 |
| Gen. TY Danjuma |
KANO, JULY 29 WEEKEND, 1966
The 5th battalion in Kano was under the command
of T/Lt. Col. M Shuwa, one of the two battalions in the country commanded
by a northern officer - the other one being the 4thbattalion in
Ibadan. On July 28, 29, and 30 the unit was deceptively quiet
although Shuwa was abreast of events elsewhere. However, on the
night of July 31/August 1st, four Igbo officers were suddenly hunted down and
shot. It remained relatively quiet again until September when all
hell broke loose at the Kano International Airport. As Lt. Col
Hassan Katsina put it at Aburi, “I have
seen an Army mutiny in Kano and if you see me trembling you will know what a
mutiny is…for two good days I saw a real mutiny when a C.O. of Northern
origin commanding soldiers of Northern origin had to run away.“ One
northern officer was actually reportedly killed by angry northern soldiers for
giving them an order to protect Igbos. The slaughter of Igbos at Kano airport
by elements of the 5th battalion was one of the more gruesome events of
that era.
ENUGU, JULY 29 WEEKEND, 1966
According to the transcript of tape
recordings of the military leaders meeting from January 4-5, 1967, held at the
Peduase Lodge, Aburi, Ghana, then Lt. Col. C. Ojukwu, Military Governor of
the eastern region, said (among other things):
“When this affair of the 29th July occurred,
I remember for certain, the first 24 hours nobody thought it necessary to
contact the East from Lagos. I made the contact later and I know the advice I
gave Brigadier Ogundipe at that time. I said to him, 'Sir, the situation is so
confused that I feel that somebody must take control immediately. Also, I would
suggest that you go on to the air and tell the country what has happened and
that you were taking control of the situation.' Then I was told about concern for
the whole country. I knew that if this thing resolved itself into factions we
would get ourselves into so much trouble that we would never or we would find
it difficult to get out. I maintained and still do that the answer would have
been for the responsible officers of the Army to get together thereby trying to
get the Army together to solve the problem that we had on our hands. I said to
him 'As soon as you have made your speech I guarantee you within 30 minutes, I
needed time to write my own, in 30 minutes I would come on to the air in the
East and say that I, the entire Army in the East and the entire people in the
East wholeheartedly support
you.“
Indeed, official circles in the eastern
region were “blacked out” initially from information flow, particularly during
the first 24 hours of the revolt. The commander of the 1stbattalion in
Enugu, Lt. Col. David “Baba” Ogunewe, a thoroughly professional and experienced
officer who had risen from the ranks, found out about the Abeokuta mutiny late
at night on July 29 by accident. Captain Ogbonna had tried to reach
the battalion from Abeokuta.
The duty officer at the 1st battalion
(who happened to be a northerner) was not on seat when Ogbonna’s message came
through, so it was passed directly to Lt. Col. Ogunewe, thus giving him an
early insight into events, which proved to be crucial. He went to
the mess in the early hours of July 30 and found a group of northern
officers (including Lts. Shehu Musa Yar-Adua, A. A. Abubakar, Sale Mamood,
Daudu Suleiman, Captains Muhammadu Jega, Gibson S. Jalo and others) fully
dressed in combat fatigues and apparently talked them out of taking precipitate
action, tapping an incredible reserve of goodwill he had always had with the boys. Ogunewe’s
successful confrontation with the northern officers is all the more remarkable
when it is realized that he was unarmed and had only been in command of that
battalion for six months. It was truly a testimony to his man-management
skills in crisis, well worth study for future reference. It turns
out though, that these officers had already been having meetings behind Hotel
Presidential in Enugu to discuss their own contributions to the “Aure” plot and
the neutralization of Lt. Col. Ojukwu. However, they had decided
after careful appreciation of the situation, surrounded by a hostile
population, to restrict themselves to self-defense to avoid reprisals against
their families.
