defeated in the elections. NCNC, Awolowo’s Action Group, Aminu Kano’s NEPU, and Joseph Tarka’s Middle Belt party, UMBC came together to form the United Progressive Grand Alliance to face Sir Ahmadu Bello’s Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) and Chief Ladoke Akintola’s NNDP together with MDF to form Nigerian National Alliance (NNA). Most of the candidates of UPGA were unable to file their candidacy papers because electoral officials made themselves unavailable. UPGA therefore boycotted the elections and insisted that they be cancelled and rerun elections be held. In some cases where elections were held, losers were declared winners. Government party candidates were announced to have won unopposed. NNA fought back, saying there would be no re-run elections. The President, Dr. Azikiwe, was asked to invite Balewa to form the government. The nation was kept in ominous expectation for days before reluctant Zik invited Balewa to form his government. These resulted in widespread rioting in most parts of the country; in addition to rioting were killings and arson in the Western Region reaching a crescendo in 1965. Nigerians yearned for deliverance. It was clear something must give as the upheavals were getting out of control and the capacity of the ant-riot police to restore law and order. While the Federal Government was planning a clampdown on the West in the third week of January, the putschists hastened their plan to intervene in the second week to pre-empt the clampdown.

The observations about the pattern and the unrepresentative spread of the killings were more of the problem and were not without merit; in many parts of the country, they remained unanswered questions. But then coup making is not what you advertise on billboards, in newspapers, or on television. So they used officers they could trust. The misgivings arose more from unfortunate coincidences and sabotage which led to the unrepresentativeness and presented the events as a continuation of ethnic rivalries among the diverse nationalities that make up the country that is Nigeria. The coup makers themselves were crest-fallen and they panicked. The complexities of our country and the unpredictability of human character stared them in the face. Some of their key officers were not at their duty posts on the night of action. Ademoyega says in his publication: “I recalled that about 14 hours before, five majors were gathered to start this action. Now only two of us were together. The remainder had vanished from our sight since half-past three in the night, that is to say, only four hours after we started and only one and a half hours since when action actually began. We had lost Ifeajuna and Okafor both of whom were our only source of troops, weapons, communication and confidence. If we did not have those two in the first place (in view of the strategic posts that they were holding), we would not have started at all. Now we were left in the lurch. Chuckwuka, too, had not joined us and Obienu did not report with his troops.”

The man in Enugu, Oguchi, was a substitute. Major Chude-Soke originally assigned to there had proceeded on a course in India. It was from Enugu units that soldiers were to be sent to Benin. Seeing that the coup had failed in Lagos, foiled by Ironsi the G. O.C., Ademoyega and Anuforo group made the last desperate efforts to salvage what remained of the operation. They headed for Benin and Enugu. It was all unavailing. There were roadblocks manned by soldiers loyal to Ironsi in several places. By this time General Aguiyi-Ironsi having foiled the coup in Lagos, had also made his broadcast that the coup had failed. This meant they had lost Benin and the Premier of the Mid-West Region, Dennis Osadebay as well. Nzeogwu had taken over in the North and had broadcast to counter Ironsi’s announcement in Lagos. He prepared to invade the East and Benin from Kaduna. The Premier of Eastern Region, Dr. Michael Okpara could not be arrested because he was hosting the President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios who came to visit him after the conference of Commonwealth Heads of Government which had just ended in Lagos. Because of international implications in the event anything happened to Makarios, action on unsuspecting Dr. Okpara was put on hold until the visitor left. Troops led by Oguchi surrounded the Government Lodge and put him under house arrest. Orders came immediately from Ironsi and troops loyal to him dislodged those he called “unfriendly forces.”

Were the coincidences contrived? That remains the unanswered question to this day. But certainly not by Nzeogwu and Ademoyega. The North was unimpressed by the narratives and was boiling with anger. In the book titled “Fellow Countrymen—The Story of Coup D’états in Nigeria” by Richard Akinnola, journalist and author of several books, reports Richard Akinjide, then Balewa’s Minister of Education, as giving an account of development in the Ministers’ camp on the day. On realizing that the Prime Minister was missing, they decided to meet where they nominated from among themselves an Acting Prime Minister in the person of Zana Diphcharima. It was only Dr. Azikiwe, the President that could confirm him and swear him in as Prime Minister, and in his absence, by whoever was acting for him. Dr. Azikiwe was out of the country in the West Indies on medical grounds. But there was an acting President, Dr. Nwafor Orizu. When approached he declined to swear in Diphcharima as acting Prime Minister, saying he needed to contact Zik. “Orizu who did not cooperate with us later cooperated with Ironsi and he and Ironsi drafted the speech handing over the government to the Army.” The reasoning was that if their nominee had been sworn in, nerves would have been calmed and tension doused in the North with the assurance that Balewa’s government was still in place. Diphcharima was deliberately nominated being a Northerner. If Ironsi kicked them out it would amount to a second coup. But Orizu said they did not know where the Prime Minister, Balewa was, nor his fate at that point in time. His stance, however, added to the unwholesome speculations about ethnic consideration in the whole saga.

