By Douglas Anele

Why did Major Danjuma and his murderous band of soldiers humiliate, physically assault and kill Ironsi based on the unsubstantiated allegation that he was either complicit in theJanuary 15 coup or was unwilling to deal with Nzeogwu and his group because an overwhelming percentage of the prominent coup plotters were Igbo? What exactly was the role of Lieutenant-Colonel Gowon, Ironsi’s chief of army staff, in the revanchist coup?

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For the first question, our response is that Ironsi paid the ultimate price for the ill-advised adventurism of those who carried out the first bloody coup in January 15, 1966. Virtually all the malice, mistrust and anger of northern soldiers resulting from that tragic event were directed at Ironsi and Ndigbo generally.

Ironsi tried hard to calm frayed nerves and animosity generated by the coup, but he underestimated the intensity of simmering grudge and pent up hatred among a group of northern soldiers and politicians who felt that high-ranking military officers and political leaders from their region were eliminated by Igbo Majors so that one of their own, Ironsi, would emerge as supreme commander.

From July 13, 1966, Ironsi embarked on a nationwide tour to assure everyone that his administration intended to serve the interests of Nigerians as a whole, not the interests of the eastern region alone. While he was on tour of the defunct western region, Danjuma led a group of soldiers who teamed up with northern guards at the Ibadan state house where Ironsi and his host Fajuyi were staying to arrest and eventually murder the two men.

Concerning the second question, from my researches no definitive or conclusive answer is available. Frederick Forsyth, inThe Making of an African Legend: The Biafra Story, argued that although Gowon had denied involvement in the revenge coup, “the tenacity of the hunt for Eastern officers and the duration of it long after Colonel Gowon had taken over supreme control in the name of the mutineers…cast doubts on both the political aspect of the coup and Gowon’s innocence of events.” Isawa Elaigwu’s Gowon: The Biography of a Soldier-Statesman, suggests that Gowon was not part of the coup plot but was pressured by the mutineers to assume the office of supreme commander.

In Ironside, Chuks Iloegbunam agrees with Forsyth that there is strong circumstantial evidence linking Gowon to the bloodthirsty coup. To begin with, Illoegbunam wondered why Ironsi was unable after several attempts to reach Gowon, his chief of army staff, on telephone in the morning of the coup, whereas that same morning, according to Joe Garba, in his book, Revolution in Nigeria: Another View, Gowon was “on the telephone rousing all commanding officers, including me, to say that there was trouble in Abeokuta and that all troops were to be readied to counter it.”

Again, when Gowon eventually telephoned Ibadan, he did not get through to the government house proper but to the adjoining guest house, and one of the ringleaders of the coup, Danjuma, picked the call. Perhaps that is coincidental; but if Gowon really intended to speak with his supreme commander, he should have ordered Danjuma to link him up with Ironsi immediately. More tellingly, during the conversation between the two, Danjuma informed Gowon that he and the northern soldiers with him had surrounded the state house and were going to arrest Ironsi. Now, instead of Gowon to order the junior officer to make sure that Ironsi was safe and drop the idea of arresting him, he betrayed the head of state by endorsing the plan and merely pleaded that there should be no bloodshed.

Of course, there was bloodshed all right; however, Gowon never lifted a finger against those who killed Ironsi and Fajuyi. In his own account entitled Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture(1966-1976) that we cited earlier,

Max Siollun suggested that although there are variations in different accounts of what transpired after Danjuma and his men abducted Ironsi, Fajuyi, Lieutenants Andrew Nwankwo and Sani Bello (Ironsi’s air force and army ADCs respectively), they all agree that Danjuma was not present when Ironsi and Fajuyi were assassinated. But it is evident that he deceived Gowon when he told the latter that he and his soldiers merely wanted to arrest Ironsi. If Danjuma was genuinely loyal to Ironsi as the call of duty demanded, he could have done something to save him even if it meant risking his own life in the process.

At this juncture, let us clear up a mythology originated by the western region’s publication, Fajuyi The Great, which was further hyperbolised in Fajuyi: The Martyred Soldier, written by one Sanmi Ajiki.

According to the story, Fajuyi was taken captive and killed together with Ironsi because he refused to be separated from the latter, insisting that he would stay with Ironsi until the end. From my investigations, the conversation in which Fajuyi declared absolute loyalty to Ironsi never happened. In fact, there are reasons why Fajuyi would have been a target for elimination by the mutinous northern soldiers as much as Ironsi.

Number one, many of the soldiers who took part in the July 29 coup believed that Fajuyi assisted the majors who organised the botched January 15coup or, at the very least, was sympathetic to their cause. Second, in September 1965, Fajuyi commanded an all arms battle group course in Abeokuta, which northern soldiers suspected was a pretext for recruiting and training those who eventually carried out the January coup.

Thus, the murder of Fajuyi was a deliberate act triggered by grievances from the first coup, not because of purported refusal by Fajuyi to be separated from Ironsi. Debunking the myth of Fajuyi’s alleged heroic act of loyalty to Ironsi does not in any way belittle the act of immense courage he might have displayed when both men were savagely brutalised by Lieutenant Walbe and others before they were finally killed.

The events that followed the revenge coup remain, in my opinion, one of the darkest periods in Nigeria’s chequered history. Rather than hand over power to the most senior military officer after Ironsi’s death in line with established military protocol, the mutineers handed it to one of their own, Gowon, who was the highest ranked northern soldier at that time. Although, as I have argued earlier, there is circumstantial evidence connecting Gowon to the revanchist coup, Murtala Mohammed, who was its arrowhead, lost out in the power chess game that played out afterwards. Mohammed eventually got his pound of flesh nine years later when he engineered a coup that kicked out General Gowon in July 29, 1975.

The main negative repercussions of the revenge coup of July 1966 were the bloody overthrow of Ironsi and the systematic decimation of Ndigbo in the officer cadres of the Nigerian army leading to domination of the military by northerners, a situation that still obtains today. Since Nzeogwu and his group failed to capture power, it can be justifiably argued that the emergence of Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon as head of state after the coup ahead of his seniors (such as Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, Commodore J.E.A. Wey, and Colonel Robert Adebayo) introduced a dangerous precedent in the political ecology of Nigeria with respect to governance. Seniority began to play second fiddle in deciding who was to become head of state, and political power rested with any group which had first access to, and use of instruments of violence, not with the titular leader or cabinet ministers.

Having taken over power, albeit illegitimately, the young Gowon was saddled with the responsibility of unifying a deeply fractured and divided country. Part of the reasons why the situation degenerated afterwards was because Gowon himself was inexperienced in statecraft.

Moreover, northern hardliners who spearheaded the coup, especially Murtala Mohammed, were more interested in secession of the north than in building a united Nigerian nation. Still, Gowon tried his best to manage the situation, but pogroms by northerners against Ndigbo and the outbreak of the Biafran war conclusively proved that his efforts were unsuccessful.

With the benefit of historical hindsight, the naively optimistic coup of January 15, which was a grossly flawed but plausible excuse for the group of northern soldiers who unleashed savage attacks on their eastern colleagues, marked a turning point in the evolution of Nigeria as a geopolitical entity.

To be continued