STAR INFORMATION: Ironsi, Fajuyi and the July 29, 1966 Coup
Mobolaji E. Aluko
December 28, 1999
Netters:
These are two accounts of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of
Military Head of State Ironsi and Western Region Military Governor Fajuyi
on occasion of the July 29, 1966 coup.
That the world may again know or remember.
Have a Happy New Year.
Bolaji Aluko
------------ REFERENCE #1 - General Alexander Madiebo's Book [The Biafran
War and the Nigerian Revolution"]
Note 1a: MADIEBO, page 56 ff:
QUOTE
"Even at that late and very dark hour, while the North was putting
finishing touches to their [COUP] plan, Ironsi was still confident he
would reverse the ugly situation. He hoped to do this by touring all
Regions of Nigeria to explain to their leaders the merits and good
intentions of Decree no. 34 and to reassure them generally. All
Southern leaders - army and police officers, politicians, intellectuals
and others - who could reach Ironsi advised him against undertaking
such a tour but he was determined to go ahead with it.
Ironsi first visited the North, and there it was an arduous effort to
restrain young Northern Nigerian officers from seizing advantage of his
visit to commence their coup. What actually happened was that the more
mature Northerners and their advisers did not want Ironsi killed in the
North. Neither did they want to risk a confrontation with him in Lagos
where all major units were being commanded by Ibos, with whose help he
could easily foil the coup before it gained momentum. Midwestern
Nigeria was unsuitable for such an operation because no troops were
stationed there and a sudden movement of troops towards the Region
would have alerted him. It was clear that Western Region was going to
be the battleground for it satisfied all the necessary requirements.
The only battalion in Western Nigeria was under the command
of a Northerner, Colonel Joe Akahan, and the men on the exercise would be
dealing with an indifferent population.
That Ironsi himself realised the dangers he faced was doubtful,
but he was advised by all who knew the true situation to halt his tour
and remain in Lagos for awhile. However, he was determined to continue
his tour.
When he came back from Northern Nigeria, he left for Midwestern
Nigeria on the 27th of July and, as expected, never returned.............
Page 62 ff
[Captain Dilibe, an Ibo Staff Officer at the First Brigade
Headquarters....] revealed that Ironsi had telephoned the Brigade
Headquarters from Ibadan at 0730 hours [ON THE 29th JULY] to say that
the Government House where he was staying was surrounded by
soldiers. Ironsi also informed the Brigade that he had already made
several attempts to get a helicopter sent to him from Lagos but had
failed......................
Page 85 ff
Ironsi's Air Force ADC, Captain Nwankwo, who was with Ironsi at the
time of his death, later told ust the story in Enugu of how the General
died. According to Nwankwo, at 0630 hours on the 29th of July 1966,
Ironsi, Fajuyi, the Governor of Western Nigeria and himself were
arrested at Government House, Ibadan by Northern troops under the
command of Captain Danjuma. Colonel Hilary Njoku, who was also
present, escaped with multiple bullet wounds. The troops used to
affect the arrestw were those detailed to protect the General during
his tour. The captives were driven to an isolated jungle just
outside Ibadan. By the time they got there, the prisoners had been
so thoroughly beaten that the older two - Ironsi and Fajuyi - could
hardly stand up. Shortly after, Fajuyi was shot, then Ironsi.
While Ironsi was being shot, Nwankwo said he ran into the bush and
escaped. He emphasized that his escape was not due to his
cleverness, but because his colleague, the Hausa ADC who was also
present, wanted him to escape..
Nwankwo explained that during the month of June, 1966, he and his
Northern colleague had discussed the possibility of another coup.
The Northern officer was emphatic the Ibos were going to do it
again, but Nwankwo swore it was going to be done by Northerners.
According to him, at the end of a long but heated argument, they came
to an agreement that whichever side did it, the man on the winning
side should save the other's life. Based on this agreement,
the Northern ADC whispered t Nwankwo to escape while Ironsi was being
shot, and also discouraged the soldiers from chasing after him. Nwankwo
said he later made his way to Lagos and contacted this Northern
officer again, who not only hid him for a couple of days, but
eventually took him out of Lagos in the boot of a car.
UNQUOTE
----------------
---------------Reference # 2 Onukaba Adinoyi Ojo's book: "Olusegun
Obasanjo: In the Eyes of Time"
QUOTE
Page 99ff
Obasanjo did not know that the army had again been thrown into another
bloody crisis. Ironsi, in continuation of his fence-mending tour, had met
with traditional rulers in Ibadan on July 28. Later that evening,
Governor Adekunle Fajuyi of the Western Region hosted his guest to a state
banquet. Major Muhammed, the coordinator of the Northern coup plot, was
also in Ibadan on that day but to supervise preparations for the coup. He
drove back to Lagos at 2 a.m. on July 29th. Shortly after, Northern
officers quietly began to tip off one another with the code word "Araba" -
meaning "divide" or "separate" in Hausa. At that time, some people in the
North were convinced that there was no basis for unity in Nigeria and that
their interests and safety were better guaranteed outside the geographical
expression called Nigeria. Stridently, they clamoured for secession.
Throughout the country the North had the majority of rifle-carrying
soldiers while the South, especially the Igbos, had a numerical advantage
in the officer cadre.
At Abeokuta garrison, Northern soldiers were said to have reacted with
their guns to an undisclosed minor provocation from an Igbo officer. A
mutiny ensued in which several Igbo officers were massacred. Major
Donatus Okafor, one of the plotters of the January 15th coup, was taken
from Abeokuta prison where he was being held and killed. Also killed were
Lt. Col. Gabriel Okonweze and Major John Obienu, the officer alleged to
have abandoned his duty post in the January 15th coup for the comfort of a
girlfriend's bed in Somolu, Lagos.