In an October 1979 interview with the
FRCN, Major-General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua (rtd), now deceased, recalled his
role as the Adjutant of the 1st Battalion in those dark days. According to
him, there was no plan initially to kill anyone although he clearly
intended to arrest Lt. Col C. Ojukwu, then Military
Governor. He corro- borates other sources who have since said
that the coup date had in fact been put off when informal word came late on
Friday night, more likely early Saturday July 30, from Captain Remawa in
Abeokuta, that violence had broken out. At first Yar'Adua did
not know what to make of it since Remawa was not part of the original
"Aure" plot. But then he got dressed and alerted other
northern officers. By the time he returned to the office at about 4 am, as he
put it: "...my CO and all the
Igbo officers had been there at three, because somebody had also rang them from
Abeokuta and told them what was happening." This
"somebody" was none other than Captain Ogbonna.
A joint guard, consisting of northern and
southern soldiers was then posted to guard the armoury, choking off weapon
flow. Ogunewe then notified Lt. Col Ojukwu and later ordered that
all officers irrespective of regional origin should live together in the mess
while all Other Ranks were to live on the parade ground. In
this manner, no group could conspire or make a move without
detection. The only officer authorized to be armed at this point was
Ogunewe himself who sat with the other officers while everyone looked at
everyone.
At 11am on July 30, Ojukwu called a meeting
of the regional executive council at which they were briefed on events in other
parts of the country. Before then Ojukwu had been on the telephone
all morning contacting units and eastern officers all over the country to get a
picture of events. He is quoted by NU Akpan, former Secretary to the
Government of the Eastern region after one of his calls, as
saying: “One thing is clear, however; these people are quite bent on
annihilating the Ibos.” Later that day, for reasons that have never
been clarified, he slipped out of Enugu (leaving Ogunewe behind) and went to
Onitsha from where he was making his calls to Ogundipe in Lagos encouraging him
to stand firm. Much later that night, urged by Mr. P. Okeke who was
then Commissioner of Police, he returned to Enugu, moving his office, home and
relatives to the Police HQ, surrounded by a special guard of Mobile Policemen
of Igbo origin. That same evening, eastern chiefs and traditional
rulers arrived back from the Traditional Rulers meeting in Ibadan, bringing
with them tales about the kidnapping of Ironsi and Fajuyi.
By Sunday July 31st, when Ojukwu called the
executive council again, he announced that Brigadier Ogundipe had since told
him that the situation was out of control. Shortly thereafter,
Ogundipe himself could not be contacted. It was not until Lt. Col.
Gowon’s broadcast on August 1st that a transient semblance of order became
discernible. Ojukwu made a broadcast in response in which he said,
inter-alia,
“In the course of this rebellion, I have had discussions with the
Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Brigadier Ogundipe, who as the next most
senior officer in the absence of the Supreme Commander, should have assumed
command of the Army…”
”During those discussions, it was understood that the only
condition on which the rebels would agree to cease fire were: that the Republic
of Nigeria be split into its component parts; and that all southerners in the
North be repatriated to the South and that Northerners resident in the South be
repatriated to the North…”
“...the brutal, planned annihilation of officers of Eastern
Nigerian origin in the last two days has again cast serious doubts as to
whether the people of Nigeria, after these cruel and bloody atrocities, can
ever sincerely live together as members of the same nation….…”
“….I have further conveyed to the Chief of Staff, Supreme
Headquarters, my fellow military governors and the Chief of Staff, Army
Headquarters, my understanding that the only intention of the announcement made
by the Chief of Staff, Army Headquarters today is the restoration of peace in
the country whilst immediate negotiations are begun to allow the people of
Nigeria to determine the form of their future association. Good
night and thank you.”
Ojukwu then spent the next one week
insisting that northern soldiers in Enugu (who comprised no less than two
thirds of the battalion) be removed from the city before he would consider
leaving the safety of the Police HQ back to the State House.
