BY SHOLA OSHUNKEYE, TAIWO FAROTIMI AND MIKE OJOOBANIKAN
It is exactly 52 years, today, July 29, 2018, that Major General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, the first Nigerian Military Head of State and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and Lt. Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, the first military governor of the old Western Region, were killed in the counter coup of July 29, 1966.
The coup was considered to be one of the bloodiest putsches in Africa.
Among the masterminds were: then Lt. Colonel Murtala Muhammed (Inspector of Signals, Lagos, who later became Head of State on July 29, 1975) and Major Theophilus Danjuma (Principal Staff Officer, Army Headquarters, Lagos, who became General Olusegun Obasanjo’s Chief of Army Staff in his first coming as Head of State). Others were: Major Shittu Alao (Nigerian Airforce Headquarters, Lagos), Captain Joseph Naven Garba (Federal Guards Lagos), Lieutenant Muhammadu Buhari (2 Brigade, Lagos, who became Head of State on December 31, 1983) and Lieutenant Ibrahim Babangida (1st Reconnaissance Squadron, Kaduna, who ruled Nigeria as Military President between 1985 and 1993).
Days before the 52nd anniversary of that bloody coup, General Ibrahim Babangida granted an exclusive interview to executives of The Crest-Shola Oshunkeye, Taiwo Farotimi and Mike Ojoobanikan, at his Hilltop Mansion in Minna.
For the first time after the event that changed the course of history in Nigeria, the former Military President, during the exclusive interview, explained why the coup went awry, and what really motivated it.
“The coup went out of hands,” he told The Crest team, last Tuesday. “There was no control. The officers allowed things to go out of hands, even other ranks were taking laws into their hands. It is unfortunate it happened.”
When The Crest asked General Babangida, popularly known as IBB, whether, looking back, he saw the coup as marking the turning point in Nigeria’s history, he answered in the affirmative. He said the military didn’t “get to understand the consequences of what was happening and that is probably why we had a longer period of military regime for 23 years.”
On what motivated the revenge putsch, Babangida declared: “The motivation was very simple. They succeeded in calling the January (15, 1966) coup a sectional coup d’état, where most of the people we revered, even in the military, were murdered; people like Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, Colonel Kur Muhammed and so on. To us, the young officers, these people were our role models. Politically, most of us from this part of the country (the North) revered the nation’s leaders–Sir Tafawa Balewa (the Prime Minister), Sir Ahmadu Bello (Premier of the Northern Region and the Sardauna of Sokoto), and people like Chief Ladoke Akintola (Premier of the Western Region). But they were all killed.”
The Crest recalls that the first coup of January 15, 1966, was spearheaded by five Majors, including Kaduna Nzeogwu, Alphonso Keshi (the then Brigade Commander), and Adewale Ademoyega, among others. Code named Exercise Damisa, the coup provoked angry reactions in the North, where many perceived it as lopsided-ness. That was the talking point wherever two or three people were gathered in whatever name. And the more people talked about it, the angrier Northern officers, and northerners in general, got. This, according to General Babangida, provided the perfect ambience for the plotting of the “revenge coup” of July 29, 1966.
“It was not unusual (to find people talking about it everywhere),” continued Babangida. “Sometimes, we would go to organizations and we would sit down, (and) people would talk about what went wrong. The atmosphere was conducive for a revenge coup.
“The atmosphere was there because people were talking about the one-sidedness of the coup. Radios and television stations were reporting it.
“And one of your papers, I can’t remember it now, (was it Ekwensi publishing it? I can’t remember). It started from Ghana and it’s not West African Pilot: They showed the Sarduana shot down and that infuriated quite a lot of people, even us, the young officers. So, when the plot came, it didn’t take time to sit down and plan it. That was a revenge coup.”
This is just another appetizer from the General Babangida interview. Watch out for the main course. Only in The Crest.