It was not intended to be the main issue when Nigeria’s  one time High Commissioner to London, Chief Matthew Mbu remarked, in a recent newspaper interview, that the country’s first and only Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, died, not of gun shots in the January 15th 1966 coup.

The Prime Minister, he said, died of an asthmatic attack, information he said was given him by the late poet, Christopher Okigbo who himself purportedly picked the information from the late Emmanuel Ifeajuna, one of the brains behind the coup.

Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, son of the Deputy Premier of the Western Region at the time of the coup, the late Chief Remi Fani-Kayode quickly debunked the claim.

Veteran journalist, Chief Segun Osoba, the only newspaper reporter who saw the corpse where it was dumped by the mutineers told Sunday Vanguard that Femi Fani-Kayode’s response smacked of emotions and that the PM’s body he saw was “fresh”.

What has followed in the last one week is a torrent of reactions from several other sources who should know and are now disputing Mbu and Osoba’s claims. And with documents.

Their number is quite long: former Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Muhammad Gambo, who was serving as a young intelligence police officer at the time; Balewa’s son, Muktar; a retired Police Commissioner, Alhaji Ahmed Babankowa, who actually discovered the PM’s corpse;

Dr. Nowamagbe Omoigui, who has done some forensic investigation into the death; and Mrs. Olabisi Kasunmu whose husband, Saka, was the Daily Times photographer, who was at the site where the corpse was found.
We also have a transcription of the statement of the late PM’s ADC to the Police Investigation Panel on the coup and the police report.

It is a collector’s item – Editor.