Through all this, Ogunewe kept in touch with
Gowon in Lagos and was crucial to arrangements that were subsequently made to
successfully repatriate non-eastern soldiers and their families out of the
region - a remarkable achievement for which he was rewarded by being fully
reabsorbed into the Nigerian Army without loss of rank after the civil
war. But even this was not so straightforward. For one, Ogunewe
had to resist all kinds of entreaties to allow vengeful Igbo mobs gain entry
into the barracks to liquidate the northern troops there. Secondly,
according to then Major (later Brigadier) Benjamin Adekunle, Lt. Col. Murtala
Muhammed had contacted Lt. Yar’Adua secretly and ordered him to break into the
armoury to secure arms and ammunition for northern soldiers - to the exclusion
of others. This led to a clash between them that almost cost
Adekunle his life later on.
Just under two weeks after Gowon came to
power, Major Adekunle was tasked to lead the 1st battalion detachment by train,
which was granted safe passage to transport non-eastern soldiers and their
families to Kaduna enroute to Lagos in exchange for surviving eastern soldiers
in other regions. The suspicion was so high that Adekunle gave
orders that every individual soldier was to guard every other individual
soldier. When Adekunle got to Kaduna, some Igbo officers released
from Kaduna Prison were placed onboard the train (without his knowledge, he
says, but with his knowledge others say) on their way to Lagos enroute to the
eastern region. Some of the northern soldiers on the train did not like
the arrangement seeing as they felt they had not yet contributed their quota to
the mayhem going on elsewhere, so they mutinied, killing the Igbo
officers. As Brigadier Adekunle (rtd) put it:
“Yar’Adua arranged for their heads to
be cut and threw their bodies over the door, chained with other officers…”
Other sources say the bodies were thrown into
a river near Minna. It turns out that there were a few pregnant
women onboard the train who went into labor when they witnessed this
spectacle. Therefore, Adekunle ordered the train stopped at
Minna Station to take the women in labor to hospital. It was there
that he says Lt. SM Yar’Adua attacked him with a bayonet.
According to Adekunle:
“I got to the railway station. Madness started. Alright put your
hand inside my head and see wound, that is blade, that is Yar’Adua’s work.
Immediately I got down they wanted to kill Adekunle. You see this,
it was for my stomach. Yar’Adua, see my hand, it was cut but they couldn’t cut
it, they cut and cut but the knife no go. You don forget say na Ogbomosho
na him I be. Then they put my head on railway line that when the
train coming to Lagos moves it will cut my head.”
Adekunle, however, has never publicly
explained how he survived but others say he was saved by then Captain GS Jalo,
who shared the same Bachama ethnicity as Adekunle’s mother. In an
interview, Lt. General GS Jalo (rtd), now deceased, also credited Alhaji
Suleiman, then District Head in Minna and his former Principal in Yola, for
saving then Major Adekunle’s life. Other sources allege that it was
Yar’Adua himself who drove Adekunle to Hospital in Minna from where he was
aero-evacuated to Kaduna and claim that Yar’Adua was neither the instigator of
the Train mutiny nor Adekunle’s attacker.
In any case, when the 1st battalion
detachment eventually arrived at Ikeja Barracks in Lagos, northern soldiers who
left Enugu unmolested got themselves involved in molesting departing Igbo
refugees and looting their property. According to General
Jalo:
“The Igbo were going away and looting set in and some senior
officers, I must confess, encouraged this to happen.”
On August 27, in another broadcast from
Enugu, Ojukwu stated, among other things,
“I last spoke to you on August 1, following the unfortunate and
tragic events of July 29. I am sure that you all have since followed
through the Press and Radio the sad turn of events. One thing has
come out very clearly from this, the preceding and subsequent events, that is,
that there is in fact no genuine basis for true unity in the country….”
Ojukwu unilaterally declared August 29 a day
of mourning in the East, a move which was, however, viewed with suspicion as an
act of defiance by hawks in the Gowon government. It proved to
be one of many “Stations of the Cross” along the long windy road to
the Nigerian Civil War, a road some say began in January 1914.
 |
| L-R: Gen. Danjuma, Gen Olusegun Obasanjo and Gen. Yar'Adua later formed the '76 troika |
BENIN, JULY 29 WEEKEND, 1966
Benin-City was quiet during the weekend of
July 29, 1966. It had hosted General Ironsi with fanfare on the
27th. School children lined the routes and there was pomp and
pageantry. Underneath it all, however, fate beckoned. It
was from Benin that Ironsi departed on his way to Ibadan where he met his
death. In the atmosphere of myths that evolved in the years after 1966,
there was even a story that ”Operation Aure” was not launched in Benin because
of the intercession of the Oba of Benin. That story is
false. A strong delegation of chiefs and traditional rulers from the
Midwest region attended the conference in Ibadan.
