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By Dennis Agbo

The family of late Captain Ben Gbulie has opened a condolence register in their Trans-Ekulu, Enugu residence, for the demise of one of Nigeria’s pioneer coup plotters, Captain Ben Gbulie.

Gbulie was among the key players that plotted and executed the overthrow of Nigeria’s first republic administration under Tafawa Belewa on January 16 1966. He later wrote a book ‘The Five Majors’ on how the coup was plotted, executed but overran by the late General Ajuyi Ironsi.

Aged 82 years, Captain Gbulie died last Sunday evening (December 23 2022) in Enugu and was subsequently deposited in the mortuary. His daughter, Nnenna Gbulie, who confirmed the death to Vanguard said that burial rites will be made known in due course.

Meanwhile, sympathizers have continued to pour encomiums in the condolence register that has been opened in his Enugu residence.

Ben Gbulie, from Nimo in Njikoka local government area of Amanbra state, joined the Nigeria army in March 1960. He was one of the pioneer trainees at Nigeria Military Training College, NMTC, in Kaduna in 1960. By July 1960 he completed the course and by September 1960, just before independence, was sent to Mons Officers cadet school at Aldershot.

By January 1961 he entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and became an officer cadet at Sandhurst. He trained in Sandhurst for two years and got his officers commission. He then proceeded to the Royal School of Military Engineering Chatham in Kent England to do an Engineering officer course. After one year of the course, he was among the military officers that were asked to come back to Nigeria when the white colonialists in the military were leaving Nigeria in large numbers and Nigerians had to take over.

Gbulie joined the Nigerian army engineers and by 1964, he was sent to America to do an Engineering officer course in Virginia USA from 1964 to 1965 and was under Olusegun Obasanjo’s in the Army Engineering when he among others officers plotted the January 1966 coup.

At the collapse of the coup, he was put in prison but later released by Col. Emeka Ojukwu at the beginning of the Nigeria/Biafra war. He joined the Biafra army and rose to the rank of a colonel, survived a battered gun wound and ended up in prison again at the end of the war. He was later released and was among the Biafra soldiers that were granted a pardon by Obasanjo in 2006 and converted to retirement with pension.