ColumnsNigeriaOpinionJuly 29, the Day of History, Links Two Martyrs – Aguiyi-Ironsi and Murtala Mohammed

You may ask…these two were martyrs? —Hector-Roosevelt Ukegbu

Supreme Commander Major General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, Nigeria’s first military ruler, knew well in time a coup was being plotted against him. The plot was revealed to him by at least two senior officers: Lt. Col. Philip Effiong, previously at the Ordnance Depot in Yaba before the January 1966 coup, then posted to Headquarters Staff, who had been alerted by a Yoruba officer based in Lokoja. The other was Major Alexander Madiebo, who had just returned to Lagos from the North. Gen. Aguiyi-Ironsi, the “detribalized” Nigerian, had instituted a personal policy that he would not hold an audience with any senior Igbo officer without a non-Igbo officer present. One of his favorite sitters was the Governor of Lagos, then Major Mobolaji Johnson—who was present when Madiebo revealed the coup plot and made the accusation that among the conspirators was Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon whom Aguiyi-Ironsi had appointed Chief of Army Staff ahead of many senior Southern officers, including Col. Adeyinka Adebayo, and senior Lt. Colonels Hilary Njoku and Conrad Nwawo, among several others. Even Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu was senior to him. Madiebo wrote that he was shocked when on the spot Aguiyi-Ironsi called Gowon into the office to allow Gowon to respond to the accusation. How so bone-headed you would think!

After Effiong reported the coup plot to Aguiyi-Ironsi, Aguiyi-Ironsi at the next meeting of the Supreme Military Council surprisingly called him up to repeat the allegation to the members there. Effiong said he became a marked man for the Northern coup plotters from that day on, and they narrowly missed killing him in Kaduna where Aguiyi-Ironsi soon posted him to take over command of the old First Brigade, earlier led by the assassinated Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun.

Aguiyi-Ironsi applied the same counter-productive technique, it turned out, when my father, a civilian, went to visit him at that time.

Aguiyi-Ironsi applied the same counter-productive technique, it turned out, when my father, a civilian, went to visit him at that time. My father, Dr. Basil Nnnnna Ukegbu, then aged 35, was at the time back continuing his research at the post-graduate school of the University of Ibadan for his University of London PhD. Until the January 1966 coup d’etat took place and in the aftermath forced the closure of the Federal Parliament in the capital, Lagos, my father had been an MP and Chief Whip of the NCNC in the Federal House. My father had written a 14-page paper and asked for an audience with the new military head of state. Aguiyi-Ironsi granted him an audience at State House, Marina, just a few weeks to the coup that ousted and killed him on July 29, 1966. Aguiyi-Ironsi had in his company his Principal Secretary, the Northern civil servant Hamzat Ahmadu, who had held the same position with President Nnamdi Azikiwe, and later also with General Yakubu Gowon, before going on to become an ambassador. Nnanna Ukegbu, former MP, who spoke fluent Hausa like the other two men in the office, had come to advise General Aguiyi-Ironsi on how to deal with tribal problems and the politicians. My father said he was discomfited when he discovered that the conversation was being taped; an unnoticed tape-recorder made a clicking sound when it ran out of tape.

Separately, and very significantly, Col. Hilary Njoku, previously commander of the 2nd Battalion based at the Ikeja Cantonment, now acting as the commander of the Apapa-based Second Brigade, replacing the assassinated Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, told Aguiyi-Ironsi to permit him to quickly recruit and train a new battalion to be made up primarily of Igbos, who could protect him. Aguiyi-Ironsi refused. Col. Njoku related this to my father in 1967 when he paid a visit to our house upon his return from Ireland after undergoing further treatment for the bullet wounds he sustained scaling the wall to escape Major Theophilus Danjuma’s men at the Government House, Agodi, Ibadan, shortly before Danjuma barged into the building to “arrest” Aguiyi-Ironsi and Lt. Col. Adekunle Fajuiyi. The date: July 29, 1966.

Fearlessly, ignoring all information about a pending coup, refusing the setting up of a fighting battalion of his fellow Igbo tribesmen—in a situation where virtually all Nigerian Army riflemen were Northerners—Aguiyi-Ironsi traveled to Kaduna, the ground zero of the plotters, and to Ibadan where he met his predictable end. Clearly, Aguiyi-Ironsi sacrificed himself for Nigerian unity. How else can you explain the paradox that a man who escaped and then led the crushing of the January 1966 coup could not quash a coup for which he had received numerous forewarnings?

The recurrence of this day in history is not a coincidence. I noticed long ago that Nigerian military officers have a fetish about the dates on which they stage coups.