During the weekend of the mutiny there were
no rebellious activities within the small detachment of the 4th battalion
under T/Major Adeniran stationed in Benin. However, the tour of duty
in Benin made it possible for soldiers in that company to discover that some of
those detained for their part in the January 15 mutiny were at the Benin
Prison. This information was to take on greater significance, when
on August 16th, there was a raid on the prison carried out by those elements of
the 4th battalion who had initially been redeployed back to Ibadan, but
then made a special trip back to Benin just for the heist.
The immediate motive for the August 16 raid
was to release their more unruly northern colleagues from the Battalion who had
been detained there in early August for their part in the events at Ibadan on
July 29 in which General Ironsi, Col. Fajuyi and some Midwestern officers and
soldiers in the 4th battalion (like Lt. Jasper) lost their
lives. One account claims the soldiers were from the 1st battalion
at Enugu, detained by Ejoor, but I have a conflicting account on personal
authority from a participant in the raid that they were not.
The rescuers did not stop at releasing their
colleagues. They removed Igbo soldiers who had long been detained
there for their part in the January mutiny, including Major Christian Anuforo
who had personally executed Lt. Cols. Arthur Unegbe, Kur Mohammed and James Yakubu
Pam, as well as Federal Finance Minister Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh. All of
these individuals - including Anuforo - were tortured and then shot after
private trials conducted by northern NCOs, although Major Adeniran himself,
pro-Akintola as he was, may not have been a neutral
observer. Indeed, one of the less well-publicized activities of mutinous
troops in the 4th battalion was the release of NNDP supporters who had
been detained in Ibadan Prison by Lt. Col. Fajuyi back in
January. It was a stroke of fortune for Major Adewale
Ademoyega, another one of the January conspirators, that soldiers from the 4th
battalion were unaware that he had been transferred to Warri Prison from the
East. Needless to say, the Military Governor, Lt. Col. David Ejoor was very embarrassed
and protested vehemently to Gowon.
IBADAN, FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1966 (“Paiko’s
Wedding”)
The situation in Ibadan on July 28 was
tense. Northern civil servants, chiefs and traditional rulers who
had come for the Conference of Traditional rulers were eager to get out of the
South, fearful that they would be targetted in the so called “Plan 15” Igbo
Plot. Indeed there were false rumors that the conference Hall was
slated to be blown up. At the regimental parade for General Ironsi a
small controversy erupted in the Press about the observation that northern troops
refused to (or could not) sing the National Anthem. Arguments went back
and forth on TV about whether their lips were moving.
Nevertheless, there was a grand reception in
the evening hosted by the Military Governor, Lt. Col. Francis Adekunle
Fajuyi, which belied the tensions that were simmering underneath. Fate was
beckoning. Both Ironsi and Fajuyi were distinguished veterans of the
Congo peace-keeping operations (ONUC) from 1960-64. Then Brigadier
JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi was the overall Force Commander for the last six months of
the operation. Fajuyi was well known as the first Nigerian officer
to be honoured with an international military citation. As a Major,
he was awarded the Military Cross (MC) for personal action in leading C company
of the 4QNR in combat on November 27, 1960 and subsequently extricating it from
an ambush during operations on January 3, 1961.
Nevertheless, following the call from Lt. Pam
Mwadkon in Abeokuta, Lt. Garba Dada (Paiko) woke up other northern officers at
the 4th Battalion, including Major TY Danjuma, a staff officer at AHQ who was
temporarily staying at the Letmauk Barracks, having accompanied Major General
JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi from Lagos. (The Barracks is named after a town called
Letmauk, site of a bitter campaign in April and May 1944 to retake AN from
the Japanese in Burma, by the 1st Nigerian Brigade of the
82nd West African Division during World War II)
Dada reportedly told Danjuma: "Sir, we will have to do the same
thing. The most important target is the Supreme
Commander. For as long as he is there, everything we are doing here
is nothing. We should go there."
