Fifty years ago, the late Lt. Col Victor Banjo, the 16th Nigerian to be commissioned into the Nigerian Army, was publicly executed reportedly on the orders of the late Ikemba Nnewi, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, who was then the Military Head of the secessionist Biafra Republic. He was an Ijebu from Ogun State but died fighting on the Biafran side during the Nigerian civil war.
Banjo was before his death, in detention on allegations that he took part in the January 1966 coup, was released by Ojukwu when the war broke out and convinced to lead part of the Liberation Army, which went on the offensive against the Nigerian Army and got as far as Benin, in present day Edo State. Banjo was to declare another republic upon having Benin under his control.
In this interview with Dare Odufowokan, Assistant Editor, his daughter, Mrs. Olayinka Omigbodun, a Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Ibadan, recalls how Banjo’s young family was thrown into disarray upon his arrest and detention. She also lamented what she described as the unjust treatment meted out to her father while explaining why she thinks Ojukwu killed his friend, her father.
How does it feel remembering the events that led to the reported execution of your father (Lt. Col. Victor Banjo)?
First and foremost, I must express gratitude to God for keeping us alive and well all these years. Despite the fact that we lost our father while still so young, God has kept us to see this day. We are four children, two boys, two girls. I am the third. We’ve all been able to go through school and acquire degrees. All of us are alive and healthy.
I thank God for the kind of parents he gave me. Our father died 50 years ago and our mum 20 years ago. She was a widow for 30 years before she also went to be with the Lord. I am proud of them. It was 30 years of struggle and difficulty, but with our late mother determined to fulfil her promise to our dad, we made it.
My mum was a Creole from Sierra Leone. She gave us the best possible life any child can ask for. We didn’t have money growing up but we had love and security in abundance. However, I still feel that pain that 50 years after my dad’s death, we do not have any official notification about his death from his employers.
I also feel pained that my father has been treated very unjustly by the people who arrested him, people who kept him in prison, who took his things and had not returned those things even up till now. And by those who treated his immediate family so unjustly by denying us so much while keeping our father unjustly in prison.
But I still believe in this nation. I had the choice of staying elsewhere than coming to live and work in Nigeria. I spent years in the United States and the United Kingdom training and schooling. I have had the opportunity to lead international organizations abroad. I’ve been severally offered opportunities to apply for international jobs. But I am a firm believer in Nigeria. And people close to me will tell you that I am passionate about this country. I am actively involved in nation building irrespective of what the country did to my father.
How easy was it for your mum to train four of you after your father’s incarceration and eventual death?
It wasn’t in anyway easy. It was rough for her. She bore the brunt of the brutality of this nation. She went through the harrowing experience of living in an unjust society. She got no widow’s pension. She got no help. In fact, all my father’s things were taken away from her. She struggled for help and received none. But God was there for her. She focused on the task of raising her children and God helped her.
At the end of her sojourn here on earth, she had practically nothing. But she had raised four secured children. And I think that is the greatest legacy anybody could leave behind.
Many reasons have been given for what Ojukwu did to your father. But as his child, why do you think your father was executed by his erstwhile bosom friend?
I never had the opportunity to meet one on one with Ojukwu before he died. But from my father’s letters which he wrote to us from prison and from what my mum told us, Ojukwu was my father’s friend. They were one of the very few graduates in the Nigerian army at the time, so they were close. I really don’t know why he decided to kill his friend.
But from what I gathered like I said from my dad’s letters and the many things I read about the incident, my father was a patriot who meant well for this country. He also meant well for the Igbo. In fact, from some of his letters to my mother back then, he spoke out clearly against the massacre of the Igbo back then. His letter of November 14, 1966, which is on page 128 of the book I published for him, he lamented the killings going on in the east.
He said he would not change the principles he lived for. He said justice and fairness to all should be the basis on which the country should be based on. He said he cannot fail to condemn what he described as the vindictive and vengeful killings of Easterners. He warned that unless the killing stops, the bloodshed will be prolonged for a longer time. He warned the Yoruba of the West not to keep quiet on the killings saying they must not think that they are temporarily safe.
