I was not a child when the first military putsch in January 1966 took place. I was in fact a gentleman in my final year of undergraduate university education at the age of 23 plus and was politically savvy and well exposed domestically and internationally. I had spent the second year of my undergraduate education in the University of London in an exchange programme with that university particularly the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the Queen Mary’s College (QMC). I was on the ring side in the conflict that wracked the Action Group (AG), the governing party in the Western Nigeria in 1961, because my oldest brother Chief Joseph Oduola Osuntokun was a high ranking cabinet minister in government since 1955 and at the age of 34 and was minister of finance when I was in the primary school. The crisis that afflicted the Action Group (AG), the internationally acclaimed best organised political party in Nigeria at that time was a tragedy for the Western Region and Nigeria as a whole. This was because the Western Region was a pace setter in many areas such as public finance, education, sports development, public administration, industrialisation, agriculture, urban development and housing. It was able to do this because it inherited huge amount of funds from the marketing board set up to manage the ups and downs in the world market prices of cocoa which at that time was the main export of Nigeria as petroleum is now the money earner for Nigeria.
The crisis in the Action Group arose as a result of personality clash among the leaders which was sometimes camouflaged as ideological conflict in the direction of the country especially when the crisis broke open. But certainly, the Action Group was not an ideological party initially. It was a mass rally essentially to protect western Nigeria’s interests; some might say to protect largely Yoruba interest.
The crisis arose as a result of frustration in the leadership after its failure to emerge as the governing party at the centre of the federation in 1959 on the eve of independence after the western Nigerian premier, Chief Obafemi Awolowo had moved to the centre while the leader of the opposition, Chief S.L. Akintola had exchanged positions with his leader by becoming premier of western Nigeria. It was the inability to manage this exchange of positions that brought conflict into the party which the NPC/NCNC federal government exploited to destroy the party. This intervention set in motion, a chain of events which the politicians directly involved could not have foreseen. It led to widespread rigging of the elections in Western Nigeria in 1965 and disequilibrium in the federation following the ethnic baiting and displacement of the NCNC and invariably the Igbo core members of the party from their predominant positions in the federal government. The genie of ethnic politics was released and this upset the radical elements in the Nigerian army particularly its officer corps which was largely dominated by Ibos. The ordinary man on the street was completely fed up with the chaos in the country. There was almost total breakdown of law and order in the Western Region including even the federal capital of Lagos marked by widespread arson in the urban areas and burning and other incendiary attacks on rival politicians. There was also ongoing rebellion among the Tivs of the Benue valley protesting against political oppression in the hands of the NPC northern Nigerian government. Soldiers and armed mobile policemen were deployed in the Western Region and the Middle Belt of Nigeria. Things were so bad that cabinet ministers were trained to use guns for self-protection. It was obvious that the politicians had boxed themselves into a corner and they apparently did not know how to extricate themselves from their situation. The deployment of soldiers in the disaffected areas exposed the soft underbelly of the politicians and exposed their dependency on the soldiers for the stability of the country and their very positions on the soldiers.
When the coup d’état of January 15, 1966 took place, the telephone communications were severed and the politicians were isolated. In the Western Region, even cabinet ministers did not know what had happened and thought the premier was killed by hired thugs of the opposition party. They were in fact planning to swear in Oba C.D. Akran, the minister of finance as the new premier in the absence of Chief Remi Fani Kayode who they believed had been kidnapped. It was not until the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) broadcast the news that the widespread nature of the coup d’état became quite clear to all and sundry. The initial reaction in the Western Region and Lagos was excited welcome of the coup leaders who were celebrated as liberators from what was perceived as corrupt leaders. Many students and their teachers accepted the broadcast of Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu that the leaders removed were completely irredeemable thieves who were selling the economic future of the country and who also deserved to die. The shock of the violence shook the country to its very foundation and there was no time to settle down and clinically evaluate the situation. Even the much blamed Major General Thomas Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and his Unification Decree No 34 was widely celebrated at least by the academia and the southern media as a forward move to build a united country.
What was clear even at that time was the sincerity of Major Nzeogwu. This was an idealistic young man who did not quite know the history of his country. Nigeria was neither Turkey nor Egypt and Nzeogwu was not Mustapha Kemal or Gamal Abdel Nasser and in the case of Nigeria, a determined military leader could not alter its destiny.
By the time in July 1966 when the second coup d’état took place, it was clearly and obviously a retaliation for the lopsided killings of northern and western army officers and the heads of government in the north, west and the federal. By this time, the initial enthusiasm and welcome of the military had waned and fear of the unknown had descended on the nation especially bearing in mind the ferocity and widespread killings of military officers and civilians largely from the East in the north of the country. From this time onwards Nigeria was on the slippery slope towards the civil war which did not settle the fundamental problems of this country. This centres around the political imbalance in the federation which was well articulated by the dictum of Professor John Wheare, that a federation should never be so organized that one section of it should be so big that it would overwhelm all the other sections put together.
This problem has remained intractable despite attempts such as creation of states during the civil war but even this attempted solution has been vitiated by subsequent haphazard and irrational creation of more states designed to maintain the dominance of one part of the country over the other and inadvertently destroying the federal basis of the Nigerian union.
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