The end of the revolution
Excerpts from WHY WE STRUCK by Major Adewale Ademoyega; an active participant’s account by one of the prime movers of the military coup
The end of the revolution
What Ironsi promised Nzeogwu was that the latter would be coopted into the Military Government in Lagos, so that he would have a hand in the reshaping of the destiny of Nigeria. If this promise had been kept, Nzeogwu would have seen to it that all of us regained our positions in the Army, and that we also took part in bringing revolutionary ideas to the government. In such a case, revisionism and reaction would have been curtailed and the repercussions of inaction that occurred under the regime of Ironsi would have been staved off. But Ironsi had no intention of keeping his promise to Nzeogwu and he never did.
Before Nzeogwu left Kaduna, we appraised the situation and agreed that all would not be lost if he partook of the Military Government in Lagos. We also agreed that all would not be lost if Ironsi observed the five conditions agreed upon. Therefore, we all shared a note of optimism before Nzeogwu left the Mess on the morning of the 20th, for the Brigade Headquarters in Kaduna.
At the Brigade Headquarters, a short ceremony was staged. There was a parade. Nzeogwu took the salute and formally handed over the reins of the Government of Northern Nigeria to Lieutenant-Colonel Hassan Katsina. It was a public ceremony. The press, the radio and the television were present, together with the world press. Hassan made a brief speech in praise of Nzeogwu. He lauded the selflessness of his fight and principles.
He also promised to stand by those principles and purpose for which Nzeogwu fought. After that, he embraced Nzeogwu and both of them parted as comrades-in-arm. Nzeogwu went from there to the airport and flew to Lagos.
But as he landed in Lagos, unlike the warm embrace that Hassan gave him and contrary to all the assurances given on the telephone and personally through Colonel Nwawo, Nzeogwu landed into the harsh, cold and menacing embrace of guns. A whole 84 mm Carl Gustav anti-tank Recoiless Rifle, the type that he had used to destroy Sardauna’s castle, was mounted upon a Land Rover and was fully charged and cocked and pointed at him. In addition, several machine guns and rifles were also mounted and cocked and pointed at him. Even if Nzeogwu had a plane full of armed soldiers to fight for him, he would still have found himself fully overwhelmed by the amount of weapons that were got ready for him in Lagos.
Whereas, Nzeogwu had simply travelled in non-combat military dress and completely unarmed. Even Nwawo ,who promised Nzeogwu a heaven of safety, was now ashamed that he had brought his so-called friend into this shameful situation. Of course, there is no value in a promise made by an enemy. Ironsi and Gowon organized those hardware of a welcome and thereby showed themselves to be paramount and incorrigible enemies of the revolution.
Nzeogwu behaved himself and was not shot. He was escorted straight from the airport to the maximum security prison in Kirikiri to join those officers and men of his revolution who had already been arrested, beaten up, tortured, and detained there.
With the arrest and detention of Nzeogwu, the revolution could be said to have ended. What remained was the hunt for the few members of the revolution who were still in freedom. These included Anuforo and myself. We were still in Kaduna but did not resume our military duties because we were being hunted for detention. Also, hunted were Onwatuegwu and Ude, both of whom had resumed their normal duties at the NMTC Kaduna. Ifeajuna was also at large. Unkown to us at that time, he had driven straight from the Federal Guards’ Officer’s Mess towards Abeokuta without waiting at our rendezvous. Having passed Otta, he stopped somewhere along the road, took the arrested Prime Minister into the bush and had him shot.
After that, he drove straight to Enugu where he parked his Mercedes Benz car and bade farewell to Don Okafor. Then, a personal friend of his and poet, Chris Okigbo was said to have driven him to the Nigeria-Dahomey border which is close to Lagos from where he journeyed to Ghana. In Ghana he was received in audience by the Osagyefo, Kwame Nkrumiah who was said to have been delighted that the feudalistic and retrogressive Balewa Government of Nigeria had been overthrown. He therefore gave Ifeajuna political asylum and lodged him with Sam G. Ikoku, who himself was a fugitive from the tyranny of the Balewa Government. It was not until Nkrumah had been overthrown by the Afrifa coup of February 24,1966 and a new military government which was friendly to the Ironsi Government of Nigeria came to power that Ifeajuna was forced out and returned to Nigeria. By then all his revolutionary colleagues had been detained and Ifeajuna was sent to join us in detention.