So, I will say, just like my brother said in one of his write-ups on the social media, Ojukwu used my father as a scapegoat. That is the only imaginable reason why he wasted such a fine soldier and loving father. In September 1967, the Liberation Army, which my father led, had retreated to Enugu and Ojukwu needed to explain the defeats he was suffering to the people of Biafra.
Why do you think he did that to his friend?
He conveniently blamed Banjo and three other men. Lt. Col Ifeajuna, Alele and one other for sabotaging the Biafran efforts. He needed to tell the people who were losing faith in him something new as a reason for the defeats. His fear about the imminent fall of Enugu was also driving him to do something. So, on trumped up charges, my father and three other men were tried by a Kangaroo court and killed by firing squad in 1967.
The trial did not reveal any evidence linking Banjo with any act of treason against Ojukwu or the Biafran government. In fact, it took a second military tribunal to convict Banjo because the first tribunal stated that the evidence presented to it was insufficient to prove Banjo’s guilt in the case. Unsatisfied and not ready to let my father off the hook, Ojukwu constituted another tribunal speedily.
Apparently, it was a clear case of sacrificing someone as a scapegoat because while my father was looking forward to assisting Ojukwu further with the Biafran war in spite of the huge risk and sacrifice involved for him as a person, Ojukwu was looking for a way of implicating him for sabotage so as to retain the control of the region. Ojukwu betrayed my father by killing him.
It was clear from his letters that my father has been assisting Ojukwu even while he did not believe in the secession. His idea, based on the letters he wrote to my mother, was to fight against, and remove the northern domination of other parts of the country and ensure a free, fair and equitable country where no arm is dominating the others.
And you don’t think his not agreeing in the secession was a reason he got into trouble with Ojukwu?
Well, they were friends and friends disagree. They probably must have disagreed on that before then because my father never hid his patriotism. But again, I was told that hours after the execution, Enugu fell. I am a Professor. Human beings are very fickle. We are wont to always look for excuses. For scapegoats; so, my father was simply the sacrifice.
He knew my father was up for one Nigeria. Even before drafting him into the war on his side, he knew my father was a patriot who wanted one united Nigeria. After the war we left Nigeria for Sierra Leone but my mother brought us back because my father, in his letters, had insisted we must be raised as Nigerians. So, his patriotism was never in doubt. Ojukwu merely executed him to cover up his own failures as a leader of the war.
What memories do you have of your late father?
I have very little in terms of direct memory of him. My father was arrested even before I was three. Although we got to meet him when I was four years old when he was under house arrest in Enugu sometimes in March 1967. But my mother spoke a lot about him. And then, one of the greatest legacies my father left behind were his letters to my mum. Through these letters, I got to know who he was. His letters are rich and deep. Some of them are even in French.
He spoke on many issues in his letters to my mum. He spoke of deep affection; loyalty; adoration to his family and wife’s anguish at the situation in the country etc. He was a very deep and brilliant man. He was a talent wasted. The memories I have are all mixed up. These are memories of what my mother said and the ones I had of him as a child. And then what I have read from his letters. Above all, he is somebody I have grown to be very proud of.
Was your father really part of a coup for which he was arrested?
My father was a solid patriot who will not be a coup plotter. He did not know of, and did not participate in the January 1966 coup for which he was arrested and imprisoned. And it is painful that up till now, nothing has been done to exonerate him of this allegation in spite of the fact that those who participated had severally said publicly that Lt. Col. Banjo was not part of them.
I was travelling and I sat beside a man. And immediately he knew I was Banjo’s daughter, he said I know him. The man who participated in the 1966 coup. My father was not party to the coup. The authorities know this. Ex Head of State Gen Yakubu Gowon knows this. He is still alive and able to say the truth if he cares about saying the truth for posterity’s sake.
In a letter he wrote to gen Gowon from prison on June 19, 1967, my father said very clearly that it was obvious that the then leadership didn’t want him out of prison so as to contribute his quota to national development. He pointedly accused Gowon and his other colleagues of plotting against him by keeping him in jail even when they were aware of his innocence. Gowon is still around to deny this if I am lying.
