(“I am not dead yet”)— Colonel Victor Anuoluwapo Banjo
The above were the defiant last words of Colonel Victor Banjo after each round of furious bullets failed to silence him. It was an unequal struggle between man and man-made metal. The great colonel eventually succumbed to the fierce velocity, thus ending the life of one of the most brilliant and mysterious officers thrown up by the Nigerian military during the years of the locusts, 1966 to 1999.
The neat and cruel symmetry of dates only reinforces the metaphysical mysteries that often accompany the birth of national tragedies. For Columbia and Latin America in general—according to the incomparable Gabriel Garcia Marquez—it was one hundred years of solitude. For Nigeria, it has been ninety eight years of the syndrome we now name as elite solipsism and still counting.
There is an exacting and intriguing connection between war and literature. Some of the greatest writers the world has produced have been arms bearers in their prime. Count Leo Tolstoy, arguably the greatest novelist of all time, Leon Trotsky, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Andre Malraux, a.k.a Colonel Berger, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Eric Blair, a.k.a George Orwell, Wilfred Owen and the great war poets of England and a host of others. These were writers of the greatest pedigree. Two of them were Nobel laureates in literature. Perhaps an immediate but superficial explanation is that apart from love, it is war and literature that evoke the deepest passion in humanity.
Readers of Victor Banjo’s memorable memoirs, particularly his hugely touching and affecting letters to his beloved wife from prison, must wonder what a great writer lost to Nigerian literature. This is the stuff of the greatest penmanship anywhere in the world. Banjo writes with passion and poetic brilliance; his observations are laced with penetrating acuity. The letters are wrought from the furnaces of epic sonnet at its summit.
Like all supremely gifted people who are conscious of their god-given endowments and the possibility of deploying these for restorative and redemptive actions, Banjo could be difficult, impossible to fathom and perpetually obsessed by a single solution. Yet there can be no denying that he was a great Nigerian patriot and nationalist. Even his obsession with a single solution which could be a vice only led to the virtue of granite clarity and phenomenal will. Eventually, there is probably only a thin line between genius and monomania.
It will be recalled that Colonel Victor Banjo was arrested shortly after the major’s mutiny of 1966 for physically threatening the new Head of state, General Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi. It was rumoured that he was close to the radical majors and was tacitly in support of their action although he was not a direct participant. A less brave and self-assured man would have lain low, but not the testy Colonel who probably viewed Ironsi with barely concealed contempt and condescension.
It was in prison, or what may be termed in retrospect as true preventive custody, that the greater events of 1966 and the killings of Nigerians of Igbo origins found Banjo. Incarceration in the east probably saved his life. Imprisonment saw Banjo resuming his friendship with his old buddy, the then Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. Although very sympathetic to the gory plight of the Igbo, he was not persuaded that this should lead to the break-up of Nigeria.
In prison, Banjo had renewed contacts with other committed Nigerian patriots and nationalists who were not sold on secession but who also felt that General Yakubu Gowon was an interloper who had no business presiding over the affairs of the nation. Thus crystallised the idea of a Third Force which was to rid the nation of the ethnic revanchists who had installed Gowon and the secessionist bugaboo in the east.
It turned out to be a bridge too far for the great colonel, or perhaps it was the old Majidun bridge that was too far. Given command of a Biafran army that was to rid the mid-West of Nigerian forces and then head for Lagos to topple the Gowon administration, the colonel began to nurse other ideas.
It was reported that an advance unit of Banjo forces actually got as far as Ikorodu. It was a fraught and dire moment for the federal government and there were rumours of hurried evacuation plans to spring the beleaguered Gowon from Dodan Barracks. But back in Benin, the colonel appeared to stall and stonewall probably due to immense logistic difficulties. There was even a farcical short-lived Republic headed by a military doctor. It would seem that after Banjo serially disobeyed his orders, Ojukwu tricked him back to Biafra where he was executed after a celebrated trial of saboteurs.
For a nation already serially traumatised, the best way to avoid further ethnic kerfuffles is to place the Banjo tragedy in a severely dispassionate sociological perspective. War is hell. Secondly, once an army loses its way in the political jungle, it will eventually turn on itself in an orgy of fratricidal bloodletting. This is the lesson the Nigerian military ought to have learnt from its years of misadventure. Apart from the nation, the greatest casualty of military rule is the military itself.