In Lagos, Majors [MURTALA] Muhammed, Paul Tarfa, deputy commander of the
Brigade of Guards, and Captain Joseph Garba, command of the Brigade of
Guards, oversaw the Lagos phase of the plot. By the time it was over,
several Igbo officers had been massacred in Ikoyi, Ikeja and other army
units with the federal capital.
General Ironsi and his host, Governor Fajuyi, were alerted in Ibadan about
the coup as early as 3 a.m. The Head of State himself immediately began
working the phones. He woke up Lt. Col. Njoku who was sleeping in another
section of the Government House. By the time Lt. Col. Njoku arrived, he
met both the Head of State and Governor Fajuyi waiting in the living room
with Ironsi's son, Tom, his ADC, Lt. Andrew Nwankwo, and Fajuyi's ADC.
General Irons was in full uniform with a pistol while Governor Fajuy was
in mufti. They had heard that Northern troops were coming from Abeokuta
to invade the State House, but they did not know whether it was the state
house in Ibadan or the one in Lagos. As they waited, General Ironsi spoke
with his wife in Lagos, Governor Ejoor of the Mid-West, Governor Ojukwu of
the East, and Lt. Col Philip Effiong in Kaduna. Each of these people had
heard about the coup and were concerned about the safety of the Head of
State. The first tangible initiative to come out of Government House,
Ibadan, to defend the government, was the decision to dispatch Lt. Col.
Njoku to Lagos. Njoku stepped out of Government House to face a volley of
bullets. He fought back, escaping with bullet wounds. He never got to
Lagos, instead he ended up in an Ibadan hospital.
But the Head of State obviously did not know what had happened to Njoku.
He and his team continued to wait in the main living room of the
Government House. At 9.20 a.m., he received more calls from different
parts of the country, including one from his wife in Lagos. He asked for
a helicopter to be sent from Lagos to take them out of Ibadan to Lagos
because they had hear rumours of rebel presence along the Lagos-Ibadan
road.
General Ironsi seemed fated to die the way he did. His army ADC, Lt.
Bello, was said to have warned him about July 29th. Bello, a Northern
soldier, knew his people were planning to strike on that day and had
passed the information to his boss like a loyal aide. His boss did not
act on it. Even after he had been alerted at 3 a.m. when the coup was
only a few hours old, he did not try to leave Government House
immediately. when they realized by day-break that Northern troops were
waiting at the main entrance of the Government House, the Head of State
and the Governor still did not make any attempt to slip through the back
of the house into the servant's quarters.
And so, they remained holed up in the living room until Major Theophilus
Yakubu Danjuma, a member of Ironsi's entourage, and Lt. William Walber,
the officer in charge of Ironsi's security, came in and arrested Ironsi,
Fajuyi and the two ADCs. Danjuma said he later handed them over to Walbe,
whose soldiers took them to a bush off Iwo Road and shot all but one of
them. Lt. Andrew Nwankwo, Ironsi's ADC, escaped before they were shot.
As many as 40 Igbo officers and more than 120 other ranks died in the
coup."
UNQUOTE
Historical End-Notes:
Obasanjo is currently civilian Head of State of Nigeria (as from May 29,
1999). He was formerly military Head of State (1976-79) after Murtala
Muhammed was assasinated in 1976.
Theophilus Danjuma is currently the Minister of Defence.
Joseph Garba is currently the Director of the National Institute of Policy
and Social Studies (NIPSS?), Kuru.
Ojukwu and Effiong went on to become the Head of State and Deputy Head of
State of the break-away Republic of Biafra (1967-70).
The others named are either dead or tooling around somewhere in Nigeria.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 20:10:20 -0500
From: "Ayowale B. Ogunye" <aog...@ix.netcom.com>
To: webm...@wazobia.com, naij...@eGroups.com
Subject: [Naijanet] Re: ironsi and fajuyi
I hope this helps.
"On the 29th of July 1966, while at Ibadan during a nation-wide tour,
General Ironsi and his host Colonel Fajuyi were abducted by troops led by
Major T.Y. Danjuma. They were led away, by a unit under the command of Lt.
Walbe, Ironsi's body guard Commander, and one Lt. Shelleng to the outskirts
of Ibadan where they were beaten and shot. Their fate was only officially
announced later at the Aburi Conference. While the reaction to Ironsi being
an Igbo can be understood, the murder of Fajuyi remains one of the little
spoken mysteries of that July coup. While Col. Ojukwu, the Eastern Region
governor, vociferously demanded full and open accounts of the fate of Ironsi
and Fajuyi, Col. Adebayo, Fajuyi's successor played a softly approach."
Page 115, "Nigeria 1966: the Turning Point", by C. Ikeazor, Published by
New Millennium, 1997.
Wale Ogunye
-----Original Message-----
From: webm...@wazobia.com <webm...@wazobia.com>
To: naij...@eGroups.com <naij...@eGroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, December 28, 1999 7:58 PM
Subject: [Naijanet] ironsi and fajuyi
>A question I have not been able to find an answer to is: Who killed
>General
>Ironsi and Colonel Fajuyi ? I've read of the circumstances of their
>death
>but not of the major participants in it. None of the books seem to shed
>light on this also. Who were the principal actors of that first and
>second
>coup, and if possible the roles they played ?
>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
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