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Tag: Aguiyi-Ironsi

  • What’s Aguiyi-Ironsi’s place in history?

    What’s Aguiyi-Ironsi’s place in history?

    The late General Johnson Thomas Ummunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi assumed power at a turbulent period in Nigeria’s political history, after helping to quell the bloody coup of January 15, 1966. He faced an uphill task during his six-month administration, because there were suspicion and resentment against his emergence from the outset, particularly in the defunct Northern and Western regions. The policies he enunciated before he was assassinated in the bloodier counter coup of July 29, 1966 did not help matters. Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI looks at the highlights of his administration. 

    AS they have done over the years, family, friends and associates of the late Major-General Johnson Thomas Ummunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi last Saturday converge on his modest home in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, for a solemn ceremony for the continued repose of the soul of the great soldier and that of other officers who lost their lives in the 1966 revenge coup, including his friend and courageous host, Lt-Col. Adekunle Fajuyi.

    The after-effects of the bloody military coup of July 29, 1966, continue to occupy a prime position in Nigeria’s political history. It was bad enough that young, idealistic military officers of mostly Igbo extraction staged a coup on January 15, 1966 that claimed the lives of former Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa; former Premier of Western Region, Samuel Akintola; former Premier of Northern Region Ahmadu Bello; and a number of senior military officers.

    But the counter-coup that followed six months after by officers of northern extraction, on July 29, was tragic; not only because it claimed the lives the first military Head of State, as well as that of Lt-Colonel Fajuyi and that of a host of other military officers, but also because set in motion a set of events that plunged the country into the 30-month civil war.

    What is the place of Aguiyi-Ironsi, or Ironsi for short, in history? Ironsi seized power in the aftermath of the chaos that ensued after the nation’s first military coup led by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu. Those who knew him well say he was a jolly-good fellow; a good family man and a professional soldier. Observers say Ironsi who spent only 194 days in office meant well, but did not fully understand the implications of the actions he took or refused to take within that period.

    They say he was too free-minded and trusting. After he took over power, he surrounded himself with northern security aides, including Danjuma, against the warnings of people like the former rebel leader, Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. Ojukwu, it was said, made efforts to get to change the bodyguards, but it fell on deaf ears.

    In typical military fashion, Ironsi, Fajuyi and other officers who lost their lives in the July coup were treated like enemy forces captured and killed in a battle. Ironsi did not take part in the bloody January coup, but by virtue of his seniority in the armed forces, he suppressed the coup. But, rather than hand power back to the civilian authorities, he assumed office as the new Head of State.

    Thus, the first military Head of State was a victim of circumstances, because of the earlier coup he knew nothing about. Though he was given a posthumous national award during the country’s golden jubilee celebration in 2010, he remains largely unsung. In comparism, the third military Head of State, Gen. Murtala Muhammed, who was equally assassinated in a coup d’état, has virtually been canonized and history is likely to be kind to him. The only difference is that the coup that claimed Muhammed’s life failed; whereas those who spearheaded the July revenge coup went on to dominate the country’s leadership for over three decades. For instance, a portrait of the late Muhammed adorns the N20 note. In addition, the international airport in Lagos and numerous streets across the nation were named after him.

    The interesting thing is that the assassination of Aguiyi-Ironsi and the northernisation of subsequent military and civilian administrations since July 1966 were not championed by officers from the core North. The July 29 coup, which was led by Gen. Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma and the late Muhammed, was planned and executed by people from the Middle Belt or the North Central geo-political zone; the same region that has today teamed up with other regions from the South in demanding for the restructuring of the country.

    Ironsi’s critics say he assumed political leadership without vision and plan. The circumstances of the time foisted the responsibility on his shoulders. Politically and administratively, his tenure was, nevertheless, eventful. It was a period of strange experimentation when the command system in the military was replicated in public administration. Advocates of federalism believed that that trial was a colossal failure. To that extent, Ironsi, in their view, cannot be described as a giant of contemporary history.The nature of the January coup and the fact that the new Head of State was of Igbo extraction was enough to annoy many Nigerians, particularly those from the North and Western Region. Ironsi’s subsequent actions only aggravated it.

    The turning point was the enactment of the Unification Decree No. 34, 1966, which effectively made Nigeria a unitary state. It was worrisome that he embarked on restructuring the country without waiting for the report of the Constitutional Review Committee headed by the late Chief Rotimi Williams, which he had set up. The report was to be submitted to another Constituent Assembly, and the outcome was to be subjected to a referendum.

    But, Ironsi was in a hurry to make an impression. In his May broadcast, he declared: “Nigeria shall on the 24th May, 1966 cease to be a federation and shall accordingly as from that day be a republic by the name of the Republic of Nigeria, consisting of the whole territory, which immediately before that day was comprised in a federation.” As federalism was abolished, the regions ceased to exist. From their ashes sprang up a group of territorial areas called provinces. Each region became a group of provinces, with a National Military Government at the centre. The late Head of State had also proposed a new economic plan, but it never saw the light of day.

    He was assassinated primarily because of his failure to deal with the coup plotters of January 15 that eliminated top Northern political leaders. The fundamental crisis of confidence within the military was borne out of the failure to try those behind the coup according to the dictates of military law. The Head of State reportedly became hostage not only to radical opinion in the media in the South that hailed the coup plotters as heroes, but also to the curious five-point agreement he had negotiated with Nzeogwu in Kaduna back on January 17.

    Thus, the failure to bring the mutineers and murderers to book gave a platform for the numerous military coups of the following years. It established the notion that a “successful” coup plotter would never be called to account for his actions. Nigeria paid the price for this in subsequent years, with coups becoming the fashionable way to change a government.

    According to reports, the coup was investigated by the police and the report was ready by March. But, the panel was set up to review the report and come up with formal charges went to sleep; it never sat. Major Adewale Ademoyega corroborates the above in his book, Why We Struck, stating that each time the matter was brought up for discussion at the Supreme Military Council (SMC), that Fajuyi was opposed to any trial.

