As at January 15, 1966, three Nigerians held substantive rank of Colonel in the Nigerian Army. They were, Colonel Ralph A. Shodeinde (enlisted as NCO in 1948 and a Commissioned officer in 1950) Commandant Nigerian Military Training Centre (NMTC), and Deputy Commandant, Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna; Colonel Adeyinka Adebayo (enlisted as NCO in1951 and Commissioned Officer in 1953) who was on course abroad as at 15 January 1966; and Colonel Kuru Mohammed (enlisted as a Cadet in1952 and a Commissioned Officer in 1954), a General Staff Officer, Army Headquarters, Lagos, in January 1966.
Thus, Obi Nwakanma lied when in his ethnic glorification essay ranked Arthur Chinyere Unegbe as a Colonel at the time of January 15, 1966 Army coup d'état instead of Lieutenant Colonel that he was. Furthermore, Obi Nwakanma salted his ethno-supremacist history by making Lieutenant Arthur Chinyere Unegbe, Adjutant-General of the Army whereas that position was held by Lieutenant Colonel James Yakubu Pam. The position held by Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Chinyere Unegbe was that of Quartermaster General, Army. It might interest Obi Nwakanma and his fellow history falsifiers that at the time of January 1966 Army coup, there were 24 Lieutenant Colonels in the Nigerian Army of which 12 were senior to Lieutenant Colonel Unegbe following the order of enlistment and dates of promotions. For instance Yakubu Pam was enlisted as a Cadet in 1954 and was Commissioned in 1955 whereas Arthur Unegbe was enlisted as a cadet in 1955 and was Commissioned in 1956. As a Quartermaster General of the Army, he was said to have conspired with the then Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, to import Army Boots from Pakistan and re-pasted them with made in Nigeria at Omimi-Ejoh shoe factory owned by Okotie-Eboh before delivering them to the Army. Unegbe's luxurious life-style as a result of his business with the Minster of Finance made both of them the target of January 15, 1966 military coup plotters.
Obi Nwakanma wrote, "The lone Igbo casuality of that January coup, Colonel Arthur Chinyere Unegbe, the Nnewi-born Adjutant-General of the Army, is often forgotten in the grand narratives of that coup, because he (Unegbe) does not fit the narrative of 'an Igbo Coup,' ....." Captain Ben Gbulie was with Majors Nzeogwu and Onwuatuegwu in Kaduna to plan and execute the January !966 coup in Kaduna and he knew every detail about the plan of the coup nationally. He was not only detained for participating in the coup but luckily for him, like Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna and others, he was detained in the East where he fought on the side of Biafra. From what he wrote in his book, "NIGERIA'S FIVE MAJORS: COUP D'ÉTAT OF 15TH JANUARY 1966 - FIRST INSIDE ACCOUNT," no sane person can accuse him of peddling hate rumours against his Igbo people. The coup plotters did not plan one-sided killings but they were infiltrated by Igbo ethnic supremacists who refused to kill their own tribesmen and in Lagos, Major Donatus Okafor and Captain Ogbo Oji had taken every possible step against what might embody the killing of Ironsi. That was why when Majors Humphrey Chukwuka and Christian Anuforo were at the residence of Ironsi to kill him, Ironsi had linked up with John Obienu, who was supposed to come with armoured cars from Abeokuta to support the coup in Lagos, at the 2nd Batallion, Ikeja, under the Command of Lieutenant Colonel Hillary Njoku. It was from the 2nd Battalion Ikeja, Ironsi got the troops with which he hijacked and usurped the revolution of the Majors. The tribal patern of the killings caused by ethnic supremacist who refused to kill their own tribesmen as directed by the revolutionary Majors and the way Ironsi captured power was what turned the January 15, 1966 coup to an Igbo coup.
Thus, Obi Nwakanma lied when in his ethnic glorification essay ranked Arthur Chinyere Unegbe as a Colonel at the time of January 15, 1966 Army coup d'état instead of Lieutenant Colonel that he was. Furthermore, Obi Nwakanma salted his ethno-supremacist history by making Lieutenant Arthur Chinyere Unegbe, Adjutant-General of the Army whereas that position was held by Lieutenant Colonel James Yakubu Pam. The position held by Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Chinyere Unegbe was that of Quartermaster General, Army. It might interest Obi Nwakanma and his fellow history falsifiers that at the time of January 1966 Army coup, there were 24 Lieutenant Colonels in the Nigerian Army of which 12 were senior to Lieutenant Colonel Unegbe following the order of enlistment and dates of promotions. For instance Yakubu Pam was enlisted as a Cadet in 1954 and was Commissioned in 1955 whereas Arthur Unegbe was enlisted as a cadet in 1955 and was Commissioned in 1956. As a Quartermaster General of the Army, he was said to have conspired with the then Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, to import Army Boots from Pakistan and re-pasted them with made in Nigeria at Omimi-Ejoh shoe factory owned by Okotie-Eboh before delivering them to the Army. Unegbe's luxurious life-style as a result of his business with the Minster of Finance made both of them the target of January 15, 1966 military coup plotters.
