Post-Colonial Nigeria: Did Igbos Draw First Blood?
Genesis: The Beginning Of North-South / Hausa-Igbo Beef in Nigeria
June 20th, 2012Lekan Abayomi, New York
I was born in 1975. I grew up believing that the Hausa/Fulani of Nigeria were a very intolerant ethnic group of people.
That the Hausas were so wicked they simply picked on Igbos in Nigeria living up North and slaughtered them in droves. And that the unprovoked massacre of Igbos in the North prompted the Biafra secession event, which again resulted in another Hausa Muslim leadership-led slaughter and genocide of Igbos in the South.
I believed for the first two decades of my life that the Hausa Muslims for no reason despised Igbos so much and that they ruled Nigeria almost entirely throughout its 50 years post independence, never giving an Igbo an opportunity to rule.
I associated Military rule and Military coups with Muslim Northerners.
I even associated the North of Nigeria with Islam and the South with Christianity. ‘Roughly divided’ between the two, as I always read in the news.
Little did I know that I was wrong in almost everything I grew up reading from the Nigeria predominantly Southern press, and European media.
They say that had Hitler won the war, history today would have been written in his favor. Perhaps the one great mistake the Hausa-Fulani-Kanuri and all Northerners ever made was not getting involved in western media, press and propaganda.
No Beef Till ’66
Igbos draw first blood in 1966
Kaduna Nzeogwu
In January 1966 an Igbo Major in the Nigerian army, Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, who was born in Kaduna and had such family affinity to Kaduna, that he was popularly called, ‘Kaduna Nzeogwu’, a Catholic by faith decided to embark on a mission that will change Nigeria’s history forever.
In the early hours of January 15th, Kaduna Nzeogwu disgruntled over a list of items with the ruling political class and with disdain for certain regionalists, led an army of fellow Igbo Majors and a Yoruba, Ademoyega Adewale, in a military coup against the political leadership of Nigeria.
He and his team of Igbo comrades murdered Nigeria’s top brass Hausas in that Coup. Prime minister, Tafawa Balewa, a federal minister and two top regional premiers were among those murdered.
Kaduna Nzeogwu’s Igbo squad killed he premier of the Northern and Western regions but of course left the Igbo Eastern premiere alive.
He killed the Finance minister, who was Nigeria’s #3 man, but left the number #2 man.
The coup started failing when the ethnic nature of it was noticed. Neogwu confronted Captain Isong, the second-in-command at the 1 Recce Squadron, on account of a rumor that Isong was allegedly spreading in the barracks about the ethnic coloration of the unfolding events.
Azikiwe was left alive.
In essence Kaduna Nzeogwu’s coup was not a coup against the establishment only, but a targeted ethnic war, waged by himself and his fellow Igbo patriots against the Hausa-Fulani, who he grew up and served with.
Nzeogwu assassinated very many top Northern brass. Included and very significant was the Sardauna of Sokoto who was shot dead with his wives too.
In the video below, late Kaduna Nzeogwu describes how he plotted the coup and killed the Sardauna.
Wikipedia- The killing of Brigadier Ademulegun’s pregnant wife by led to the suspicion among Yoruba and Hausa that the coupist were common criminals rather than Nationalistic patriots. Brigadier Ademulegun was a Yoruba officer. The premier of the Northern region was killed, The premier of the West was killed, but the premier of the Eastern region where most of the plotters were from was forgotten. On the Federal level the Prime Minister was killed, the Finance Minister the number 3 man was killed but the number 2 man who “coincidentally” happened to be from the same region as the plotters “escaped the killing”. The kid glove with which the new leader Ironsi handled the coupist led to the dissatisfaction of northern officers with Ironsi’s reluctance to courts-martial the coup plotters led to the counter-coup of July 29, 1966 which was led mainly by a group of junior Hausa-Fulani officers.The coup plot failed and just before midnight on January 16, following a complex series of events, the GOC of the Army, General Aguiyi Ironsi, also of Igbo origin, preceded by a short statement by acting President Nwafor Orizu, announced that he was taking over the country following an “invitation” from the Council of Ministers. ref
Brigadier Ademulegun was shot dead in his bed, head of the NMTC Colonel Ralph Shodeinde was killed. Ifeajun in high treachery murdered his boss, Brigadier Maimalari.