    The composition of the administration’s advisory team was also another source of discontent. Chief among them was Francis Nwokedi, an Igbo man and former permanent secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, who had become close to him during his days in the Congo.  Others were Pius Okigbo (economic adviser) and Lt. Col Patrick Anwunah who was later Chairman of the National Orientation Committee. The most common complaint against the appointments was that, although highly qualified and distinguished, they were either all Igbos or Igbo speaking.

    On February 12, Ironsi took his most sensitive decision when he put Nwokedi in-charge of the establishment he set to work out the details of his unified Nigeria. He had also replaced the Attorney-General, Dr. Teslim Elias, with Gabriel Onyiuke, also of Igbo extraction. Similarly, Dr. Pius Okigbo became the Economic Adviser. Then, contrary to Katsina’s advice, he attempted to appoint Prof. J. C. Edozien from the University of Ibadan as the Vice Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, instead of Prof. Ishaya Audu. When he effected promotions in the Army, of the 21 officers promoted from Majors to Lieutenant-Colonels, 18 were Igbo-speaking.

    Had Ironsi hearkened to the demand for state creation, the tension would have subsided. Perhaps, the subsequent civil war could have been also been averted. The minority groups, who were marginalised under the abolished regions, would have heaved a sigh of relief. Sectionalism would have been curtailed to an extent. In six months, the Ironsi regime, which had been swimming in legitimacy crisis, finally lost credibility.

    As the disquiet persisted, Ironsi took two steps. He asked Yakubu Gowon, who was relatively popular among military officers, to douse the tension in the Army by explaining the situation to the Armed Forces, in a bid to retain their loyalty.

    He also embarked on tour of the country to explain the activities of his government to the traditional rulers. He returned from the North to Lagos, and left for Ibadan. After meeting the obas, a cocktail party was organised for the Head of State by his host, Fajuyi, unmindful of the plan for a bloody and vengeful coup by Northern officers, led by Danjuma.

    Fifty-one years after, the after-effects of the January 1966 coup and the counter-coup in July are still haunting Nigeria. The succession of military regimes that followed was inevitably led by northern soldiers that carried out the 1966 counter-coup. The military ruled the country for 29 of the next 33 years, until the restoration of democracy in 1999.

    The civil war was spurred by the killing of about 30,000 Igbos by Northern mobs in revenge of the killings of the notable figures from the region murdered during the January coup. The deaths of hundreds of Igbo soldiers and that of the Head of State did not mollify some northern soldiers. In the early stages of the counter-coup, Igbo soldiers were killed if they were suspected of complicity in, or supporting the coup of the “Five Majors” in January 1966. Later on, simply being Igbo became reason enough to be killed. As the new Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, struggled to stabilise himself in power, random murders of soldiers of Eastern Region origin continued to occur. Senior northern officers could no longer control the violence they had unleashed; junior officers simply went on rampage, while their superiors looked the other

  • Aguiyi-Ironsi: Hero or villain?

    Aguiyi-Ironsi: Hero or villain?

    What is the place of the late General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi in the history of Nigeria? Following the bloody coup masterminded by mostly young Igbo officers, there were lots of misunderstanding, suspicion and resentment against his administration, particularly in the defunct Northern and Western regions. As a leader who was obviously not prepared for the challenges of governance, the late Aguiyi-Ironsi displayed much naivety in the way he handled the demands of various stakeholders. Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI looks at the policies that probably alienated the late Head of State from a large chunk of the country. 

    As Nigeria marks the 51st anniversary of the January 15, 1966 military coup, which facilitated the emergence of the late Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi as the first military Head of State, one issue associated with him that has refused to go away is the distortion of the country’s federation. Prior to the bloody military coup that ended the First Republic and ushered in the era of military rule, Nigeria had a true federal structure. The regions were autonomous and viable; they took full responsibility for determining their destinies. Each region developed at its pace; each region was responsible for generating its own resources. They retained 50 per cent of the revenue and remitted the remaining into a common pool at the centre, to be shared later by the federating units.

    No region waited for monthly allocations or handouts; none called on the Federal Government to fix any road, furnish any school or equip any hospital. The regions were responsible for determining their own affairs and by so doing contributed to the strengthening of the centre.

    But, the emergence of Aguiyi-Ironsi changed all that. He became the Head of State in turmoil. The circumstances of the time foisted the responsibility on his shoulders. It was a period of strange experimentation when the command system in the military was replicated in public administration. Advocates of federalism believed that that trial was a colossal failure.

    He thought that concentrating powers in the centre would facilitate unity and enhance cooperation among the ethnic groups. He promulgated the Unification Decree 34 on 1966 May 24, abolishing the federal structure and concentrating powers at the centre. With the decree, the regions were deprived of right to minerals in their states; the Federal Government became the custodian of the country’s treasures and resources.

    A Lagos-based lawyer and commentator on national affairs, Chijioke Ogham-Emeka, said the greatest irony in the criticism against Aguiyi-Ironsi’s arrangement is that although General Yakubu Gowon restored Nigeria’s federal structure on September 1, 1966, yet the country has been administered substantially in the spirit of the vilified Decree No. 34. For instance, under the 1999 Constitution, Nigeria is supposed to be a federation. But, the extraordinary powers lumped at the centre makes it essentially a unitary structure.

    He said: “If we realise that Nigeria must be one and that only a unitary structure can achieve that, why should we not call a spade a spade and post-humously apologise to (or at least vindicate) Aguiyi-Ironsi? Nevertheless, history itself has vindicated him. A true Nigerian was ‘crucified’ for the cause of a united Nigeria and today his murderers are the largest beneficiaries of a unitary and united Nigeria.

    “If we operate a federal system of government why not allow the Niger Delta people to control their oil resources and pay royalty into the Federation Account? Why should the concept of ‘federal might’ not be reduced in practice to a myth? Why do we deceive ourselves?”

    Many observers agree that the development of the country has been slow since Aguiyi-Ironsi’s abrogation of the federal structure in 1966. The ceding of the control over mineral deposits to the Federal Government is responsible for the culture of states folding their arms and going cap in hand to Abuja every month for allocations. Unlike the pre-1966 era, when states were competing in the area of development and revenue generation, today no state can take any decision over any mineral deposit within its area. The result is that the country has been made to rely on ‘easy money’ from crude oil exports. Even though most states are sitting on potential wealth, there is no incentive to harness same for development, because it belongs to the federal purse.

