January 15, 1966: 50 years after

BY fixing the date of handover of instruments of surrender from the humbled Republic of Biafra to Nigeria after a 30-month civil war that took thousands of lives on both sides on January 15, 1970, perhaps the stakeholders wanted to make a statement that whatever damage was done to the polity exactly four years earlier on January 15, 1966, which was actually the major precursor of the crisis, could be undone.

But 50 years after the putsch that killed many major players in the country’s political field, the gunshots still reverberate across Nigeria, the effects of the coup are yet to wear off and the issues raised by it are still unresolved even as the country grapples with its fallouts.

The young middle-level officers who planned the military take-over may have been driven by their patriotism and inspiration drawn from fallouts of revolutionary ideology sweeping the globe at the time, making them to offer themselves as the vehicles of change.
Blinded by radical enthusiasm and feeling of despondency that the young nation was being led on a path of destruction by its first crop of leaders, the revolutionaries followed the emerging trend in Africa signposted by military putsch sweeping away early political leaders.

Three years earlier in the neigbouring West African countries of Dahomey and Togo, there had been change of governments and few days earlier, the leaderships of David Dacko and Maurice Yameogo were violently overthrown in Central African Republic and Burkina Faso, then known as Upper Volta.

But the Nigerian coupists certainly did not envisage that their midnight operations during which prominent political leaders and senior military officers were killed, would continue to define the course of nationhood, fifty years after.
Because of the delicate ethnic balancing of the country, which was not as pronounced as it is today, what was planned, at least according to the accounts of the coupists, to be a pan-Nigeria affair, ended up being the major cause of the cracks in national unity and hindrance on the nation’s charted path to greatness.

Bello

In what was perceived by its opponents as ethnic colouration, the Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, Northern Premier, Ahmadu Bello, Western Premier, Ladoke Akintola, an ally of the North and senior military officers who were almost limited to the North and the West, were killed but some Igbo political and military officers were allegedly left alive.

And instead of calming frayed nerves, the major beneficiary of the putsch, General Aguiyi Ironsi, either by omission or commission, attempted through the contentious Unification Decree, to centralize the country’s administration even as he made no visible attempt to prosecute the January mutineers, an action that further deepened the anger of northern officers.

Perhaps if they had applied the principle of federal character in their composition and execution of their plan, the country could have been spared the agonizing consequences of their action although, in some accounts, a more nationalistic reason of freeing detained Chief Obafemi Awolowo and installing him as the leader of the country, was given.

What was planned to be a solution to the perceived drift in the polity at the time incidentally ended up being the very source of acrimony that caused the dismemberment of the country six months later when a counter-coup was staged by Northern elements who initially were said to be bent of drifting away from Nigeria.

That the country is still grappling with the issues raised by the January coupists as the reasons for their action in even larger scales today, showed their myopia about the politics and consequences of their actions.

Leader of the coup, Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, in his broadcast where he declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution, justified the putsch by stating, “The aim of the Revolutionary Council is to establish a strong united and prosperous nation, free from corruption and internal strife.”

But corruption has grown in such a scary scale and has permeated every level of the society that it is now described as the major clog in the wheel of the country’s progress while the “internal strives” of those days have become a child’s play, first to the pogrom and the resultant 30-month civil war and later to the internecine communal clashes and political distrusts that have come to be identified with Nigeria today.

He said to Nigerians, “Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 percent; those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds.
“Like good soldiers we are not promising anything miraculous or spectacular. But what we do promise every law abiding citizen is freedom from fear and all forms of oppression, freedom from general inefficiency and freedom to live and strive in every field of human endeavour, both nationally and internationally. We promise that you will no more be ashamed to say that you are a Nigerian.”

But corruption has grown in such a scary scale and has permeated every level of the society that it is now described as the major clog in the wheel of the country’s progress while the “internal strives” of those days have become a child’s play, first to the pogrom and the resultant 30-month civil war and later to the internecine communal clashes and political distrusts that have come to be identified with Nigeria today.

Akintola

The “big men” have moved from taking ten percent to the whole pie and more than ever, they continue to engage in acts “to keep them permanently in office” while freedom from oppression has continued to elude Nigerians.

Every coup speech since Nzeogwu’s, has addressed corruption and indiscipline in high places as its major reason and several attempts are still being made to pull back the country from the edge of the precipice where it is always dragged by circumstances that are continually fuelled by the issues raised in the first coup.

The replacement of the original centrifugal system of federalism where the four federating units of the time were developing, each at its own pace with a measure of limited independence, by the command structure of the military and its centripetal administration, destroyed the very foundation of the country’s politics.

The federating units were balkanized, a development that further exacerbated the ethnic lines of a multi-national country that was programmed to derive strength in its diversity thereby stressing more on divisive tendencies.

The current agitation for restructuring of the polity, which latest attempt was the last 2014 National Conference convoked by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, was one of the echoes of the results of military take-over of governance in Nigeria.

If the democratic journey had not been halted by the January, 1966 intervention that foisted, in the first instance, a 13-year military rule on Nigeria, perhaps the country would have gotten over the hiccups of a democracy that is still being haunted by the ghost of military dictatorship even after 16 years of unbroken civilian rule.