Northern military officers believed Chukwuemeka Ojukwu was complicit in the January 1966 coup d’etat and wanted to move against him, Yakubu Gowon, former military head of state, has revealed in his memoir.
Gowon, who ruled Nigeria from July 1966 to July 1975, will
present his memoir, ‘My Life of Duty and Allegiance’, in Abuja today.
In the January 1966 coup executed by officers mostly of Igbo
origin, key northern leaders and military officers were killed.
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the prime minister; Ahmadu Bello,
premier of the Northern region; Ladoke Akintola, premier of the Western region
who was their political ally; and Festus Okotie-Eboh, minister of finance, were
all killed.
Zakariya Maimalari, a brigadier and the most senior military
officer from the north, was also killed alongside many other northerners in the
military.
The coup failed and Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, a major general
and the army chief, became the head of state.
‘OJUKWU REJECTED MY FRIENDSHIP’
The reverberations from the failed coup led to the counter
coup of July 1966 in which Aguiyi-Ironsi was killed.
Gowon, then a lieutenant colonel and army chief, was made
the head of state after the countercoup led by northern officers.
Ojukwu, a colonel who was then the governor of the now
defunct Eastern region, refused to accept Gowon’s leadership, insisting that
the most senior army officer, Babafemi Ogundipe, a brigadier, should have been
appointed to the position.
Gowon was a lieutenant colonel — two ranks below Ogundipe —
when he assumed office as head of state.
Joseph Wey, a commodore, and Adeyinka Adebayo, a colonel,
were also senior to Gowon, and he was promoted to major-general and later
full-star general within one year.
“The case of Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe was, however, not
as straight forward because the course of the coup had made it obvious that he
could no longer function effectively in the command-and-control structure of
the Nigerian Army and the Armed Forces. With the concurrence of the UK
government, he was appointed Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the UK,” Gowon
wrote.
“Ojukwu refused my offer of friendship. By extension, he
wilfully refused to recognise my leadership. He felt that the ‘normal’ protocol
of seniority in service should have been upheld in selecting General Ironsi’s
successor under the new administration, regardless of the circumstances by
which I assumed power. Admiral Wey effectively persuaded former Supreme
Military Council members to take cognisance of the situation and support my
leadership, highlighting my ability to command respect from junior officers and
my willingness to lead during a difficult time.”
‘I WANTED TO WORK WITH OJUKWU’
Gowon did not believe Ojukwu was supporting Ogundipe or
defending the army hierarchy for altruistic reasons.
He wrote: “Left unsaid at the time was Ojukwu’s strong view
that I was junior to him in the hierarchy. He failed to appreciate that he had
been under serious threat because the young Northern officers believed he was
complicit in the January 15, 1966 coup. I pre-empted any attempt to move
against him, in part, because of my respect for all the Regional Governors and,
more importantly, because I saw him primarily as a colleague and officer with
whom I thought I had worked to restore normalcy in those early days of
uncertainty. I believed that, together, we could rebuild the army and allow the
country to continue its course in history.”
Despite his reservations, he went ahead and retained Ojukwu
as the governor of the East.
“My decision to retain Ojukwu in office was altogether
altruistic, though subsequent events made it seem a huge mistake. But with the
situation at hand, it did not matter whether he agreed or not with the fact
that change had occurred. Even if he did not agree with my new role, the
soldier in him never said he would leave the Army. I let him be,” Gowon wrote.
Ojukwu subsequently declared the secession of Biafra in May
1967 over the reprisal killing of Igbos in the north after the January 1966
putsch.
This led to a 30-month civil war which came to an end in
January 1970 with the surrender of Biafra.
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