    One of the features of Decree No. 34 was the unification of the civil service of the abolished regions. According to reports, popular feelings in the North and the West then underscored dejection and disillusionment. The understanding in the North was that civil servants from the South will invade the North to displace northerners from the public service, because they had more professional expertise. The rumour was not dispelled. For the northerners, the unification of the civil service was the most annoying aspect of the decree. On May 27, 1966, riots broke out in the North in which many Easterners were killed. The nature of the problem on ground also exposed the fragility of the military then. Soldiers believed that Aguiyi-Ironsi had further sowed the seed of discord and violence. It thus became difficult to deploy the partisan military to quell the riots.

    What is the place of Aguiyi-Ironsi in the history of Nigeria? He was a jolly good fellow; a good family man and a professional soldier whose intention was to unite the country, after the abortive coup. But, there were misunderstanding, suspicions and resentment against his policies, particularly in the defunct Northern and Western regions.

    Aguiyi-Ironsi’s critics said he assumed political leadership without vision and plan. His administration faced persist criticisms from different parts of the country. As a leader that was obviously not prepared for the challenges of governance, he was confused over the demands of various stakeholders. Students and activists persisted in their clamour for the release of Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, the symbol of patriotic pan-Nigerian fervour. The West was disappointed that Aguiyi-Ironsi was silent about the fate of the jailed opposition leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Delegations from the various provinces in Yorubaland protested to Fajuyi, saying that his continued imprisonment was unjust. The Head of State turned a deaf ear. The perception of the North and the West was that the new regime was to the advantage of the East, the home region of the ruler. In fact, while reflecting on that period of national anxiety, Gowon told his biographer: “There were complaints that only Igbos came to advise Aguiyi-Ironsi.”

    As Head of State, he inherited a country deeply fractured by its ethnic and religious cleavages. The fact that none of the high-profile victims of the January 1966 coup were of Igbo extraction, and also that the main beneficiaries of the coup were Igbo, led the Northern part of the country to believe that it was an Igbo conspiracy. Though he tried to dispel this notion, by courting the aggrieved ethnic groups through political appointments and patronage, his failure to punish the coup plotters crystallised this conspiracy theory.

    His failure to try those behind the coup according to the dictates of military law fuelled opposition against his administration. The Head of State reportedly became hostage not only to radical opinion in the media in the South that hailed the coup plotters as heroes, but also to the curious five-point agreement he had negotiated with Nzeogwu in Kaduna back on January 17.

    According to reports, the coup was investigated by the police and the report was ready by March. Subsequently, a panel was set up to review the report and come up with formal charges. But, the panel went to sleep; it never sat. Major Adewale Ademoyega corroborates the above in his book, Why We Struck, stating that each time the matter was brought up for discussion at the Supreme Military Council (SMC), that Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, the Governor of the West, was opposed to any trial.

    One of the arrowheads of the July 1966 revenge coup, General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, confirmed that Aguiyi-Ironsi’s failure to try the coup plotters was a major factor that led to the second coup. In Lindsay Barrett’s book, Danjuma: The Making of a General, Danjuma, accused the late Aguiyi-Ironsi of doing nothing to bring Nzeogwu and his fellow conspirators to justice.

    Meanwhile, there were allegations that the mutineers were being treated specially in prison. Thus, the failure to bring the mutineers and murderers to book gave a platform for the numerous military coups of the following years. It established the notion that a “successful” coup plotter would never be called to account for his actions. Nigeria paid the price for this in subsequent years, with coups becoming the fashionable way to change a government.

    Owing to increasing tensions in the land, former leading politicians in the Western and Eastern regions were detained on March 7, but those of the Northern region were left alone, because of political sensitivities resulting from the coup. Indeed, Aguiyi-Ironsi made an effort — ultimately insufficient — to pacify the North. He had appointed and promoted the son of the Emir of Katsina as the new military governor, released northern ministers who were detained by Nzeogwu in Kaduna, reappointed Sule Katagum to the Public Service Commission and placed Malam Howeidy in charge of the defunct Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN).

    In May, among other promotions, he promoted three substantive northern Captains (Ibrahim Haruna of Ordnance, Murtala Muhammed of Signals and Mohammed Shuwa of Infantry) who were then acting Majors to the ranks of temporary Lt. Cols. But, he fell short on more culturally sensitive matters. For example, the military governor of the Northern Region, Major Hassan Katsina, was discouraged from attending the funeral of the late Prime Minister in Bauchi.

    Reflecting on Aguiyi-Ironsi’s tenure, eminent scholar Prof. Isawa Elaigwu noted that, though the nature of the coup became more suspicious to many Nigerians, the Head of State’s subsequent actions only aggravated it. The political scientist said in his book, Gowon: The Biography of a Soldier-Statesman: “In a way, it may be argued that General Aguiyi-Ironsi was a victim of circumstances — circumstances which required the quick use of his mental capacity and political subtlety — two traits Ironsi did not possess in adequate amounts.”

    The composition of the administration’s advisory team was also another source of discontent. Chief among them was Francis Nwokedi, former permanent secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, who had become close to him during his days in the Congo.  Others were Pius Okigbo (economic adviser) and Lt. Col Patrick Anwunah who was later Chairman of the National Orientation Committee. The most common complaint against the appointments was that, although highly qualified and distinguished, they were either all Igbos or Igbo speaking.

    On February 12, Ironsi took his most sensitive decision when he made Nwokedi the sole commissioner for the establishment of an administrative machinery for a unified Nigeria – even though he already appointed a separate Constitutional Review Panel under the late Chief Rotimi Williams which had not submitted a report.

  • Aguiyi-Ironsi and Fajuyi

    Aguiyi-Ironsi and Fajuyi

    •50 years after, Nigeria is yet to learn useful lessons from their assassination 

    It is exactly 50 years today that the counter-coup of 1966 was executed by soldiers, largely of northern extraction. One event that stood out in the process was the execution of the Head of State, Major-Gen. Johnson Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi and Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, in Ibadan. Aguiyi-Ironsi who had emerged the major beneficiary of the January coup d’état was on an official visit to the Western Region where Col. Fajuyi was governor when incensed officers led by Captain Theophilus Danjuma decided to avenge what they considered the iniquitous Igbo coup of January.