With Ironsi now fully in charge, there was clamour for the trial of the putschists, but they were not brought to trial. The position of the North was six months later to be displayed in an altercation between Major Theophilus Danjuma and the General Officer Commanding, GOC: “You organized the killing of our brother officers in January and you have done nothing to bring the so-called dissident elements to justice because you were part and parcel of the whole thing. G.O.C.: ”Who told you that? You know it is not true.” Major Danjuma replied: “You have been fooling us. I ran around risking my neck to calm ranks and in February you told us that they would be tried. This is July and nothing has been done.” (Excerpts from Danjuma: The making of a General by Lindsay Barrett). The rest as it is said is history. Before the encounter, there had been fighting in Abeokuta, and killings. The North said there were five Battalions in the country. Three were at first headed by Easterners and it rose to four. The fifth was by a Westerner, Lt. Col. Adekunle Fajuyi. There were grumblings that Easterners dominated the higher hierarchy of the officer corps. This broke open after the July revenge coup and Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon came to the saddle. Col. Adeyinka Adebayo as he then was, argued at a meeting of the Supreme Military Council that the way out to bring about balance and reduce the fear of domination was to have equal representation of five candidates per state being admitted at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA). The recommendation was accepted.

Before the July coup, Major Nzeogwu held on to his own territory, determined not to surrender but to “liberate” the other parts of the country. He surrendered only after negotiations with Lagos. The Ironsi regime flew in a known friend of his who was a Military Attaché in London, Col. Nwawo, to do the negotiating and persuade him to let go. Nzeogwu spelt out his terms which included a guarantee for compensation to be paid to the families of officers and all men who lost their lives during the coup, a guarantee of safety for all his men–himself and his colleagues and the lower rank men who participated in the event of 15 January; a guarantee of freedom from prosecution; those overthrown would not be returned to power. There was the assurance that he and some of his men would be members of the government to drive their vision and programmes. The conditions were accepted by Ironsi on phone and personally accepted by his emissary. His friends Ademoyega and Anuforo soon arrived in Kaduna and they went through the agreement together with Nzeogwu. They were filled with optimism that all would not be lost after all. As it turned out it was all a ploy to get him arrested and locked up. There was a parade in his honour and after handing over to Lt.-Col. Hassan Katsina both of them embraced. Nzeogwu drove to the airport and flew to Lagos believing he was a free man. He landed in the midst of hostile faces and menacing guns and was driven straight to Kirikiri Maximum Prison where he found his colleagues earlier arrested. With Nzeogwu in the net, the search began for Adewale Ademoyega, Anuforo, and the others.

It was the end of their “revolution”. Memories began to run through Ademoyega. He recalled Uche Chukwumerije had warned him to be weary of Emmanuel Ifeajuna that he was not dependable and that he would let him down when he would need him most. He told Ademoyega of their days at the University of Ibadan and how Ifeajuna “deserted their group in the moment of action.” Ademoyega himself recalled that when he felt uneasy about the attitude of Donatus Okafor, he sought to take over the beat from him, but Ifeajuna prevailed on him with the assurance that Okafor would deliver. It was the two of them that failed the “revolutionaries” thus lending weight to widespread suspicion of ethnic colouration in the endeavours. Early in the life of his regime, Ironsi showed his hands as an ethnic jingoist. In the prison in Uyo, Ifeajuna and Ademoyega resorted to exchanging blows.

I am unable to see Ironsi’s short-lived regime as a continuation of the attempted coup of the Nzeogwu group which was driven by high-mindedness but curtailed by limited appreciation of the complexities of a heterogeneous country such as Nigeria. The accidental Ironsi regime was without a mission. Consequently, it got the earlier adventure compromised and labeled as an Igbo coup. Lt.-Col. Pam was cruelly murdered contrary to the assurance that where there was no resistance, an officer and a high-ranking politician would only be arrested. Pam surrendered and his wife pleaded in vain. His own plea that his family was young, the youngest of his children being only four and a half months old, fell on deaf ears. Why should Col. Shodeinde be killed with his expectant wife? Why should the first wife of Sardauna who came between the invaders and her husband be shot dead with her husband?

In his book, Cannon Fodder, Recollections of Life in Biafra, Emezuom Nworgu succinctly put it: “A coup spearheaded by Eastern officers turned out to have left Easterners marked out for elimination untouched and alive. This was the first of the many chills of 1966.

“The people of the North, not letting matters lie as it were, went on the warpath, letting the blood of their compatriots from the East.”

Mankind is obtuse and obstinate to reflect: Is this how our world is supposed to be and how it will continue? We have fallen short and the truth is not in us. Mankind has deviated from the Will of God; hence the world is upside down. Nature is not mute, it is man that is deaf, so says Terence McKenna. We should begin to listen to the voice of Nature. Putting the harrowing and ugly events behind us is one of its admonitions to us. Grasping it is so the Dark days do not continue to linger and anger does not continue to rage. We must cultivate love for ourselves, for our Neighbour. It is the way to close the ugly chapter of our history and end all recriminations.