The Igbo victim was, Lt-Col Arthur Unegbe. Also killed was the highly unsung Itsekiri Finance Minister Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh.
It is important to pint out at this juncture, that Nigeria had been very peaceful. A progressive, ethno-harmonious place, with the only riots of note being some election turmoil in the western Yoruba region of the country and Tiv riots in the Middle-Belt.
Up until this time there was no major Hausa-Igbo beef.
There were episodes pre-independence, during colonial rule, triggered by the machinations of colonialism, these included the minor 1945 Amalgamation riots and the 1953 Igbo Military and political power predominance riots. The colonialist gave Igbos top positions in the Military. Indeed, over all it must be noted that the prime source of Nigeria’s ethnic disarray is colonial. ‘Nigeria, made in the UK’, they say.
Sardauna Was Premiere Of North Only: It’s Stupid To Expect Him To Talk Of One-Nigeria During The Three Region Federalism That Existed At The TimeSardauna
Important to mention that Sardauna is often mispresented. Sardauna was not a leader of Nigeria but was only leader over the northern protectorate. So his statements were about his northern region, just as at the time Ojukwu made even more seditious statements about the eastern region he presided over. Sardauna’s utterances must be listened to in context of the then true Federation with three autonomous parts. Read more on this here.
Next Blunder- Aguiyi-Ironsi Dissolves Regions
You see, growing up, I have blamed the Hausas for so much. May the Almighty forgive me.Today the South of Nigeria are heard loudly clamoring for a return to autonomic regions. You are want to believe that it was some Northern Muslim that dissolved this.
No.
The Igbo top commander and now first military president of Nigeria, General Aguiyi Ironsi, in a very careless and thoughtless move, aimed at suppressing the Nzeogwu ethnic coup sentiment and distrust, in his brief six months of reign, dissolved the regions.
So we ask the question- why did Aguiyi Ironsi dissolve the regions and create a Unitary republic?
This according to World News.com was ‘in a bid to do away with the divisive tendencies of Regionalism.’
At this stage, we can conclude the following-
1. An Igbo man, Kaduna Nzeogwu embarked on the first ethnic identifying campaign for power
2. Same Igbo man, led the first provocative and very painful attack and assassination of top brass Hausa men.
3. An Igbo man disrupted our political beginnings and introduced us to the military rule aberration.
4. Another Igbo man, General Aguiyi Ironsi clearly recognized the ethnic danger provoked by the former.
5. The second Igbo man destroyed Nigeria’s regional rule and initiated the Unitary republic.
Evidently, the industrious Igbo did not like Regionalism, this is why they (Nzeogwu and Ironsi) killed the Northern and Western regional Premiers and abrogated the three regions, instituting a one-Nigeria to enable free Igbo entrenchment and trade outside the Eastern region.
Chukwuma
Kaduna Nzeogwu, being a Southerner who grew up in the north and was
perhaps more Hausa than Igbo did not respect the tenets of regionalism
and perhaps had other desires and agenda for Nigeria. He struck with the
first coup and killed Sardauna. Aguiyi Ironsi from the South East who
was perhaps not a very bright man, took over and without proper thought,
scrapped regionalism and this is how we got here today. It was two
South Eastern men in succession that did away with the regionalism and
true federalism system and replaced it with a One Nigeria. Only in the
context of a One Nigeria without regionalism as obtains today can
Sardauna’s comments be taken as tribalistic. Think about it, while
Sardauna was talking about mere employment, Ojukwu was asking for an
entire separate nation. This was the terrain that obtained at the time.
Up to me, I reject their regionalism methods that cut out, I am for no
borders and equal opportunities not just for other regions but other
African nations, “everybody come inside,” however we must understand the
roles and particular challenges of these men in those peculiar times of
a new regional Nigeria.
No comments