Dear All:
The quoted words below (from a Nigerian brother's very touching e-mail message of yesterday) as well as from my recent readings on similar topical matters (which I plan to explain briefly later) do call for some sober reflections or actions on the part of the leaders in political power in that great country called Nigeria and, also, in other African countries:
"I think that General Ironsi deserves proper burial, if Nigeria is to see peace or tranquility. He was among those brutally murdered in the coup of July 1966, with their dead bodies concealed for a very long time. We have shed too much blood in Nigeria, but my people hardly learn from history."
Is it not time for our various political leaders, on the continent, to face reality and do what is right? In several places on the continent, there are varied "Ironsi-Fajuyi situations", whereby some top political or military leaders were killed, but their remains were never handed over to their families for proper burial. In our own Ghana, for example, it happened during the AFRC regime (or "Rawlings One Regime"), when several ruling or retired military leaders were arrested and summarily executed (allegedly after secret trials and convictions). Reportedly, they were treated like common prisoners and buried similarly. However, my understanding is that President John A. Kufuor's government, out of decency, allowed relatives of those executed and buried that way to have the remains of their loved ones exhumed and re-buried with proper family rites and honors. I was very happy for the re-burial rites of their loved one by the family of my fellow historian (Ghanaian diplomat J.B. Felli), whose older brother (then Colonel Roger Felli, as Ghana's Foreign Secretary) was one of the military officers arrested and summarily executed, and subsequently buried like a common prisoner!
In There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (2012), Professor Chinua Achebe (on pages 81-82) gave precise and useful accounts of what happened to General Aguiyi-Ironsi and his host (then Nigeria's Western Region Governor Fajuiyi) on July 29, 1966, including names of some of the alleged actors involved in their deaths. If so, can the reported living actors show where these murdered leaders were buried? Or like "Hitlerite rumors", were their bodies allegedly dissolved in acid?
As quoted above, for peaceful or tranquil governance in Nigeria (and everywhere else in Africa), is it not about time for murdered former leaders to be accorded proper family burials, including Liberia's Samuel K. Doe, who was reportedly made to drink a child's urine before being killed? In Of Africa (2012), Professor Wole Soyinka did confirm the scenario (on page 7) that former Liberian President Taylor's "arrest took place, after all, after the lesson of the pitiable, sadistic end of his predecessor Sergeant Doe --literally killed piecemeal, forced to drink a child's urine." Just imagine!
In Nigeria, for example, have proper burials been accorded the remains of General Aguiyi-Ironsi and Colonel Fajuyi as well as all other citizens similarly eliminated (or killed), especially in July 1966? In the January 1966 coup in Nigeria, several eminent citizens of the country, too, lost their lives. However, the understanding is that their families had their remains to accord them proper burials. What about the others?
These are thoughts, with historical-cum-political hindsight, that may irritate some brothers and sisters, who feel that we should let "sleeping dogs" lie in their graves. Yet, for the peace or tranquility of our various countries, we should endeavor to do the RIGHTFUL thing. That is how I feel as an African! And, hence I feel elated that unlike the burial on foreign soil (in Salisbury, North Carolina) of the remains of the great African philosopher (the late Dr. J.E.K. Aggrey, mentor to former Presidents Nnamdi Azikiwe and Kwame Nkrumah), Professor Chinua Achebe will soon be laid to rest at his ancestral home of Ogidi, near Nnobi (his birthplace, where he was born on November 16, 1930)! Many thanks to the bereaved Achebe Family!
A.B. Assensoh.
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