    A gallant officer, Col. Fajuyi would not allow them lay hands on his guests since it would amount to a betrayal and would send out a wrong signal. Rather, he offered to suffer the same fate.

    We remember today, the events of those turbulent days from which the country is yet to recover. Inter-ethnic relations have been marked by mutual suspicion, nepotism that breeds poor governance and underdevelopment. It was in response to this that the federal character principle was first enshrined in the constitution in 1979, to promote equity, balance and allay fears and mistrust.

    However, the principle has, since then, been observed more in the breach. Successive administrations are largely populated by members of the ethnic group to which the leader belongs. This is the case even with the current administration. Many Nigerians from the south have been complaining about its composition. Appointments are hardly made on merit or on well spelt out criteria. Only recently, a new Inspector-General of Police was appointed and the career of dozens of Deputy Inspectors- General of Police and senior Assistant Inspectors-General of Police had to be sacrificed in order to get the preferred candidate.

    The quota system of admission into schools that allows some students who score below 20% gain admission into federal institutions while preventing more brilliant students’ access to the same colleges and universities has not only promoted mediocrity but engendered bitterness in younger Nigerians.

    Unless the trend is checked, Nigeria’s bid to catch up with the developed countries and become a true giant of Africa will remain a mirage. The challenge before leaders at all levels is to promote integration, justice and fair play. To achieve this, we need to break down the partition walls between the earthly groups and religions, thus promoting the concept of one Nigeria. Pernicious mal-administration has been the result of the post-1966 political system. It would take a fundamental, deliberate and sustained campaign for nationalism and patriotism to effect the necessary changes and build a new Nigeria.

    The qualities of Col. Fajuyi – courage, selflessness, patriotism and nationalism are missing in today’s Nigeria. They are values that must be restored and replicated in the current crop of leaders. We are in the same canoe and must paddle together to get to the shore safely. The decay in national institutions, deepening economic crisis and rise in sectarianism could be traced directly to the absence of such virtues and values. Scholars and patriots owe the country a duty of coming up with a viable formula of recruiting leaders.

    Ironically, Gen. Aguiyi-Ironsi had to be killed because he introduced the Unification Decree No. (34) of 1966 which sought to weld together the ethnic groups as one unit run from the centre. Coming immediately after the January 1966 coup, it aroused anger from the north that had lost a generation of leaders. It also compounded the fears that the Igbo were out for domination.

    General Aguiyi-Ironsi and Colonel Fajuyi were killed, but Nigeria is yet to learn the needed lessons. Half a century after, there is now a need to reappraise the national, institutional, cultural and socio-political milieu that has continued to promote mediocrity and underdevelopment.

  • Aguiyi-Ironsi: Echoes of January 1966 coup

    Aguiyi-Ironsi: Echoes of January 1966 coup

    The after-effects of the January 1966 coup are still haunting Nigeria today, 50 years on. Among other things, it set in motion a set of events that plunged the country into the 30-month civil war, over three decades of military rule and a heightened sense of tribalism. Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI examines the role played by the late Head of State and one of the victims of the July 29, 1966 counter-coup, Major-General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi.

    This week marks 50 years of the death of Major-General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, the senior military officer who seized power in the ensuing chaos that followed the January 15, 1966 military coup. Aguiyi-Ironsi was reputed to be a good soldier. He did not take part in the bloody January coup executed mostly by young, idealistic officers of Igbo extraction. By virtue of his seniority in the armed forces, he suppressed the coup. But, rather than hand power back to the civilian authorities, he assumed office as the new Head of State.

    Aguiyi-Ironsi was accused of forcing the remaining members of Balewa’s Government to resign at gun point. He then made the Senate President, Nwafor Orizu, who was serving as Acting President in the absence of the substantive President, Nnamdi Azikiwe, to officially surrender power to him; thereby ending the First Republic.

    The so-called revolution was staged to put an end to corruption and ethnic rivalry. But, it ended up worsening the situation. Northerners interpreted the coup as an Igbo-led conspiracy to subjugate the north and impose Igbo domination. With the benefit of hindsight, observers say it was not a good move that Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo man, emerged as the Head of State, after the coup. It was like sitting on a keg of gunpowder, because from the mood of the country, a northern counter-coup was inevitable.

     

    Counter coup

     

    That was what happened; six months later; on July 29, 1966 northern soldiers staged an even bloodier, counter-coup, against their Igbo colleagues. The counter-coup claimed Aguiyi-Ironsi’s life and that of his courageous host, Lt-Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi. The late Head of State had arrived Ibadan on July 28, 1966 to address a conference of Western Nigeria traditional rulers. By dusk, he was through with the assignment and was prepared to head back to Lagos. But, his host urged him to spend the night with him and he obliged.

    In the early hours of the morning, the Government House, Ibadan, was surrounded by soldiers led by Theophilus Danjuma. The circumstances leading to Aguiyi-Ironsi’s death still remain a subject of much controversy. But, suffice it to say that Aguiyi-Ironsi was arrested and questioned about his alleged complicity in the coup, which saw the demise of the Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa; Minister of Finance, Festus Okotie-Eboh; the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello; the Premier of Western Region, Samuel Ladoke Akintola; as well as top army officers and some civilians.

    According to reports, Fajuyi did not treasure his personal safety over that of his Commander-in-Chief and intimate friend. Both were physically battered by the coup plotters on their way to the serene, sleepy and desolate area at the outskirts of Ibadan, where they were killed. For their families, it was deep, but subdued mourning, because the new military authorities would not readily admit that the two fallen heroes had died in the coup. It took seven months before an official announcement confirmed what had been widely known: that Aguiyi-Ironsi and Fajuyi were dead!

    After the counter-coup, some of the officers involved in the January coup were subjected to grisly treatment by northern soldiers. For instance, in August 1966, they raided the Benin prison and released the northern troops who were detained there for their part in the Chukwuma Nzeogwu-led coup. Igbo officers also detained with them for the same offence were not spared. Five of them, including Majors Chris Anuforo and Don Okafor, were tortured to death.  According to reports, Anuforo was shot dead, while Okafor was buried alive.