Obi Nwakanma wrote, "The lone Igbo casuality of that January coup, Colonel Arthur Chinyere Unegbe, the Nnewi-born Adjutant-General of the Army, is often forgotten in the grand narratives of that coup, because he (Unegbe) does not fit the narrative of 'an Igbo Coup,' ....." Captain Ben Gbulie was with Majors Nzeogwu and Onwuatuegwu in Kaduna to plan and execute the January !966 coup in Kaduna and he knew every detail about the plan of the coup nationally. He was not only detained for participating in the coup but luckily for him, like Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna and others, he was detained in the East where he fought on the side of Biafra. From what he wrote in his book, "NIGERIA'S FIVE MAJORS: COUP D'ÉTAT OF 15TH JANUARY 1966 - FIRST INSIDE ACCOUNT," no sane person can accuse him of peddling hate rumours against his Igbo people. The coup plotters did not plan one-sided killings but they were infiltrated by Igbo ethnic supremacists who refused to kill their own tribesmen and in Lagos, Major Donatus Okafor and Captain Ogbo Oji had taken every possible step against what might embody the killing of Ironsi. That was why when Majors Humphrey Chukwuka and Christian Anuforo were at the residence of Ironsi to kill him, Ironsi had linked up with John Obienu, who was supposed to come with armoured cars from Abeokuta to support the coup in Lagos, at the 2nd Batallion, Ikeja, under the Command of Lieutenant Colonel Hillary Njoku. It was from the 2nd Battalion Ikeja, Ironsi got the troops with which he hijacked and usurped the revolution of the Majors. The tribal patern of the killings caused by ethnic supremacist who refused to kill their own tribesmen as directed by the revolutionary Majors and the way Ironsi captured power was what turned the January 15, 1966 coup to an Igbo coup.
The historical revisionism continued, "When soldiers under his command sacked the first republic, Ironsi RALLIED THE TROOPS AND ENDED THE COUP. But the acting President of the Federal Republic, Nwafor Orizu, after consultation with the Council of Ministers ceded emergency power to Ironsi to DEFEAT THE MUTINY, restore law and order, and then begin a transition back to a national civil government." Here the historical revisionist is telling his readers that Ironsi rallied the troops and ended the coup and in a strange acrobatic somersault got power ceded to him by the acting President, Nwafor Orizu so as to defeat the mutiny. Was there any mutiny after Ironsi had rallied the troops to end the coup? Obi is engaged in a first-class historical revision and distortion of which he is exposed by two separate broadcasts by Radio Kaduna and Radio Lagos on January 15,1966. At 12:30 noon on Saturday, 15 January 1966, broadcasting in the name of the Supreme Council of the Revolution of the Nigerian Armed Forces, Major Patrick Chukwuma Nzeogwu said, "The Constitution is suspended, and the regional government and elected assembly are hereby dissolved. The aim of the revolutionary Council is to establish a strong, united and prosperous nation free of corruption and internal strife. .......Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand ten per cent; those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as Ministers and VIPs of waste; the tribalists, the nepotists; .... those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian Political calender back by their words and deeds.... We promise that you will no more be ashamed to say that you are a Nigerian." Among the offences that he listed as punishable with death sentences were bribery or corruption and embezzlement.
At 14:30 pm, Ironsi caused Lagos Radio to announce thus, "In the early hours of this morning, 15th January 1966, a dissident section of the Nigerian Army kidnapped the Prime Minister and the minister of finance and took them to unknown destination. The General Officer Commanding (Ironsi) and the vast majority of the army remained completely loyal to the Federal government and are already taking appropriate measures to bring the mutiny under control." Here, Ironsi claimed to loyal to the Federal government which Nzeogwu wanted to overthrow because of corruption, tribalism and nepotism. If Ironsi was loyal to the Federal Government of which its head, the Prime Minister's, where about was unknown the constitutional step to take was to provide security so that the Parliament could meet to elect acting Prime Minister. The NNA alliance consisting of 198 members in the Parliament nominated Zana Bukar Dipcharima as the acting Prime minister, while UPGA with 109 members nominated Kingsley Osumba Mbadiwe. Faced with the parliamentary reality that Dipcharima would win, the acting President whose signature was necessary for Dipcharima to become Prime Minister, said that he was not going to assent to the outcome of voting in the Parliament. Instead he gave Mbadiwe and Dipcharima a paper, ceding power to Ironsi,to sign. Thereafter, at 23:50 hours on January 16, 1966, Nwafor Orizu, announced on radio Lagos that politicians had agreed to hand over power to the military, and thereby called on Ironsi to address the Nation. The Republican Constitution of 1963, did not empower the Council of Ministers or the President to cede power to anybody. Those who cry today for decentralisation of power from the centre and restructuring of Nigeria must remember that it was Major General Umunakwe Aguiyi Ironsi, who through Decree No. 34 of May 1966, abolished the regions and introduced unitary government on the recommendation of one-man commission of enquiry on unitary Government, headed by Francis Nwokedi. Unitary form of government had been advocated by Nnamdi Azikiwe and the NCNC since 1940s. Thus when Ironsi decreed a unitary form of government on May 24, 1966, Azikiwe's newspaper, West African Pilot, featured a large cartoon titled, The Dawn of a New Day, portraying Ironsi government as a large cock (the symbol of Azikwe's political party, NCNC) crowing ONE COUNTRY, ONE NATIONALITY.