Then there is Major Adewale Ademoyega, one of those who planned the coup, who wrote in his book, Why We Struck, that; “also in detention were Lt. Col. Banjo and Major Aganya, both of whom had not taken part in the revolution.” Those were the exact words of Ademoyega in his book. Gowon and others were aware of this long before Ademoyega wrote.
But Gowon later became the Head of State. Why didn’t he release your dad?
After Gowon was installed as Head of State, my father made several overtures to him for his release. But Gen. Gowon refused to release him even though he knew he was not part of the coup. The only concession he gave was that Banjo could be transferred to a prison in Lagos if he so wished. My father rejected the offer.
Even when my father wrote Ironsi from prison in Ikot Ekpene, on June 1, 1966, he was wondering what on earth he did to warrant being imprisoned. He faulted the way he was being treated and asked for justice, fairness and loyalty from Ironsi as a loyal officer. He saw his detention as a grievous crime against him. He pleaded his innocence and asked to be released. There is really no basis for tagging him as a ‘coupist’. I sincerely think setting the records straight is one of the things Nigeria, and the likes of Gen. Gowon, owe us as his family and children.
It is very painful for us not knowing how he ended really. Not knowing where his remains are. Not even the exact date of his death. We only read in the book of a foreign journalist who had witnessed his execution of the date and circumstances. Beyond that, there is little or nothing to prove how he ended. This is very sad.
We need a closure of some sort. You know when someone dies and he is committed to mother earth that is some closure. But for us as young children back then, we were not sure whether he was dead or still coming back. And 50 years after, we still don’t have a closure. That is really very painful and unbearable in a way. It is still bad that there is no notification about his death. I don’t feel that is right
When Ojukwu released him, why didn’t he leave the country instead of joining the Biafran Army?
He made effort. But his papers were with gen. Gowon which he refused to give him. And I read somewhere that Ojukwu, who wanted someone that will be counselling him, convinced him to stay. He must have really been in conflict at that time whether to stay or join us abroad. He loved his country, so I am not surprised he chose to stay. Ojukwu was his friend, don’t forget.
It was tough like I said growing up without him. Though my mother ensured we survived the tough times, there was a big drop in our social standing and our finances. I remember being in school and some children were served milk while we couldn’t afford it. We just watched while others drank the milk. Looking back now, I could imagine what it was like. We had to live on the meagre resources my mum could garner. This is why we are saying the authorities should do the right thing by correcting the impression about our father, we need an official statement on him. He is N16, meaning he was the 16th officer commissioned into the Nigerian Army. He deserved to be better treated.
All we knew and still know is that he was arrested on Monday, January 17, 1966 when he went to work. My mother and I were sad to watch the heroic reception given Ojukwu, the man who killed my father in 1982 when he returned from exile. He also got a state burial upon his death in 2011. We couldn’t understand what manner of country this is.
How did your mother cope with the situation back then?
My mother died 20 years ago, but before her death, she made some requests and those remains our request even today. These requests are in a letter my mother wrote to Gen Yakubu Gowon on May 31, 1972, two years after the civil war ended. Gen. Gowon was then the Head of State. She requested the return of my father’s safe, removed personally by Gen. Gowon from 21B Cooper Road Ikoyi on Monday, January 17, 1976. In the safe were some vital documents and belongings of my father and his immediate family. We want that back because it will go a long way in helping us catch up on those times.
She also asked for the return of some land papers and money as well as my father’s cars namely a Mercedez Benz WAL 720 and another car. She wrote the number too. She also asked for the death certificate of my father. So, we call on the authorities to help out with these so we can have these things to cherish about our dear father who was unjustly sacrificed by this country.
And personally, I have a lot of unanswered questions. Why is my father still being tied up with the January 1966 coup? Why was my father arrested at all? Even when it was clear to the then Head of State, that my father wasn’t part of the coup, why did he choose to leave my father in prison? Gen. Gowon took the steel cabinet from our home, why hasn’t he returned the cabinet? When exactly did my father die? Where are his remains? I seek answers to these questions. And someone like Gen Gowon is still around to help out with answers to these questions and many more.