     

    The man Aguiyi-Ironsi

     

    Aguiyi-Ironsi was born to Mazi Ezeugo Aguiyi on March 3, 1924, in Umuahia-Ibeku, present-day Abia State. When he was eight years old, he moved in with his elder sister, Anyamma, who was married to Theophilius Johnson, a Sierra Leonean diplomat in Umuahia. Aguiyi-Ironsi subsequently took the last name of his brother-in-law, who became his father figure. At the age of 18, he joined the Nigerian Army against the wishes of his sister.

    Aguiyi-Ironsi enlisted in the Nigerian Army on February 2, 1942 and was admitted to and excelled in military training at Eaton Hall, England and also attended Royal Army Ordnance Corps before he was later commissioned as an infantry officer with the rank of Lieutenant on June 12, 1949. He soon returned to Nigeria to serve as the aide-de-camp to John Macpherson, Governor-General of Nigeria, and he was assigned as equerry to Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Nigeria in 1956, for which assignment he was sent to Buckingham Palace to train.

    During the Congo Crisis of the 1960s, the United Nations Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, appealed to the Nigerian government to send troops to Congo. Lieutenant Colonel Aguiyi-Ironsi led the 5th battalion to the Kivu and Leopoldville provinces of Congo. His unit proved integral to the peacekeeping effort, and he was soon appointed the Force Commander of the United Nations Operation in the Congo.

    Aguiyi-Ironsi returned from Congo in 1964 during the post-independence “Nigerianisation” of the country’s institutions of government. It was decided that the British General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Nigerian Army, Major General Welby-Everard, would step down to allow the government to appoint an indigenous GOC. Aguiyi-Ironsi led the pack of candidates jostling for the coveted position. A consensus was reached by the ruling Northern People’s Congress (NPC) and National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) coalition government, and Aguiyi-Ironsi became General Officer Commanding of the Nigerian Army on February 9, 1965.

    The deaths of hundreds of Igbo soldiers and that of the Head of State did not mollify some northern soldiers. In the early stages of the counter-coup, Igbo soldiers were killed if they were suspected of complicity in, or supporting the coup of the “Five Majors” in January 1966. Later on, simply being Igbo became reason enough to be killed. As the new Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, struggled to stabilise himself in power, random murders of soldiers of Eastern Region origin continued to occur. Senior northern officers could no longer control the violence they had unleashed; junior officers simply went on rampage, while their superiors looked the other way.

     

    194 days in office

     

    As Head of State, Aguiyi-Ironsi inherited a country deeply fractured by its ethnic and religious cleavages. The fact that none of the high-profile victims of the January 1966 coup were of Igbo extraction, and also that the main beneficiaries of the coup were Igbo, led the Northern part of the country to believe that it was an Igbo conspiracy. Though he tried to dispel this notion, by courting the aggrieved ethnic groups through political appointments and patronage, his failure to punish the coup plotters crystallised this conspiracy theory.

    In the wake of the January 15 coup d’état, there were tensions within the military. Quite apart from the shenanigan that led to the “civilian hand over”, the fundamental crisis of confidence within the military was borne out of the failure to try those behind the coup according to the dictates of military law. The Head of State reportedly became hostage not only to radical opinion in the media in the South that hailed the coup plotters as heroes, but also to the curious five-point agreement he had negotiated with Nzeogwu in Kaduna back on January 17.

    According to reports, the coup was investigated by the police and the report was ready by March. But, the panel was set up to review the report and come up with formal charges went to sleep; it never sat. Major Adewale Ademoyega corroborates the above in his book, Why We Struck, stating that each time the matter was brought up for discussion at the Supreme Military Council (SMC), that Colonel Fajuyi, the Governor of the West, was opposed to any trial.

    Meanwhile, there were allegations that the mutineers were being treated specially in prison. Thus, the failure to bring the mutineers and murderers to book gave a platform for the numerous military coups of the following years. It established the notion that a “successful” coup plotter would never be called to account for his actions. Nigeria paid the price for this in subsequent years, with coups becoming the fashionable way to change a government.

    Owing to increasing tensions in the land, former leading politicians in the Western and Eastern regions were detained on March 7, but those of the Northern region were left alone, because of political sensitivities resulting from the coup. Indeed, Aguiyi-Ironsi made an effort — ultimately insufficient — to pacify the North. He had appointed and promoted the son of the Emir of Katsina as the new military governor, released NPC ministers who were detained by Nzeogwu in Kaduna, reappointed Sule Katagum to the Public Service Commission and placed Malam Howeidy in charge of the defunct Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN).

    In May, among other promotions, he promoted three substantive northern Captains (Ibrahim Haruna of Ordnance, Murtala Muhammed of Signals and Mohammed Shuwa of Infantry) who were then acting Majors to the ranks of temporary Lt. Cols. But, he fell short on more culturally sensitive matters. For example, the military governor of the Northern Region, Major Hassan Katsina, was discouraged from attending the funeral of the late Prime Minister in Bauchi.

     

    Federal structure abrogated

     

    In a nationwide on May 24, he promulgated Decree 34, which turned the country into a unitary state. Decree The decree divided Nigeria into 35 provinces and made all civil servants part of a unified civil service. Three days after, students and civil servants took to the streets, to protest against this development. The regime was shaken by the riots; one of the precursors of the July 29 counter coup.

    Fifty years after, the after-effects of the January 1966 coup and the counter-coup in July are still haunting Nigeria. The succession of military regimes that followed was inevitably led by northern soldiers that carried out the 1966 counter-coup. The military ruled the country for 29 of the next 33 years, until the restoration of democracy in 1999.

