“The 1966 Coup, Not Igbo Coup” – IBB

Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida has made an assertion that alters most people’s view of the 1966 military coup in Nigeria. IBB made some assertions. In what felt like a peace statement in his newly launched memoir, A Journey in Service, IBB asserted that the 1966 failed coup which was termed the Igbo coup led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was more a Hausa coup than an Igbo.

Buttressing his point, he wrote: “For instance, the head of the plotters, Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, was only Igbo in name. Born and raised in Kaduna, his immigrant parents were from Okpanam in today’s Delta State, which, in 1966, was in the old mid-western region. Nzeogwu spoke fluent Hausa and was as ‘Hausa’ as any! He and his original team probably thought, even if naively, that they could turn things around for the better in the country.”

Additionally, IBB noted that Nzeogwu was heinously callous to have murdered Sir Ahmadu Bello and his wife, Hafsatu, not only because they were adored by many but also because they were said not to have fought back. Kaduna’s action, recounted the former military leader, led to the “infiltration of the putsch by ‘outsiders’ as opposed to its supposed original intention.”

Recounting what happened over thirty years ago, the military head observed that the whole essence of the coup was to install Obafemi Awolowo as president, “it took on an unmistakably ethnic colouration, compounded by the fact that there were no related coup activities in the Eastern region.”

Further, IBB wrote that it was important to bear in mind that Igbos who were far away from the coup also died. For instance, continued IBB, “Lt-Col. Arthur Chinyelu Unegbe, was brutally gunned down. As a disciplined and strict officer who, as the Quartermaster-General of the Army, was also in charge of ammunition, weapons, equipment, vehicles, and other vital items for the Army, the coup plotters feared that he might not cooperate with them.”

Additionally, IBB also asserted that some non-Igbo officers, like Major Adewale Ademoyega, Captain Ganiyu Adeleke, Lts Pola Oyewole, and Olafimiha, partook in the failed coup. On the other hand, part of those who ensured that the coup didn’t succeed was “another officer of Igbo extraction, Major John Obienu.” This analysis puts into perspective what the coup was like and the wrong assumptions that followed it, especially in the aspect of ethnic coloration.

Polishing his fact, IBB added, The fact that these Igbo officers would do this to a man not known to be a great ‘lover’ of the Igbos may have given the coup a different ethnic colouration.”