It was Ifeajuna’s unilateral, personal and short-sighted flight to Ghana that made the propagandists of Gowon’s regime to spread the false notion that our coup was sponsored by Ghana. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Much as many of us admired the militant anti-imperialism and Pan-Africanism of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, we certainly realized that he was a bourgeois revolutionary. He was by no means a soldier statement, the type that Nasser was, who could inspire young military revolutionaries as we were. Nkrumah to my mind, was not really a socialist. At best he was a totalitarian welfarist. He did not mobilise or educate the masses of Ghana. If our own revolution had taken off, we really would have had very little in common with Nkrumah except the idea of Pan-Africanism which was not peculiar to him and which he pursued in his own personal and self-aggrandising manner. Ifeajuna did not return to Nigeria until late March 1966 by which time the revolutionary child which he helped to conceive and which he did so much to bring to life had died.
Anuforo left for Enugu to see his family. Over there, he met Major Chkwuka who had not been allowed to return to his former duty in Lagos but was being hunted. Before long, both were invited to the Army Barracks where they were arrested and sent to Lagos for detention at Kirikiri. Two weeks after the arrest of Nzeogwu, Onwuatuegwu and I were invited to the Police Headquarters in Kaduna. Believing that I was extremely dangerous, the British police officer in charge summoned me to a special room. Then called a few policemen who were in mufti and winked to them. They suddenly surrounded me and dealt heavy blows on me. I did not struggle with them. They pushed me to the floor and pressed me down. I thought they would produce a knife and cut my throat but they ransacked my pockets and pants and gleefully declared, “no weapons.” After that, they chained my hands, took me to a waiting Land Rover to which Onwuatuegwu was also brought, chained but not assaulted. We were flown to Lagos and detained inside the maximum security Kirikiri prison. Captain Ude was quietly arrested and sent to the same prison to join us. Thus, the first revolutionary child of Nigeria died completely. But why did it die?
Four important reasons were responsible for this. The first was the fickleness of some of us who planned and executed the coup. An officer like Don Okafor was from the ranks. He joined the Army in 1951 and was not commissioned until 1960. As such, he had spent the longer part of his career in the ranks and had developed the conservative attitude. It would have been different if he grasped the principles of revolutionism and was himself fundamentally revolutionary. He was the commander of the Federal Guards by appointment and that made his consent to the revolution invaluable. I had always been sceptical about his ability to perform. On more than three different occasions, I expressed my doubts to Ifeajuna and suggested that he put a more dynamic officer in charge of such a sensitive duty as arresting the GOC.
I even volunteered myself, but he was adamant. He claimed that he was sure that Okafor would do that assignment faithfully and that in any case, he had a Captain to help him. More than any thing else, it was the failure of Okafor’s mission that cost us the loss of Lagos and consequently, of the revolution. All the same, it must be admitted that if Ironsi was away from his residence and heard shooting going on elsewhere, he might not return home but act exactly as he did. In that case, it was Okafor’s misfortune to have missed his most important target.
The next most important cause of our failure was the behaviour of Ifeajuna himself. Having seen that Ironsi had got loose and was already raising troops against us, Ifeajuna too Okafor with him and both of them suddenly disappeared from our midst. This raised the serious question of whether or not there was a common collusion between the two of them and whether Okafor’s failure to arrest the GOC was not a case of deliberate or wilful omission.
To my mind and to be quite honest, Ifeajuna should have been angry with Okafor the same way that I was angry with him. Then, if Ifeajuna had been faithful to me like I was to him, he should have stuck to me and both of us together would have planned the next line of action. This ought to be the natural course of things because Ifeajuna and I had worked together alone on this Lagos sector project for the previous three months and more or less to the exclusion of the other majors who were brought in individually as the need for them arose. Why the sudden change of front? This matter later brought a serious argument between myself and Ifeajuna when were both detained together at the Uyo Prison. That was in early April 1966, a few weeks after he had been repatriated to Nigeria. This argument became so serious that both of us exchange blows and it was Dr. Mbanugo, then a political detainee in same prison, who separated us. After the fight, we came together and became friends again.
The action of Ifeajuna on the morning of the coup was definitely questionable, but he could hardly be blamed for treachery. It seemed more like a weakness of character. After all, he successfully carried out his own tasks and part of Okafor’s task. That was excellent. It only remained for both of us, together to solve another of Okafor’s problems.
Actually, by the time we were preparing for the coup, Ifeajuna was holding such a sensitive post in the Army that within our own group, he was the pivot on whom the Lagos operation turned. Since I was privy to all his plans and he kept no secret from me, I rule out treachery. Probably after doing his own bit, the next action seemed too much for him and he suddenly chose to seek safety in flight. If that was the case, he must be forgiven because he is now dead.