After a brief meeting with Lts. Ibrahim Bako
and Abdullai Shelleng, a quick phone call was made to Lt. Col. Murtala Muhammed
in Lagos, seeing as Muhammed had earlier contacted the boys to stand down from
their group's pre-planned coup. But Muhammed initially urged
restraint, seeing as he was unsure whether his earlier confrontation with
Anwunah meant that Igbo officers and soldiers in Lagos were already armed and
may well have the advantage - as Anwunah had threatened. However,
concerned that exposed northern mutineers in Abeokuta would be isolated and
thus likely arrested and charged if they delayed action, Danjuma, Dada, Bako,
Shelleng, and the duty officer (James Onoja) decided to overrule Muhammed and
proceed with operations in Ibadan. Because Danjuma did not go to
Ibadan with combat dress, he borrowed one from Lt. James Onoja* who had
recently come back from a course in the US, and wore it right over his
pyjamas. Then Danjuma armed himself with a hand grenade for suicide
in the event of mission failure. (Some accounts say it was Akahan’s
uniform, but the Onoja version is likely more correct, confirmed by Danjuma
himself. In any case Akahan was out of the loop until
daybreak).
Soldiers were then hurriedly selected from
infantry companies at Mokola commanded by Onoja and Shelleng. While
Shelleng took one group to man checkpoints along the Lagos and Abeokuta roads
to protect the southern approaches to the city, 24 soldiers under Lt. James
Onoja, some say in two LandRovers mustered by the MTO, Lt. Jerry Useni (Later,
Lt. Gen), accompanied Major Danjuma to the Government House in the early
hours of July 29, 1966. The specific initial objective was to
isolate the premises, disconnect the Supreme Commander from the chain of
command and arrest him as a tool for negotiations regarding the boys who killed
Okonweze and others at Abeokuta. The Government House was already
guarded by elements of the National Guards company, led by Lt. William Walbe,
who was in charge of a 106 mm recoilless rifle group, along with some soldiers
on duty from the 4th battalion whose reporting relationship was to the adjutant
of the battalion as well as the duty officer.
 |
| Gibson Jalo |
THE TAKE-OVER OF THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE, IBADAN
Upon arrival there, having established that
the Supreme Commander was in, Major Danjuma was confronted by two command
problems. Both arose from the fact that he neither belonged to the
4th battalion nor was he part of the National Guard, although he was
senior to all the boys on the ground. First task, therefore, was to
ensure the cooperation of those elements of the 4th battalion who were on
duty there. The second was to secure the cooperation of the National
Guard Commander on the ground. In order to address the first problem
he asked the adjutant (“Paiko”) to issue a “legitimate” order that all his
soldiers on duty be disarmed by the duty officer (Onoja) who was there to
conduct a “legitimate” inspection. After being disarmed by the Duty
Sergeant, they were illegitimately screened and those who could be trusted (i.e.
northerners), illegitimately rearmed. Then they were supplemented by
the pre-selected group Danjuma brought along from the barracks with
Onoja. To deal with the second problem he confronted Lt. William
Walbe directly and secured his cooperation. This wasn’t too
difficult. Although they were in different cells, Walbe himself had
been attending separate meetings in Lagos with Joe Garba and others and was
well aware of the outlines of a coup plot, although he did not expect one that
night.
Once the building was surrounded and the 106
mm gun positioned in support, Danjuma came under pressure from the boys on the
ground to proceed with the operation. There were fears, based on
myths acquired in the Congo, that General Ironsi was assisted by “juju” and
that he could disappear at anytime using his “crocodile”. Junior
officers who had come to join the party urged immediate attack, some even
suggesting a repeat performance of the Nzeogwu assault on the Nassarawa Lodge
in Kaduna in January. They wanted the 106 mm weapon used to
bring down the complex. Danjuma resisted the pressure.