    The civil war was spurred by the killing of about 30,000 Igbos by Northern mobs in revenge of the killings of the notable figures from the region murdered during the January coup. As a result, Igbos fled south. In 1967, they attempted to secede from Nigeria. Although the army successfully suppressed the rebellion, bitterness remains 50 years after. Observers say the current agitation for Biafra has its roots in the unaddressed grievances from 1966.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • “Cameron’s statement is true but politically incorrect”

    “Cameron’s statement is true but politically incorrect”

    A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), ‎Prof Fidelis Oditah, who is also a Queen’s Counsel, believes Cameron’s statement is true but politically incorrect and impolite.
    “The comment may be impolite and is politically incorrect because as far as we know, Nigeria and Britain are friendly nations.
    “I don’t think it’s good politics to make such a statement about an ally on the eve of the anti-corruption convention.
    “Much as it is diplomatically incorrect, I think that the substantive content of that comment is generally correct,” he said.
    Oditah does not think Nigeria should demand an apology from Downing Street following the prime minister’s remarks.
    “Is Nigeria not fantastically corrupt? Why should it demand an apology for speaking the truth? It may be impolite, but the fact is that the President said his agenda is to fight corruption to a standstill, and pretty much the first 12 months of his administration has been dominated by headlines of ‘corruption’. I don’t see why people should be so sensitive about the statement.
    “When I read the broadcast of Aguiyi Ironsi in relation to 1‎966 coup, he was talking about the need to rid the country of corruption. That’s 50 years ago. In January 1984 when Babangida/Buhari came to power, it was to rid the country of corruption. When Buhari has returned this time it is to rid the country of corruption.
    “I think that Nigerians should be happy that the British prime minister is telling them that Nigeria is ‘fantastically corrupt’ because the country is indeed fantastically corrupt,” he said.
    Oditah said there are still exceptional Nigerians who are not corrupt, therefore, he does not thing the statement is a characterisation of all citizens.
    “I think the statement has to be understood in that context. I don’t think he’s speaking about each of every of the 170 million Nigerians.
    “In general, the country is fantastically corrupt, both in the public and private sector. ‎I think that such statement should be understood to be addressing the generality,” he said.
    ‎A Constitutional lawyer, ‎Mr Ike Ofuokwu, believes Cameron’s statement did not take into consideration President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade.
    “What he said is true, but it is an undiplomatic statement. It is not a fair comment especially considering that this administration is putting a process in place and is working hard towards ridding the country of corruption.
    “For the first time, very top personalities are being charged to court and some are also refunding what they stole.
    “In that sense, it is not a fair comment to make at this time, but it is the truth and Nigerians have a duty to correct that perception,” Ofuokwu said.
  • Market elects new leaders tomorrow

    Market elects new leaders tomorrow

    AS peace finally returns to Aguiyi-Ironsi International Market, one of the over 32 sections within the popular Ladipo Auto Spares Market in Mushin, Lagos, its traders will elect their leaders tomorrow.

    The Chairman of Mushin Local Government, Hon Olatunde Babatunde Adepitan, urged the aspirants to ensure the stability and progress of the market.

    Adepitan, who spoke through the council’s manager, Mr. Rasaq Oladeji, at the market during the presentation of manifestoes by the aspirants, enjoined the traders to work towards ensuring peaceful atmosphere for buying and selling.

    The three chairmanship aspirants at the market, Festus Obinachi, Chris Akornonso and Cyril Onyemachi, The Nation learnt, have pledged to conduct themselves peacefully during and after the election.

     

  • History and moral of constitution making in Nigeria

    History and moral of constitution making in Nigeria

    Next Monday, the National Conference will reconvene for the final consideration and signing of its report. The prospect that the conference will have a happy ending looks rather bleak. And the reason is the same old one that has marred virtually every constitutional conference in the country since 1966; a dubious hidden agenda of self-service by the conveners.

    When President Goodluck Jonathan made a U-turn from his long-held rejection of a constitutional conference and suddenly announced early this year that he would convene one, there were widespread scepticisms, even cynicism, about his decision. Many, including this reporter, concluded it was to divert public attention away from his dismal performance and, at the same time, execute a Machiavellian sectional and self-succession agenda against the foreground of next year’s presidential election.

    Once again, it seemed the lesson that no such hidden agenda has succeeded since 1966 when the country’s first military regime sought to perpetuate itself, has been lost on those in power.

    Back in 1966, the first military Head of State, Maj.-Gen. JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, set up a Constitutional Study Group under the late Chief Rotimi “The Law” Williams barely a month after he came to power in January. However, even before the panel could settle down to study anything, the general took the unwise advice of a power-hungry cabal he had surrounded himself with and promulgated the Unification Decree in May, which turned the country into a unitary state under his jackboots. This led to his overthrow and assassination in July.

    Col. Yakubu Gowon, who took over, set up an Ad Hoc Conference on Constitutional Proposals, essentially to manage the crisis of his succession in the face of strong objections from Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military governor of Eastern Nigeria, who was nominally his senior. The conference ended in a fiasco in Aburi, Ghana, with each side accusing the other of bad faith in implementing its decisions.

    The disagreement eventually led to a three-year civil war that ended in 1970. After that Gowon announced he would end military rule in 1976. He changed his mind in 1974 when he not only said in the year’s Independence Day broadcast on October 1 that 1976 was “unrealistic”. He also failed to give a new date that was realistic.

    This led to his overthrow in July 1975. In his first Independence Day broadcast on October 1, the new Head of State, Brig. Murtala Mohammed, announced a five-item, four-year transition programme, the central pillar of which was a new constitution for the country. In February 1976, some disgruntled elements in the Army tried to overthrow his regime but failed. However, they succeeded in assassinating him.

    Despite this assassination, the new regime headed by Lt.-Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo kept faith with Gen. Mohammed’s transition programme and ended 13 years of military rule by handing over power to civilians on October 1, 1979. However, this was not before it had executed its own agenda of changing the country’s constitution from the parliamentary model bequeathed to it by its British colonial masters to an American-type presidential model in which the centre became all-powerful.

    The wisdom of this change, intended to check the country’s old centrifugal tendencies, has since become debatable. As Prof. Ben Nwabueze, SAN, the country’s foremost constitutional lawyer, who also played  a central role in drafting the 1979 Constitution said in a recent interview in Sunday Vanguard (March 20), this change seems to have led to the exact opposite of the framers’ good intentions.

    “We took 50 per cent of the concurrent list of matters (in the old constitution) and merged them to the exclusive list,” he said. “We also went to the residual matters, took almost 50 per cent and put it in the exclusive list. We took so many other things…It turned out that putting so much power at the centre was an invitation to disunity…The struggle for control of the centre with all that power led to disunity.”

