By Felix Durumbah
From a principal witness to the January,1966 coup which halted the First Republic in Nigeria, has come revealing details of the ethnic composition of the coup plotters who were led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu.
The witness, former military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, fondly called IBB, has given a deep account of who was actually who in the coup,one of the nation’s historical defining moments.
Gen. Babangida has said that it was not an Igbo coup.
As a young Lieutenant in the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron, Kaduna, IBB was a witness to history that has shaped a near-general negative perception of the Igbos of South-Eastern Nigeria –a belief, now debunked by a prominent witness –, who have had to bear the brunt for about 59 years now, of an inaccurate tag orchestrated and deepened by political elite of subnational groups that detest them, deploying the propaganda that the January 1966 putsch was an all-Igbo coup, in order to justify needless schemes designed to perpetually keep the ethnic group out of the national scheme of things.
In his trending book, ‘A Journey In Service’, launched with fanfare on Thursday, February 20, 2025 in Abuja, the nation’s capital, IBB directly dismissed claims that the 1966 military takeover was an “Igbo coup.”
According to him, the leader of the coup, Kaduna Nzeogwu, spoke Hausa fluently.
He said Nzeogwu was only Igbo in name, acting and living more of a Hausa man.
However, IBB condemned Nzeogwu for murdering national icon and Premier of Northern Nigeria at the time, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, and his wife, Hafsatu, who were loved by many.
He described the murder as heinous and callous.
“For instance, the head of the plotters, Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, was only Igbo in name. Born and raised in Kaduna, his immigrant parents were from Okpanam in today’s Delta State, which, in 1966, was in the old Mid-Western Region.
“Nzeogwu spoke fluent Hausa and was as ‘Hausa’ as any! He and his original team probably thought, even if naively, that they could turn things around for the better in the country.
“That said, it was heinously callous for Nzeogwu to have murdered Sir Ahmadu Bello and his wife, Hafsatu, because not only were they eminently adored by many but also because they were said not to have put up a fight.
“From that moment, the putsch was infiltrated by ‘outsiders’ to its supposed original intention, and it took on an unmistakably ethnic colouration, compounded by the fact that there were no related coup activities in the Eastern Region,” Gen. Babangida wrote.
IBB straightened the records, chronicling that some Igbo military officers were also victims of the coup just as several non-Igbo top brass participated in the bloody takeover.
He wrote further: “It should, however, be borne in mind that some senior officers of Igbo extraction were also victims of the January coup.
“For instance, my erstwhile Commander at the Reconnaissance Squadron in Kaduna, Lt-Col. Arthur Chinyelu Unegbe, was brutally gunned down by his own ‘brother’, Major Chris Anuforo, in the presence of his pregnant wife, at his 7 Point Road residence in Apapa, for merely being a threat to the revolution As a disciplined and strict officer who, as the Quartermaster-General of the Army, was also in charge of ammunition, weapons, equipment, vehicles, and other vital items for the Army. The coup plotters feared that he might not cooperate with them.
“It should also be remembered that some non-Igbo officers, like Major Adewale Ademoyega, Captain Ganiyu Adeleke, Lts Pola Oyewole and Olafimihan, took part in the failed coup.
“Another officer of Igbo extraction, Major John Obienu, crushed the coup.
“Those who argue that the original intention of the coup plotters was anything but ethnic refer to the fact that the initial purpose of the plotters was to release Chief Obafemi Awolowo from prison immediately after the coup and make him the executive provisional president of Nigeria.
“The fact that these Igbo officers would do this to a man not known to be a great ‘lover’ of the Igbos may have given the coup a different ethnic colouration. But, again, I may be wrong here since this view is speculative. I admit that my position here may be the naive insights of an unsuspecting young officer who viewed events from a distance.”