Lt. Col. Hilary Njoku, Commander of the 2nd
Brigade in Lagos, then emerged from the main building and was walking right
past the soldiers on duty moving toward the gate. One account says he came
up from Lagos with Ironsi, had been staying at the guest house next to the main
lodge, but was at the main lodge where Ironsi was staying, socializing with
both Ironsi and Fajuyi. Another account says he came up from Lagos
that evening when rumors of a coup gained strong currency among senior Igbo
officers in Lagos to brief the C-in-C. When he attempted to leave
the premises, ostensibly to mobilize loyal units, he was shot at by soldiers
who had been ordered not to let anyone out and he responded in kind. (Some say
he shot first). Luckily he escaped with serious injuries, some
say with no less than 8 pieces of shrapnel in his thigh. Njoku
initially made his way to the University College Hospital but had to escape
again when a “mop up” team came searching for him.
At this point, Lt. Onoja asked for permission
to leave, saying he was going to get more ammunition from the
barracks. However, he panicked and ran away in one of the LandRovers,
fearing that Njoku’s escape meant the coup would fail. He was later
arrested at Jebba.
When it became apparent that Njoku had
escaped, Danjuma, guarded by two soldiers, made rounds to check all guard
positions around the lodge and was moving toward the guest house when he heard
the phone there ringing. He asked one of his guards to break
the window so he could reach in to answer the phone. According to
General Danjuma (rtd), this is how the conversation went:
Danjuma: “Hello”
Gowon: “Hello. I
want to speak to Brigade Commander. I want to speak to Colonel Njoku.
Danjuma: “May I know who is
speaking?”
Gowon: My name is Gowon. Yakubu
Gowon.”
Danjuma: “Ranka dede. This is
Yakubu Danjuma.”
Gowon: “Yakubu, what are you
doing there? Where are you?”
Danjuma: “I am in the State House
here.”
Gowon: “Where is the Brigade
Commander?”
Danjuma: “He is not around.”
Gowon: “Have you heard what has
happened?”
Danjuma: “Yes, I heard
and that is why I am here. We are about to arrest the Supreme
Commander. The alternative is that the Igbo boys who carried out the
January coup will be released tit for tat since we killed their own officers.
Gowon: (after a period of
silence) “Can you do it?”
Danjuma: “Yes, we have got the
place surrounded.”
Gowon: “But for
goodness sake we have had enough bloodshed. There must be no bloodshed.”
Danjuma: “No, We are only going to
arrest him.”
At this point Danjuma replaced the phone as
yet another command crisis with the soldiers on the grounds was
brewing. It is not clear from available information what Gowon did
with the explosive information he had just gained from Danjuma or how he and
Ogundipe planned to deal with it. Danjuma does not say that Gowon or
any other senior officer explicitly ordered him to desist from his
activities. To what extent, then, did knowledge that Ironsi was
already surrounded by elements of the 4th battalion affect efforts to send
a Helicopter or the force structure of any potential rescue
mission? It appears that, at least in dealings with Ibadan, a
decision was made, by omission or commission, to adopt a negotiating rather
than fighting attitude to the mutiny.
This is an area that will attract
considerable attention of researchers in the future. Some have used
it to implicate Gowon in the coup but depending on what other information he
had at that point about availability of loyal fighting units, this may be too
harsh a conclusion to draw without additional clarification from Gowon
himself. He may well have been stalling to allow him time to make
alternative plans. Certainly, neither the National Guard
Company, 2nd (in Lagos) nor 4th (in Ibadan) battalions nor the
garrison at Abeokuta were usable at that point. Even if they were willing,
battalions in Enugu, Kaduna and Kano were too far away to be useful,
particularly considering the lack of emergency strategic airlift
capability. In any case, any thinking along these lines was quickly
neutralized by Murtala Muhammed’s decision to seize Ikeja airport at
dawn. Lastly, Gowon may have viewed Danjuma as the lesser of two
evils - the other being an all out effort by mutinying junior officers to get
their hands on the General (which is what eventually happened). In
retrospect, at that point only a foreign power could have mustered the might to
stage a complex night-time military rescue operation to save Ironsi. But there
is no evidence that such an option was ever considered.