    Whether the change was wise or not, the new presidential system under President Shehu Shagari lasted only 51 months. His ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) boasted that there were only two parties in the country; NPN and the military. Meaning, it could never lose any election to its civilian opposition. It went on to gratuitously rig the 1983 election – chances then were that it could still have won fair and square – so massively the military felt compelled to pick up its gauntlet as the only opposition party and threw it out on December 31, 1983, barely three months into its second term.

    The regime of Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, which took over from Shagari, said initially that a return to civil rule was not its priority. Less than two years after he came to power, he was overthrown by his army chief, Maj.-Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, in a bloodless palace coup in August 1985.

    Babangida, in turn, ran the longest transition programme in the country’s history and in the end was forced to “step aside” in August 1993, leaving behind his army chief, Gen. Sani Abacha, ostensibly to back up the interim government of Chief Ernest Shonekan he had cobbled together to remedy the huge constitutional crisis his inexplicable cancellation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, apparently won by Chief MKO Abiola, had created.

    Instead of backing up Shonekan, Abacha obliged very convenient calls from several so-called progressives for the overthrow of what they dubbed Babangida’s “contraption”, and sent the former UAC mogul packing in November 1993. But rather than hand over power to Abiola, as the “progressives” foolishly believed he would, the man predictably kept the power to himself.

    Five years after he overthrew Shonekan, the man tried to perpetuate himself by swapping his khaki for mufti through a political sleight of hand in which all the five parties his electoral commission had registered in the course of his transition programme, nominated him as their presidential candidate. However, before any election could hold, the man died a mysterious death.

    He was succeeded by his Chief of Defence Staff, Lt.-Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who, ironically, he had pencilled down for sack on the day he (Abubakar) became the head of state. Wisely, the new head of state refrained from stretching his luck and ran the shortest transition programme in the country’s history, lasting only 11 months; dutifully he handed over power on May 29, 1999 to a civilianised Gen. Obasanjo after he was pardoned for his conviction over a coup attempt against Abacha for which he served several years of a life sentence commuted from death sentence, and after he had won the presidential ticket of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which was essentially a two-horse race against Shagari’s deputy, Dr. Alex Ekwueme.

    Obasanjo served out his two terms of four years each, but soon forgot the lesson of his regime’s good faith during his first outing as the military head of state in 1976; he sought a third term half way through his second. Not only that, reminiscent of  NPN’s boast during the Second Republic, his party said it would rule Nigeria for the next 50 years, if not forever.

    Obasanjo’s third term agenda failed so miserably that today virtually all those who aided and abetted him have been denouncing him. Surprisingly (?) the loudest denunciation has come from his one-time Minister of Information and Political Adviser, Prof. Jerry Gana, a permanent resident in the country’s corridors of power.

    His former principal’s Constitutional Conference of 2005 came to grief, Gana said in an interview in Daily Sun (April 16), because the man was “greedy”! “I was,” he said, “the political adviser at the time and I happened to be one of the conveners…But just because of the issue of third term, which was not part of what we recommended, Obasanjo abandoned the whole thing. It was irresponsible, it was not proper, it was unfair…It was painful; it was an act of greed.”

    This, Gana said in the interview, which I am not aware he has repudiated, was something President Jonathan has assured Nigerians he would not contemplate with his own National Conference. “This president,” he said, “has said no Nigerian must come back and do this again. He told us…by the Grace of God this time round your recommendations will be implemented.”

    Gana is not alone among President Jonathan’s men who say they believe in his good faith. Senator Femi Okurounmu, hitherto a champion of Sovereign National Conference and chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee which recommended the shape and circumscribed terms of reference of the current National Conference, is another.

    “I think,” he said in an interview in the New Telegraph (March 17), “this administration, in all fairness, has tried to show it has no hidden agenda and I can say that as the chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Conference that if the government has a hidden agenda, I would be privy to it.”

    As we all now know, the newspapers have since given the lie, a big, big lie, to repeated denials by the president’s men that he had no hidden agenda in convening his own National Conference.  A 102-page document with presidential imprimatur written all over it, has since surfaced at the conference purporting to be the “Terms of Agreement of the Six Geo-political Zones in Nigeria.” This was reminiscent of the document Obasanjo’s men tried unsuccessfully to sneak into his 2005 conference in order to give him a third term.

    As with Obasanjo’s document, this one too has come with malicious intent towards one section of the country. It also contained the six-year, single-term tenure we all know is so very dear to our president.

    If I have bored you with this longish recap of the history of constitution making in the country since 1966, I am terribly sorry. But I thought the recap was necessary to make its moral apparent; virtually every constitutional conference in this country has come with a hidden agenda by its convener and virtually all of them have come to grief.

    I have no doubt in my mind that as members of the current one reconvene next Monday, this too shall come to pass because it too was never convened in good faith.

     

  • Remembering Ironsi and Fajuyi

    SIR: Where will Nigeria’s saviour come from? Politics which is meant to solve our perplexing troubles is now a tool to separate people. Decent and strong guidance is elusive; yet it is desired to change the mind-set of the average man on the street as well as the elite for national goals.

    Have we ever had a golden era? Yes! We have. General Aguiyi Ironsi and Col. Adekunle Fajuyi may not have been ideal democratic leaders but they both were committed to helping Nigeria move away from the nationalist sentimentalities of the numerous tribes that was and is still today tearing the country apart.

    Activists have asked if this country can ever produce great leaders of the same kind to the types they have read about in other climes who liberated their countries from anguishes. They reason that such leaders succeeded in their quest for development because they were altruistic, loved their country, and treated all and sundry with consideration, both by edict and example impressed upon on citizens.

    It is 47 years now since General Aguiyi Ironsi and Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, passed on to the other world. They lived a short life but left a mark that is hard to get rid of from our national landscape – together, they were blessed with the gift of loyalty.

    Thanks to Fajuyi’s sacrifice, for, in this country today, we have people who are grooming responsible citizens for the future. Fajuyi’s loss calls and bid us to fight biases with determination. If Nigerians stand up to fight against discrimination of women then it would be possible to have many more like Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Margaret Ekpo, Gambo Sawaba, Laila Dogonyaro,etc.