Obi Nwakanma had told readers how Major-General Umunnakwe Aguiyi Ironsi was killed on July 29, 1966, but he failed to balance it up by telling readers about, at least, how one of the eight non-Igbo officers of the Nigerian Army was killed in January 1966. To balance up the story of killings in the Army in 1966, I hereby paraphrase what Captain Ben Gbulie wrote on how Brigadier Samuel Adesujo Ademulegun and his eight months pregnant wife were killed in their bedroom in the middle of the night of January 15, 1966. Major Tim Onwuatuegwu burst into their bedroom with his Sten gun cocked and turned on the light to find a stunned Brigadier Ademulegun lying in bed with his wife. He got out of the bedsheets in his pyjamas asking, "How for Christ's sake did you get in here, Tim?" At that moment Mrs Ademulegun, draped in a silk lingerie, climbed out of their bed and planted herself protectively in front of her husband. Major Onwuatuegwu squeezed the trigger and a bullet caught the Brigadier slap-bang on the chest. A second bullet also meant for the Brigadier hit his eight month pregnant wife, ripping open her abdomen. Then as the couple reeled and slumped down on the floor, Major Tim Onwuatuegwu turned away and left them. So, Obi Nwakanma, we are all human beings and if we love our neighbours as ourselves, this world will just be joyful for all us to dwell in.
S. Kadiri
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2016 04:28:50 -0700
From: opinions234@gmail.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - MUST READ: The Aguiyi-Ironsi Tragedy
MUST READ: Aguiyi-Ironsi
By Obi Nwakanma
Fifty years ago, on a Friday night at the Western Nigerian Governor's lodge in Ibadan, a group of soldiers led by Major Theophilus Danjuma committed a terrible act of treason. They accosted their Commander-in-chief, Major-General Johnson Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and Military Head of State of Nigeria only six months in the making, stripped him of his epaulettes and his swagger stick shaped in the form of the Crocodile, and proceeded to arrest him and his host, the Military Governor of the West, Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi.
 |
| *Major-General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi |
These soldiers, some of them far too drug-addled, did not stop there. They proceeded to administer brutal beatings and a careless torture of the General, and the Governor, Colonel Fajuyi, supervised by T.Y. Danjuma, and Ironsi's ADC, William Walbe. They did not stop there: bruised and much bloodied, these two men were later bound hand and feet, as legends would have it, and tied to a military truck driven by Jeremiah Useni, through the streets of Ibadan, and taken to that quiet spot on Iwo road, where they were murdered and buried in mean and shallow graves.
Fajuyi was by then, nearly dead in any case, far too brutalized to endure any further humiliation. But Ironsi stood tall to the very end – the image of a great elephant enduring the beatings that accompanied him finally to the dug-spot. Accounts of Ironsi's stolid, dignified and courageous handling of his brutal end come to us by a number of eye witnesses. He was travelling with then Colonel Hillary Njoku, Commander of the Lagos Garrison, in his entourage. They were upstairs in the Governor's lodge when they sensed the change in the air, by the rustle of the mainly Northern troop that had been arranged for his guard detail.
As soon as they noticed the mutiny afoot on the grounds of the Governor's lodge in Ibadan, they quickly knew that they had only one shot at getting out there alive. Ironsi ordered Hillary Njoku to find his way out of the grounds and make contacts with his headquarters in Lagos to send some reinforcement. Meanwhile, he got through to Yakubu Gowon on the phone which were still working, to send a Helicopter for him. The Helicopter did not come. Gowon, Ironsi's Chief of Staff, was busy issuing different orders to Danjuma in Ibadan, and apparently to Murtala Muhammed and Martin Adamu in Lagos, the arrowheads of that July mutiny. Neither did any reinforcement come. Just as he was attempting to sneak out of the Governor's lodge, the mutineers saw Colonel Hillary Njoku, and fired shots at him. He escaped by scaling the fence of the Government House, but was so seriously injured he had to find his way to the University College Hospital, where he was treated.
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