Why Ndigbo can't apologise to anyone for the death of northern leaders in the 1966 coup

The current video clip making its rounds in the social media impressing on people that Ohaneze Ndigbo had a meeting in Enugu to discuss how they would apologize to the Northern Oligarchy for Majors Ifeajuna and Nzeogwu's killing of the Sarduana of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello and the first and only Nigerian Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, if it is true, obviously casts serious doubts in the minds of well-meaning Igbo, especially those of us in the Diaspora, concerning the level of commitment to Igbo aspirations of the leadership of contemporary Igbo nation. Why would the Igbo apologise to anyone for the things that happened that led to the Nigerian civil war, in which they lost more than three million citizens?

In one chapter of my book: “The Presidential Years from Dr. Jonathan to Gen. Buhari”, which anyone can order from Amazon, I took a graphic look at some of the reasons the Nigerian civil war happened. One very outstanding reason was that the political leaders at the time inherited politics of power from Britain. Politics of power tilted political activities towards tribal affiliations. Tribal leaning made it difficult to develop a national spirit. Instead, it encouraged tribal conflict and the machinations that followed in their wake. The realities that followed those revelations became even more poignant when it is considered that all the truth about what led to hostilities in Nigeria that ultimately led to civil war had never been told in its entirety. It is in fact doubtful if the narrative can ever be exhausted.

Like the history of every other people, writing about the Nigerian civil war and what led up to it, would be like watching a masquerade dance in a village square. The way you see the events will depend on your angle of elevation or your location, or both. Even as we speak, most Nigerians either do not have a critical knowledge of the overt and covert events that led up to that war or they decided, for whatever reason, to be economical with the facts. And yet, we know that there is nothing more dangerous or more damaging than for a person who should know, to keep groping in the dark about a situation or a condition the one is most passionate about. It is even more fatal when the young ones who are eager to know about their past, in order to determine their future, are fed with tissues of lies and concocted ideas that scarcely make sense to any reasoning person.

I was 20 years old when the Nigerian conflict erupted. I was in the second year of my Advanced Level studies. So, I was quite able to understand and grapple with what was going on at the time. I recollect that when the British ruled Nigeria as its colony, our people had absolutely nothing to worry about. There was constant electricity in the cities. There was safe and ready water in the taps in our towns and cities. Streams and rivers were there in the rural areas to take care of the domestic needs of people who needed to drink water or use it to cook, wash clothes and kitchen utensils or to bathe.

The roads in every nook and cranny of the country were maintained on daily basis. There was the Public Works Department (PWD) which undertook the repair of all the roads from rural agricultural producing to urban consuming areas. Students and non-employed youths within the catchment areas of local councils were deployed to scoop sand and stones to fill in the ditches on our roads on daily basis. And they were paid daily. So, there was daily employment for Nigerian youths who wanted to get some money to spend on a daily basis.

In short, the infrastructure Nigerians needed at the time was largely available for their use. Nigerians never complained because there was just no reason for it. They were a happy people.

By 1957, however, the wind of the quest for self rule among West African countries began to blow its way into Nigeria from Ghana. Nigerians watched Ghanaians secure and celebrate their independence that year. The sheer pride and happiness that engulfed Ghanaians motivated Nigerian politicians to double their efforts and put more pressure on the British government to grant the country self rule. Eventually, independence for Nigeria came in 1960. Three regions made up the country and they were the Eastern Region, the Northern Region and the Western Region. A fourth region, the Mid-West, was later added in 1963. As would be expected, the quest for regional power played a major role in subjugating the politicians' pursuit of a national spirit once regions came into competition for political power among themselves.

As much as they were able, Nigerian politicians managed the country. Political alliances were forged. But just two years into independence, trouble started. The crisis that was instigated by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Action Group Party and Chief Samuel Akintola who was also in the party led to the 1962 state of emergency in Western Region. It is well documented and has become part of the dark spots in the country’s history.

Many Nigerians knew that the disagreement that erupted during the annual congress of the Action Group party in Jos, Northern Nigeria on Friday, 2 February 1962 was not a sudden event. The misunderstanding was not, as it were, goaded by the spur-of-the-moment instincts of the state actors. It had been building up, gradually but steadily, soon after Nigeria was granted self rule by the British. It was the political battle that laid the foundation of all other battles that have continued to bedevil the entire Nigerian political horizon ever since.

When the British left, even the army felt liberated. The political alliances in the country and even the army formation at the time were normal Nigerian people who were naturally eager to manifest their new-found strengths and relevance in a fresh and entirely Nigerian democratic dispensation.

Within the political parties, especially in the western region, there were personal ambitions on the part of the politicians which led to scheming and manipulations. There was a desire to consummate those ambitions expeditiously, which led to impatience. There was the fact that not many of the politicians thought that building up a nation would take time and meticulous planning. There was insensitivity on the part of the politicians flouting their wealth and big new cars in public which was not a part of the British legacy, and which attracted public disgust and opprobrium. And so, political idealism came into conflict with social realism.

In both the army and the political circles, there was courage and there was cowardice that culminated in betrayals. There was intellectual leadership and there was financial leadership, both attracting their followers. There was hate and there was love, sometimes manifest and at other times covert. There was magnanimity and there was pettiness that fanned self aggrandizement on the part of the political class. And so, there was trust and there was mutual suspicion within the polity.

