Death is horrible.
Even more gruesome is cold blooded murder of defenceless people.
The cold blooded murders that characterised the January 15, 1966 coup and the counter coup and pogroms are most regrettable.
One does not wish there were more deaths.
I can appreciate correcting a historical fact, but, in the name of decency, is bringing up this point with this associated fanfare and combative taunts necessary at this time since your point does not alter the configuration of the historical reality being discussed?
Are we to now lapse into further counting of dead bodies tribe by tribe?
Lay them side by side and weigh the rank of one against the other to further evaluate the social scope of the massacres?
Has that not been sufficiently done and the point made?
Even if you are correct on the gentleman's rank, your point does not tell us anything new about the character of the January 15,1966 coup and does not modify the point I was making.
Since you have brought that effort at correction to our attention, I will leave it for members and myself to corroborate but I will not expound on why that point does not change the configuration of the coup because I am tired of the sheer morbidity of this debate, based as it is on resurrecting ancient sufferings and struggling to project them into the future, in arguments where positions do not shift.
I will not let myself enter into the game of counting dead bodies in terms of number and rank according to tribe.
I am adding nothing more to my response because I am convinced that much of the capacity for illumination on these issues at this time has been exhausted.
I want to return to emphasising humanistic bonds, not dwelling on events of more than 40 years ago on which we have jaw jawed endlessly while positions hardly shift.
If you have something substantial, however, that throws new light on the issues or is capable of doing so, I am prepared to respond to it.
thanks
toyin.
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 1:22 AM, G. Ugo Nwokeji <ugo@berkeley.edu> wrote:
Toyin Adepoju, you wrote:"[The coup plotters] killed one Igbo person- an officer who was not of high rank."I don't know if it is blind bias or pure ignorance or both that is driving your usual vitriol on the coup/civil war issue.The officer killed was Lt. Colonial Arthur Unegbe, regarded as one of the most senior and most high-profile officers of then Nigerian army of one major-general, two brigadiers and a handful of full colonels.At the time he was killed, Unegbe held a general staff position as Quartermaster-General, a position held these days by generals. Is it that you don't know the meaning of quartermaster-general?He was as senior as Ojukwu and Gowon (unless they too were junior officers!), was I think the first indigenous Commanding Officer of the 5th Infantry and swapped positions with Ojukwu when the latter was posted the 5th.You can keep all your biases, but you have no right to make up facts to support them. If it is ignorance, shouldn't you first educate yourself on the elementary facts first?On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 8:58 PM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com> wrote:They killed one Igbo person- an officer who was not of high rank.--
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