    Ironsi barnstormed the country in quest of peace and spoke about the need for it up until the day he died in Ibadan. He was not given to rhetoric; otherwise he would have remained in Lagos making announcements full of pseudo-patriotism. He went to the field uniting his troops to restore stability and sanity in the country.

    And even though his grip lay in the military, he was meek enough to consult widely in other areas. He was a skilled general, gentleman-officer, fluent in the English language, of unsullied character, and valued reason above narrow-minded interest and the unity of the country above personal self-seeking interest.

    The political class and army looked up to Ironsi for leadership and guidance against the background of riots, election-rigging, minority-people agitation and many more social problems in the land.

    May be his ‘oneness’ policy might have created a Nigeria where ingenuity, intelligence, a high sense of industry was the norm in all regions of the country and not the exception?

    Aguiyi Ironsi and Adekunle Fajuyi went into alignment with their true pristine self and saw life from an all-inclusive, rather than a fragmented perspective. They realized that as a people we shine more as ‘full moon’.

    `Major General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi and Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi practiced the religion of love to take Nigeria to loftiness unimagined and should have a memorial day, like Martin Luther King Junior, in their memory.

    • Simon Abah

    Port Harcourt

     

  • Normalcy back in market

    Normalcy back in market

    Normalcy is finally back in the popular Aguiyi-Ironsi Market, Mushin, Lagos as the traders that were forced out during a recent leadership tussle are back in their trade.

    They have praised government efforts at restoring peace in the market. One of them, Mr Okechukwu Imoh said he lost fortunes during the tussle.

    The Chairman, Mushin Local Government, Hon Olatunde Adepitan, said he visited the market to know if the traders were happy with the peace measures taken.

    He said the interim government in place would manage the market for six months, take the enumeration of traders and shops, clean the market, secure the facilities, restore peace and mutual trust, involve all stakeholders in the affairs of the market and organise peaceful election where all the traders will freely choose their leaders for a period allowed by the constitution.

  • Aguiyi-Ironsi: Igbo leaders blast Useni

    Aguiyi-Ironsi: Igbo leaders blast Useni

    SOME eminent Igbo leaders yesterday faulted revelations by Lt. General Jeremiah Useni, former Minister of Federal Capital Territory, on how northern military officers killed the late General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, Nigeria’s first military head of state. He was killed in the July 1966 counter-coup.

    Useni, in an interview published in The Nation yesterday, claimed that he was one of the soldiers who fired shots during the coup in which Aguiyi-Ironsi was killed. In the interview, he spoke of how the plot to topple the military government was hatched and executed by mainly northern military officers seeking revenge against the Igbo.

    The 1966 coup which toppled the civilian government in which the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafwa Balewa, Premier of the Northern Region and Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Premier of the Western Region, Chief Ladoke Akintola and several northern military leaders were killed, was perceived as a coup against the north.

    Colonel Joe Achuzia, former Biafran army commander, dismissed Useni’s accounts as unreliable. According to him, the former minister was not relevant in the scheme of things during the Aguiyi-Ironsi era.

    He said, “I don’t react to such nonsense as the one you said came from Jerry Useni. It is not in my character to make statements on documents or statements I have not seen or read as the case may be.

    “However, people like Useni are not in any position to give any reliable account. He was a junior officer who was not in reckoning in the army until the mass recruitment done in preparation for the Nigerian civil war. His account can never be anything reliable. It cannot be correct. At most, it will be very, very wrong,” Achuzia said.

    In his own reaction, Chief Ralph Uwazurike, leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), accused Useni of intentionally fanning the embers of discord ahead of the 2015 presidential election in the country.

    “I like what Jerry Useni has said. It is a good revelation that reinforces the fact that Nigeria was built on distrust right from the word go. The whole polity called Nigeria was conceived and delivered on distrust between the north and the south. We know this all the while but Useni’s confession merely confirms our fears over how our brother was murdered.”

    According to him, northerners saw themselves as brothers united against the south. It was not about religion but a north versus south divide. “They conspired and murdered Aguiyi-Ironsi simply because he was an Igbo man who rose to become the Head of State. That is why MASSOB is saying there is no basis for us to remain in the entrapment called Nigeria. With this kind of revelation, what is the basis for our remaining in the country called Nigeria? We want to be allowed to go our separate way because Nigeria is built on distrust.”

    He accused Useni of fanning the embers of war at all cost. “They want the country to erupt in chaos ahead of 2015. He is reminding us of how they murdered our brother in cold blood based on distrust. He expects us to be happy reading all he said. Boko Haram is killing our brothers even now, based on the same distrust. Yet they want a united Nigeria.”

    For Dr. Chinweoke Mbadinuju, former Governor of Anambra State, Useni should be cautioned against waking up the past that is not very pleasant. Doing this, he warned could re-open old wounds that are better left to heal.

    “I don’t know what he wants to achieve by all he said. The statements were very unfortunate and unnecessary. We need peace in this country. No need to wake up the past that is not very glorious.

    “I would have said more, but the truth of the matter is that it is not good to ascribe too much to inglorious past especially now that Nigeria is at the stage it is now politically. It is bad now that seven northern governors are looking for trouble in the PDP.”

    And according to the submission of Nduka Eya, former Secretary-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, the consciences of people like Useni, who had hands in the killings of prominent Igbo sons and daughters during the dark days of Nigeria’s history, must be haunting them.

    “Even though I am yet to read the said interview, I can say maybe his conscience is haunting him,” Eya said.

    Mazi Okwu Okwu, Secretary of the Board of Trustee (BoT) of the Ohaneze Youth Council, said Useni should be ashamed of his involvement in the killing of Aguiyi-Ironsi and other gallant officers of the Nigerian Army.

    “If Useni is importing heroism into his action, then it means he lacks any element of human feeling. At a time when his co-travellers are writing books and granting interviews to express their regrets over this same incident, Useni is busy celebrating his callous nature.

    “To me, here is a man who is on his own in his failure to realise that the misdeeds of the past account for many of the troubles we face today as a nation. He is a fish out of water. He should be pitied,” Okwu said.