The deteriorating political situation in the west had far reaching effects. One of those effects was that it gave rise to a new dimension in the vision of the khaki boys in the Nigerian army. In that chaos, Igbo boys in the Nigerian army saw both a loophole and a possibility. And they began to nurse the ambition that the Igbo were definitely the ones who should step into the shoes of the British colonial masters, now that they had left.

Major Nzeogwu	Major Ifeajuna

Majors Kaduna Nzeogwu and Emmanuel Ifeajuna who masterminded the first coup that unseated the First Republic were both Igbo who grew up in the northern region. They knew the terrain and the relationships between the easterners and the northerners very well. For the records, it is important to note that these army boys were very decent about their ambition. They meant to maintain the standards the country inherited from the British – the civil service, the financial institutions, the agricultural enterprises, the roads, the schools, the markets and other infrastructural facilities and if possible, improve upon them for Nigerians, irrespective of where they came from, just as the British would have done.

Their ambition was buttressed by the fact that throughout the country at that time, the Igbo were the ones occupying most of the viable positions, just the same way as Asians are doing in contemporary United Kingdom. They were there in the banks as workers and managers. They were there in schools as students and teachers. They were there in the hospitals as doctors and nurses. They were there in the markets as business men and women. They were there in the civil service as staff and permanent secretaries. They were there in the transportation industry. They were there in the hospitality industry. In Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Kaduna, wherever you went, the Igbo practically dominated the national economy. And for that reason, the Igbo boys in the army convinced themselves that only the Igbo could conveniently step into the shoes of the British and rule Nigeria with equity and the fear of God. And they became committed to this objective.

However, the objective was a sort of internal Igbo arrangement. They couldn’t possibly disclose this to those non-Igbo colleagues of theirs with whom they planned to embark on the first coup-de-tat Nigeria was to experience. It was their internal arrangement which must remain secret among the Igbo military officers. But they still had to enlist the support of their non-Igbo military colleagues. And together they sacked the government of President Nnamdi Azikiwe and Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa – thereby redirecting the political and military focus of the country.

Sir Ahmadu Bello	Sir Tafawa Balewa

In the North, key political actors like the Sarduana of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello and the first Nigerian Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa were murdered in the coup. In the West, some key actors like Chief Samuel Akintola and the Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie Eboh, were also killed. But in the East, principal state actors like Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Akanu Ibiam and Dr Michael Okpara who the coup plotters had slated for death were not seen at home when the army boys struck. It was strongly suspected that the plan had been leaked to them. In the circumstance, not one Igbo leader was hurt anyway during that first coup. This situation could have corroborated the internal plan of the Igbo military officers to get the Igbo to step into the shoes of the white man who had now gone. They saw that the cap fitted and were eager to wear it. So, the highest ranking army officer, Major General Aguiyi Ironsi was installed Head of State after the coup. Ironsi was an Igbo, from Umuahia.

But the plan back-fired after those they executed the coup with now had an afterthought. For them, the fact that not even one Igbo leader was maimed or killed during the coup was quite an eye opener. It was then construed that the entire event was an Igbo coup and the northerners staged a counter-coup.

Subsequent coups that culminated in the unstable position Nigeria found itself from that time going forward manifested all the traits we already noted: courage and cowardice, betrayals, scheming and manipulations, mutual suspicion, mutual mistrust and so on. All these led to distrust, the killing of easterners in the north, the subsequent declaration of Biafra by the Igbo and the war that followed.

But on January 15, 1970, Biafra surrendered.Eastern leaders

Dr Michael Okpara	Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe	Dr Akanu Ibiam

Given this background, it is most absurd to believe that anyone would conceive the very disturbing idea that the Sarduana of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, who was a mere regional leader or Alhaji Tafawa Balewa who was the Prime Minister of Nigeria at the time cursed the Igbo that because “they” killed them, they would never become President of the country unless, somehow, the curse was reversed. This conception was championed by people like Pastor Tunde Bakare, unfortunately.

In the first place, Balewa was Nigeria’s Prime Minister, not the President. At the time he was murdered, the President of Nigeria was Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo. So there were practically no chances that the Prime Minister would look beyond the confines of his office to place a curse on an office that was much higher than his. It’s just commonsense.

Come to think of it: how could Balewa or Bello have cursed the Igbo instead of the army boys who murdered them? Were the army boys sent by the Igbo nation to kill the Prime Minister and the Sarduana of Sokoto Caliphate? Alhaji Tafawa Balewa was a fine and polished gentleman in his days. He knew and respected the Igbo for who they were, and for what they meant to Nigeria. And if they had to place a curse on anyone for any reason, it should be on the politicians from the Western Region who created the opportunity for the army to gatecrash into the democratic evolution of the country in the first place. It is foolhardy for any Igbo to accept that either Major Nzeogwu or Major Ifeajuna acted on behalf or the instruction of Ndigbo as a people. The two Nigerian majors were on their own and they acted on their own. No one has a right to drag Igbo people to an agreement they were not privy to.

Chief Asinugo is a London-based, British-Nigerian veteran journalist, author and publisher of ROLU Business Magazine (Website: https://rolutld.com)