As for Don Okafor, I have already expressed something about his shortcomings. But those who would rather accuse him of double-dealing should ask themselves why did the same Okafor fail to arrest Brigadier Maimalari? I feel sure that even Alex Maidiebo, the arch-reactionary who saw red in the Lagos revolutionaries, could not give a cogent reason for the failure of Don Okafor “to deal with Maimalari” as he (Madiebo) claimed that Okafor had boasted. As for me, I did not hear Okafor making such a boast but I cannot swear to it that he did not make it. He was not that closer to me. In conclusion, I would say that Don Okafor was just incompetent to carry out such revolutionary tasks as were given to him and that choosing him for such delicate tasks was totally unfortunate. It accounted in no small measure for our loss of Lagos and the consequent loss of the revolution.
CONCLUSION
The third reason for the death of the revolution was the preponderance of the forces of reaction. Why was it that there were very few senior officers in the planning and execution of the revolution? Simply because the upper echelon of the officer corps was crowded with reactionaries and revisionists. There were no less than seventy Nigerian officers in the ranks of majors and above by October 1965, but less than ten were ready and willing to take part in the revolution. The remainder were either nonchalant or totally apathetic. Of the ten that were ready and willing to take part, only seven were really revolutionary and willing to work for the building of a new social order.
The only senior revolutionary officer who was not brought into the planning at all was Lieutenant-Colonel Banjo. This was because he held the view that the revolution should have a broad military base and an initial political base. On the contrary, I believed that any attempt to broaden the base or initiate political support would compromise the security of the planning and lead to our utter destruction. My stand was vindicated a few months later when during the civil war, Banjo planned to invade Ibadan but first of all made contact and preparation through civilians. His planning was compromised and the whole effort wasted.
Nevertheless, it is still consistently alleged that some civilians helped us with the planning or with the coup. Let me declare it categorically here and now that the allegation is totally false and had no basis. Our outlook, programme and motivation did not call for the participation of civilians at the formative stage.
As for Lieutenant-Colonel Fajuyi, he would have been immensely useful to us if he was around. As our preparations warmed up, it was no longer possible to make contact with him, and so he did take part. All the same, when he later joined Ironsi’s military government as the Governor of the Western Region, he remained the one unwavering spokesman for the coup and for the revolutionary officers. His singular stand became so well known that we, in detention, knew it when Hassan reportedly turned round and dubbed Fajuyi an “Action Grouper”, thus earmarking him for elimination, come their July 29, 1966, counter-coup.
It was the preponderance of reaction and conservatism among the senior Army officers that made our revolution to receive little or no support amongst them after our first strike. It was the preponderance of reaction around Nzeogwu that check-mated his desire to further the cause of the revolution after his initial success. It was the preponderance of reaction that made it easy for the reactionaries to fold up our revolution even without striking a blow against us. It was as if we moved a motion in a gathering of senior officers, while the junior officers were standing around in the gallery watching. Our motion, of course, was revolutionary and popular. Hence, the junior officers cheered and applauded and rejoiced in support, shouting, “fire, fire, fire”.
The older ones who were really occupying the floor, frowned in consternation and the chairman, knowing the feeling of the house, said, “In that case, let us put it to the vote.” It was put to vote; we were overwhelmingly defeated. So, we agreed to fold it up.
The fourth reason for the failure of the revolution was that Nigeria was not yet ready for it. This was easy to see. The preponderance of reaction in the Army simply reflected the preponderance of reaction in the country. Those Army officers who worked resolutely to destroy our revolution were typical Nigerians. They were very much like their civilian counterparts. But the young officers were different. They were enthusiastic for change, and they would carry on the revolutionary flame as long as they were rightly channelled along the path of it. That was the reason why I was confident that we would have succeeded if we had fought from Kaduna. We would then have eliminated both the men and forces of opposition and revision.
It was also for this reason that Nzeogwu declared that we were prepared to lose “a million” men to ensure the success of our revolution. We would certainly have won, even if we had to sacrifice a lot. To succeed in such a circumstance in their own country, Russians, with only about twice the Nigerians’ population, sacrificed more than two million people. China, in their own turn, sacrificed several millions.
Now, leaving the Army officers alone, why was it that the average Nigerian was concerned first and foremost for himself and next for his family? Why was it that the usual attitude of the Nigerian is to grab and grab and grab? Why was it that the Nigerian does not care about things that did not touch him personally? While the people on top used their power to benefit themselves and their families, why did the people below aspire to do no more than get to the top simply to follow suit?
CONCLUDED