Gen. Murtala Ramat Mohammed came to power following the overthrow of Gowon. The day: July 29, 1975. The same day nine years earlier when he played a key role in the overthrow of Aguiyi-Ironsi. The recurrence of this day in history is not a coincidence. I noticed long ago that Nigerian military officers have a fetish about the dates on which they stage coups. They choose the dates of previous coups which were successful. For example July 29, 1967 and July 29, 1975, with Murtala Mohammed seriously involved with both. On the first date, he was the one dishing out the pain. On the later date, he was the one receiving the pain. Also, the Babangida/Buhari/Bako/Gusau coup against President Shehu Shagari of December 31, 1983, which happened to be the anniversary of  Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings return-to-power coup in Ghana of December 31,1981. The leader of the abortive February 1976 coup that killed Murtala Mohammed, Lt. Col. B. S. Dimka, went as far as including in his broadcast on Radio Nigeria parts of the speech earlier read by Major Mathieu Kérékou announcing his own coup to the people of (Dahomey) Benin Republic on October 26, 1972.

Once in office, Murtala Mohmmed decided to be a populist, a man of the people. He became “detribalized.” As head of state, Murtala tried to be fair to all Nigerians regardless of their tribe. He clearly did not do anything to favour the North over the Southeast or Southwest. His emergence as head of state, even though he had not originated the coup or even took part in its execution, however, meant that the locus of power in the Army and the country had shifted away from the Middle Belt tribes, including Gowon’s Angas people and the people who would later be referred to as the “Langtang Mafia.” Simply put, many among the Plateau soldiers who provided the backbone of the Northern-dominated Army did not like the ousting of Gowon.

Worse, Murtala began to create more enemies for himself when he began to demobilize the Nigerian Army. He wanted to draw down the war-time strength of the Army to more economically affordable numbers, as the war was over. He also decided to hold conversion courses for Army officers who had received “field commissions” during the war. The courses were meant to give the affected officers a short form of the regular officer training similar to the six-month courses held at Eaton Hall and at Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot, England, that a number of Nigerian soldiers had received in the 1950s and 1960s. The group of majors (mostly of Plateau origin) led by Major Clement Dabang who spearheaded the anti-Mohammed coup of February 13, 1976  condemned the conversion course as being too tough and wanted Murtala out so as to end the program. Their co-conspirators Lt. Col. Buka Suka Dimka and the colonels only wanted to restore Plateau dominance in the Army and country.

Like Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi before him, Murtala Mohammed soon began to take his nationalism cum detribalization too far. He continued to live in the Ikoyi residence allocated to him as Minister of Communications in Gowon’s Cabinet. He chose not to live in the State House where Gowon had lived and ruled from – the former residence of Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’s Minister of Defence, Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu, situated at the end of Ribadu Road,  S.W. Ikoyi, conveniently beside Dodan Barracks. After Aguiyi-Ironsi died, easily and brutally, Gowon took extreme precautions for his safety. He rejected Aguiyi-Ironsi’s indefensible Marina residence. He ventured out of his Dodan Barracks residence only when accompanied by a heavily armed company-size force equipped with artillery, machine guns, armoured cars. His official plane sat on the tarmac at the Ikeja Airport guarded day and night by a squadron of soldiers armed with machine-guns. He filled up Dodan Barracks with selected native Plateau-area troops. On the other hand, the man that took over, Murtala, went about Lagos seemingly without a care to his safety. Some days, with no more than one bodyguard, he would show up unannounced at government offices to catch late-coming civil servants and sack them on the spot.

On the other hand, the man that took over, Murtala, went about Lagos seemingly without a care to his safety.

Then similar to the earlier case of Col. Njoku and Gen. Aguiyi-Ironsi, Major Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, the deputy, suggested to  Major Gen. Murtala Mohammed that they should disperse all the Plateau soldiers from Dodan Barracks and repopulate the Barracks with other soldiers, to whom they could entrust their safety. Murtala Mohammed, like Aguiyi-Ironsi before him, refused, saying such a move would be considered tribalistic. He may have felt some sense of reassurance, though, with the fact that some key Middle Belt officers such as Col. Joseph Garba, the erstwhile commander of the Brigade of Guards under Gowon, had supported their coup. Well, on the morning of Friday, February 13, 1976, Lt. Col. Dimka appeared at Radio Nigeria Broadcasting House on Ikoyi Road to make his coup speech. Armed Plateau soldiers from Dodan Barracks poured out to support him. As the vehicle ferrying the General, the driver and the bodyguard, and his aide Lt. Akintunde Akinsehinwa, stopped at an intersection on Ikoyi Road en route to the regular Friday morning meeting at Dodan Barracks, Lt. William Seri emptied the magazine of a rifle into the General at point blank range. Murtala, like Aguiyi-Ironsi before him, was easily and brutally murdered.

I might add that a few days after the coup, I was on Lagos Island and witnessed truck after truck of the Nigerian Army carrying Plateau soldiers, their families, and belongings, away from Dodan Barracks and out of Lagos.

If Gen. Mohammed had taken the slightest bit of precautions and given a back seat to his being detribalized and nationalistic like Aguiyi-Ironsi, the coup against him, just like the coup against Aguiyi-Ironsi, would not have succeeded.

♦ Hector-Roosevelt Udunna Ukegbu, is a graduate of the University of Lagos, where he was a student leader; he also graduated from the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York; St. Gregory’s College, Ikoyi, Lagos, and the Owerri Grammar School, Imerienwe.

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