Setting Forth from Ebrohimie Road

The producer and director of Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory, Kola Tubosun, discusses the making of the documentary and the significance of the setting to Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka’s life.

On 15 January 1966, a group of Nigerian soldiers working independently attempted a coup against the civilian government of Nnamdi Azikiwe and Tafawa Balewa, sworn in on 1 October 1960, at the country’s independence. These soldiers, including majors Kaduna Nzeogwu, Adewale Ademoyega and Emmanuel Ifeajuna, believed that they were acting in the country’s best interest, convinced of the revolutionary import of their putsch. With their military action, Nzeogwu and his mates aimed to rid Nigeria of the corrupt political administration and install a fairer, more efficient one. They attacked major cities such as Kaduna, Ibadan and Lagos; blocked off the rivers Niger and Benue; and successfully assassinated 22 individuals, including the prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the premier of northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the premier of Western Nigeria, Chief Samuel Ládòkè Akíntọ́lá, and the minister of finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh. 

Although foiled only two days later by the Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi-led Nigerian army, this coup set in motion a series of events that would irrevocably mark the decade, impacts that are still with us today. Significantly, it would be regarded as one of the causes of the Nigerian Civil War, otherwise called the Biafran War, which broke out on 6 July 1967. By then, it had become common to refer to the coup as ‘the Igbo coup’, a sentiment borne of the fact that four of the five masterminds of the coup, which killed mostly northern political bigwigs, were easterners. Continuing, despite the relentless refutal by the coup plotters. Nonetheless, this sentiment would give rise to widespread resentment of easterners, especially among northerners. More insidiously, it would serve as the convenient excuse for the unleashing of terrible violence by northerners on easterners in every part of Nigeria, a phenomenon that has been termed ‘the anti-Igbo pogroms’. 

It was in response to the enormity of this violence that the governor of the eastern region, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, would declare the region’s secession from Nigeria and the birth of a new nation called Biafra, a move that swiftly resulted in war. When Nigeria launched its attacks on the newly seceded Biafra, there was a storm of controversy. Two opposing sides of debate quickly formed, as can be expected, each aligning with and consisting majorly of citizens of each side of the conflict. In other words, while Biafran intellectuals decidedly argued in support of the secession, many Nigerian intellectuals tended to argue against and in favour of the military action on the new nation...