The logic of a strife-torn army unravelling at its ethnic and regional seams is strange and compelling. There is no paddy for jungle. Once Colonel Banjo accepted a military rank and the command of an army from the Biafran army, he had accepted Ojukwu as his commander-in-chief. He was bound by military ethos to accept and obey his orders to the letter.
Treason cannot cancel out treason except by superior force. Within the context of the mass hysteria of a faltering and tottering Biafra and the enduring trauma of the Igbo people at that point, it would have been impossible for Ojukwu to save his old friend from certain death. Not even friendships forged in radical comradeship often survive a poisoned polity. When Majors Adewale Ademoyega and Emmanuel Ifeajuna caught up with each other in prison, the argument about who was remiss in his role during the uprising led to memorable fisticuff which shook the entire prison.
Perhaps in an unviable federal prison, there is always a stiff price for an ethnic nationality to pay for political sophistication and a cultural incapacity to stomach tyranny and misrule. But by his radical daring, his contempt for personal suffering and his noble self-sacrifice, Colonel Victor Banjo has joined the pantheon of Yoruba avatars who have sacrificed themselves in the pursuit of a greater and better Nigeria. If political martyrdom were to be added to this list, then it becomes an endless cortege indeed.
Last Friday, the Yoruba race in Nigeria added another illustrious son to the pantheon of its military sons who have chosen self-sacrifice as a noble profession. There have been weeping and wailing ever since. But one thing should be clear. Major Akinloye Akinyemi, a.k.a Sergeant Carter, might have died physically, but his cult of heroic example will survive for many generations to come. It was the mortal remains of the late major that were interred last Friday, leaving him with the robe of immortality.
In the end, nothing could be better and more uplifting than the moving tribute and homage paid to him by three of his classmates at Government College, Ibadan, and the lengthy obituary by his military colleague and former comrade in arms, Colonel Tony Nyiam. First published in an abridged form in a national newspaper, the full devastating disclosures came later in the online Sahara Reporters.
Scion of the notable Akinyemi family, the late major was a model officer in every material particular. He was in a class and league of his own always finishing far ahead of others in terms and times of physical and mental exertion. Top honours and rave commendations at the elite Sandhurst Military Academy were followed by a First Class degree in Electrical Engineering from a prestigious British university.
There is a lot about Akinyemi that recalled the martyred Colonel Banjo. Both were extremely brilliant officers, mercurial in disposition and also first class military engineers. Even as he was pushing his lithe body to the limits of physical endurance, he was also pushing his mind to the zenith of pneumonic capacity. This mental agility and the conquest of physical pains would serve him well during subsequent ordeals.
It was not surprising that this gifted officer chose the elite paratrooper unit as his natural turf. Given his antecedents and glittering records, Akinyemi ought to have finished at least as a four-star general who could hold his own in the rarefied echelons of global military titans. But in an army imploding from its internal contradictions, the unhappy consciousness is a sure recipe for tragedy.
The unhappy and troubled major began asking unhappy and troubling questions about an army courting disaster and death by misadventure. Instead of heading for the stars, he was directed to the military dungeon where his tragic predecessors had ended up. He only escaped the firing squad by whiskers. Twice the major was arrested and detained and twice was he arraigned before military investigating boards, first during General Babangida’s tenure and later during General Abacha’s reign of terror. He lost his commission in the process.
It was perhaps Major Akinyemi’s encounter with Abacha’s murderous goons that left their indelible scars. Mentally abused and grotesquely tortured, he was also rumoured to have been injected with a poisonous substance which eventuates in fatality by slowly targeting the vital organs. If this were to be so, the major must have been an extremely tough cookie indeed.
It is just as well that “Sergeant Carter” finally found peace and solace in god as a Christian soldier and officiating pastor of The Redeemed Christian Church of God. The major is at ease, but the nation is still ill at ease. Perhaps it is only the dead who are probably lucky. We say this because there are several walking dead and living casualties out there crying for mercy.
As we bid a final goodbye to this illustrious son of an illustrious father, it is useful to remind ourselves of the heroic sacrifices of those who made the current dispensation possible. As the nation celebrates its fifty second anniversary, many of the demons of yore are still very much with us. Only full disclosure will lead to full closure for an unhappy nation. May the fallen major rest in perfect bliss.
