In his autobiography recently published and publicly launched, *A journey in Service*, former military president Ibrahim Babangida came up with the hypothesis that the January 15, 1966 military coup was not, after all, an Igbo coup. Since the public presentation of the book, not unexpectedly, several views have been expressed by many people on this topic. Some agreed with his conclusion, while some did not agree. But hardly any on both sides interrogated his arguments incisively before taking their positions.
For any academic, accepting the IBB hypothesis on the January 1966 coup as *Not an Igbo Coup* without interrogation will be a serious error of judgment. Already, several number of authors before him had written and tagged the coup as an Igbo coup. We must therefore interrogate IBB’s claim to find out whether it is true or not, irrespective that it’s IBB who said it. And in doing so, we must look at the pillar upon which the author hung his entire argument regarding the intention of the coup plotters, knowing that he was not part of it and hardly an eye witness to the events. In doing so, we will see that his claim is speculative, explaining why he kept on using the word probably! In other words, it is based on conjecture and not on incontrovertible evidence.
For example , in trying to justify his claim as to the “original intention” of the coup plotters, IBB said in the pages of his book: “… as a young officer who saw all of this from a distance, probably, ethnic sentiments did not drive the original objective of the coup plotters”. He then added pointedly on the leader of the coup, Major Nzegwu and his combrate in arms: “He and his original team (which the book didn’t say who) *probably thought*, even if naively, ….”. Nothing can be more vague! And the book also didn’t say who were “the outsiders” that came in to take over the plot. There was equally no where, either in the original documents or public statements of the plotters either at the planning or operating levels of the coup that mention was made of bringing Chief Awolowo out from prison and hand over power to him. And IBB himself didn’t make any reference on it; so this itself is speculative!
His argument on the killing of Lt. Col. Unegbe melts away if the real circumstance of the situation, as narrated by one of the original officers of the plot, is taken into account.
One of the most detailed accounts of the killing of Lt. Col. Arthur Unegbe, the Quartermaster General of the Nigerian Army during the January 15, 1966 coup, can be found in “Why We Struck” by Major Adewale Ademoyega, one of the key coup plotters whom IBB named.
Details from “Why We Struck” tell that unlike other top military officers targeted in the coup, Unegbe was not originally a primary target of the coup because the plotters “focused only on officers from the North and West”. However, when the coup forces stormed his residence and demanded that he hand over the keys to the army armory, he refused. The coup plotters, led by Major Donatus Okafor and Captain Emmanuel Nwobosi, could not allow him to remain alive because of the sensitive nature of his role as Quartermaster General. To prevent him from alerting loyalist forces or resisting their plans, they shot him dead in his home.
There are several other books saying the same thing, but among these, “Why We Struck” remains the most authoritative firsthand account by one of the coup leaders, detailing the events leading to Unegbe’s death.
And it is primarily on account of this episode and the participation of three Yoruba officers that he listed, the most senior of whom wrote the above account, IBB conjectured that ethnicity did not drive the objective of the original coup plotters. With all due respect, these two points – i.e. the killing of Lt. Col. Unegbe and the participation of three Yoruba officers – cannot absolve the January 15 putsch from being tagged as an Igbo coup. If we look at what someone rightly called the operational logistics of the entire exercise, we can’t help but fault the argument of IBB on this point. The Igbos were not so “innocent” and IBB’s account isn’t that “stack truth” if we remember that IBB himself was in Kaduna and Col. Unegbe, for example, was killed in Lagos. So there was no “vivid and clear eye account” of events on that day. In fact, he was sleeping and didn’t know what was happening until after the event when he was wakened up by a colleague. So as someone who was not part of the plot he couldn’t have known the real motivations and intentions of the “original plotters”.
On the other hand, those who say it’s an Igbo coup have some incontrovertible, and so far undisputed, public facts to support their claim. And these are as follows:
Major Ifeajuna led the Lagos faction that went to Tafawa Balewa’s residence…. He is Igbo;
Major Nzeogwu led the Northern faction in Kaduna…. He is Igbo;
Cpt. Nwobosi led the faction that went to Ibadan and killed Aare Akintola…. He is Igbo;
Cpt. Timothy Oneatuegwu led the faction that went to Ademulegun’s house and killed him and his pregnant wife. … He is Igbo;
Lieutenant Humphrey Chukwuka led the faction that went to Ralph Sodeinde’s house in Kaduna…. He is Igbo;
Cpt. Ezedigbo led the faction that went to Okotie- Eboh’s house…. He is Igbo;
Major Chris Anuforo led the faction that went to Col. Kur Mohammed’s house…. He is Igbo;
Major Donatus Okafor led the faction that went to Maimalari’s house. … He is Igbo;
Major Donatus Okafor also went to Lt. Colonel Abogo Largema, the Commander of the 4th Battalion in Ibadan, at the Ikoyi Hotel in Lagos and killed him. … He is Igbo;
Cpt. Emmanuel Nwobosi visited Lt. Colonel James Pam, the Adjutant General, in his house and killed him. … He is Igbo;
Lt Oguchi was sent to the East to kill Okpara…. He spared his life…. He is Igbo;
The federal government was overthrown and Maj. Gen. Aguiyi Ironsi became Head of State. … He is Igbo; and
Everyone who died in the January 1966 coup was killed by an Igbo. Nobody from another tribe pulled a trigger that killed anyone in the coup.
Therefore, to postulate that the January 1966 coup was not an Igbo agenda will not only be an error of judgment, but also an assault on the memory of the innocent victims that were killed.
Yes, Nzeogwu spoke Hausa fluently and lived in the North; but he was still Igbo! Ojukwu was born in the North and spoke Hausa fluently. Up until he was made Governor of Eastern region, he never lived in the East. He schooled in Lagos and England before joining the military. Yet he was the warlord that led the Igbos into the Biafran war. Zik was also born in the North and spoke Hausa fluently. He spoke Yoruba fluently as well. His early political career was in Yorubaland. Yet he established *The Igbo Federal Union*, an Igbo supremacist group, which declared that the Igbo people were created by God as a special race to lead the African Continent.
Many believed, and still believe, that the coup was the planned mission of the Igbo in furtherance of that Zikist vision!