In any case, when Onoja ran away, TY Danjuma
was isolated. With no duty officer on ground, and no other officer
from the 4th battalion on the premises, the NCOs began to wonder if they
should take strange orders from this Major they had never met, wearing a
mis-sized American satin combat uniform on top of pyjamas and who wasn’t even
from their unit. They began to wonder if Danjuma might even be an
Igbo officer based on his physique and bearing and perhaps even his
reluctance to destroy the building. Fortunately for Danjuma, Lt. Abdullai
Shelleng returned briefly from his checkpoint on Abeokuta road to check on
things and persuaded the NCOs to obey him, assuring them that he was a
northerner.
Other officers also arrived back on premises
as daybreak approached, including “Paiko” himself. Nervous soldiers
then appealed directly to Garba Dada (Paiko) to blow up the house but he
refused to do so unless Danjuma gave the okay. Danjuma chose to
maintain the siege, waiting patiently for the occupants to emerge from the
building. The opportunity would come at 8 am when the Governor and
Head of State were scheduled to go for official engagements in
town. The one curious oversight, though, was that no effort was made
to cut off the phone lines at the lodge.
At 6:30 am General Ironsi’s Army ADC, Lt.
Sani Bello emerged from the building to find out what was going
on. After a brief confrontation with Danjuma and a group of hostile
northern NCOs, he was arrested, told to remove his shoes and sit down on
the ground. As members of the Head of State’s convoy and delegation
began arriving from guest chalets they too were detained and asked to sit on
the ground. They include many others like Colonel Olu Thomas, an
army physician, and Chief C. O. Lawson, Secretary to the Government, arrested
at about 7:30 am.
At this point, Lt. Col. Fajuyi personally
emerged from the building. Some accounts claim that his ADC had
absconded during the night and switched sides. Danjuma describes his
conversation with Fajuyi as follows:
Fajuyi: “Danjuma come. What do you
want?”
Danjuma: “I want the Supreme
Commander”
Fajuyi: “Promise me that no harm
will come to him”
(Danjuma gave his words to the effect that
no harm would come to Ironsi and that he was only being arrested)
Fajuyi: “I will go and call him.”
Chorus of northern NCOs: “No, Sir.
Don’t allow him to go.”
Danjuma: (talking to Fajuyi who
had briefly turned around) “Sir, you see what I
have. This is grenade. If there is false move two of us
will go.”
At this point Fajuyi led the way into the
building with the grenade bearing Danjuma and five armed soldiers (including
Lt. Walbe) right behind him, essentially using him as a cover as they climbed
the staircase and went upstairs to meet General Ironsi.
Ironsi: “Young man”
Danjuma: “Sir, you are under
arrest.”
Ironsi: “What is the matter?”
Danjuma: “The matter is you,
Sir. You told us in January when we supported you to quell the
mutiny that all the dissident elements that took part in the mutiny will be
court-martialled. It is July now. You have done
nothing. You kept these boys in prison and the rumours are now
that they will be released because they are national heroes.”
Ironsi: “Look, what do you mean?
It is not true.”
At this point Ironsi and Danjuma began
arguing, with Fajuyi getting in between them and reminding Danjuma again and
again of his promise that no harm would come to Ironsi.
Danjuma: “Fajuyi get out of my
way. You, just come down.”
Danjuma: (to Ironsi) “….You
organized the killing of our brother officers in January and you have done
nothing to bring the so called dissident elements to justice because you were
part and parcel of the whole thing.”
Ironsi: “Who told you
that? You know it is not true.”
Danjuma: “You are lying. You have
been fooling us. I ran around risking my neck trying to calm the
ranks, and in February you told us that they would be tried. This is
July and nothing has been done. You will answer for your actions.”
At this point Danjuma and Lt. Andrew Nwankwo,
Ironsi’s AirForce ADC, had a fierce verbal exchange, with one holding a grenade
with the pin pulled and the other holding a pistol. But with the fingers of
five other soldiers on the triggers of automatic weapons, Nwankwo was
outgunned.
….to be continued
Comments
Post a Comment