Revolutionaries or Opportunists?

As Sardauna of Sokoto, Bello was not only the political leader of the Northern region but was also an important spiritual figurehead as leader of the Muslim community in Nigeria. Nzeogwu, surrounded by armed troops, many of whom were Northerners and could have resisted if they disagreed with his message, informed the troops of the true nature of their mission. He described the ineptitude, incompetence and corruption of Nigeria’s political leadership over the past few years, and impressed on the soldiers the duty they had to set Nigeria back on a course towards progress and prosperity.

Buoyed by their commanding officers’ charisma, conviction and courage, the troops steeled themselves for the task ahead. First, they shelled the Premier’s lodge, blowing off the roof and setting the entire compound ablaze. Then, they infiltrated the residence and searched room by room, until the Sardauna was found. He was shot by Nzeogwu himself, in the presence of his wives and children.

Nzeogwu’s attempted revolution of January 15, 1966, precipitated a countercoup six months later in July 1966, in which hundreds of Igbo soldiers and thousands of civilians were killed. By 1967 Nigeria was plunged into a civil war and subsequent military rule that would decimate democratic institutions and irrevocably alter Nigeria’s socio-political trajectory for decades to come.

Nigeria was not alone in this, several other African nations grappled with coups and political unrest in the first couple of decades after gaining independence, as they struggled to establish their postcolonial national identities. Africa accounts for 214 of the 486 attempted or successful military coups carried globally since 1950.Though the tide appeared to have turned in favour of uninterrupted democracy in the 2000s, history now appears to be repeating itself. Since 2020, there have been seven successful coups in countries belonging to the Western and Sahel regions of Africa (Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Chad, Mali, Sudan) known in modern geopolitical neologism as Africa’s ‘Coup Belt’. Though the coups have been condemned by international and regional organizations, they have received a groundswell of support from the local populace within these nations, signalling a disenchantment between the people and their ‘elected’ leadership. In Gabon, for instance, hundreds took to the streets in the capital, Libreville, to celebrate news of the deposition and arrest of President Ali Bongo. As African nations appear to be regressing into the same ‘militocracy’ that characterized much of the 1960s-1980s, it is important to revisit the story of Nzeogwu, one of Africa’s first coup plotters, and to examine how the path he took towards addressing Nigeria’s political problems plunged not just Nigeria but the wider intercontinental and international community into deeper political quagmires.

In many ways, Nzeogwu embodied what it meant to be Nigerian during the independence era. He was born and raised in Northern Nigeria to parents of Eastern origin. He was so completely culturally assimilated to the North that his friends and colleagues called him ‘Kaduna’—after the city of his birth. He was considered Igbo in name alone. At that time, to be Nigerian meant the freedom to travel, live and work freely in any part of the country regardless of ethnicity.

Nzeogwu joined the Nigerian Army in March 1957. He attended his preliminary officer training course at Teshie, Ghana and then the elite Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in the United Kingdom, before being commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1959. In 1962, he was posted to the Nigerian Army’s Field Security Section, becoming Nigeria’s first military intelligence officer. Within his first few years as a junior officer, some senior officers already noticed in him a streak of rebellion. It was for this reason that despite holding a lot of promise for his accomplishments in the field, he was made Chief Instructor at the Nigerian Defence Academy in Kaduna—a posting where he would not have direct operational command of fighting troops.

Early in January 1966, Majors Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna and Ademoyega set in motion their plans to incapacitate the federal government and seize power. During the initial stages of the January 1966 coup, Nzeogwu and his collaborators were hailed as national heroes. The Nigerian people had become disillusioned with the flamboyant, corrupt and selfish political class and welcomed the new social order the soldiers promised, which in Nzeogwu’s words, sought to ‘establish a strong united and prosperous nation, free from corruption and internal strife.’ However, it soon became clear that only Nzeogwu had been successful in his assignment. Major Ifeajuna, who was charged with capturing and securing the Western Region (the seat of Nigeria’s then capital, Lagos) faced stiff resistance from the leader of the army, Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi, and eventually had to flee the country altogether.

Major Ademoyega also failed to secure the Eastern Region and was foiled by Lt. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. In any case, the initial ‘excitement’ the coup generated gave way to dismay as the scale of the casualties of the coup attempt was revealed days later. The pattern of the killings gave the appearance of being unfair, lopsided and ethnically motivated. Of the twelve senior government officials and army officers killed, two were Igbo. The rest were of northern or western origin. Notably, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s President, was suspiciously away from the country as the coup was being executed, and though Aguiyi-Ironsi escaped death through a stroke of luck (he was attending a party when the mutineers converged on his residence and was later tipped off about the plot), his survival only fuelled the rumours. Many northerners feared the coup was part of an Igbo conspiracy for ethnic domination. This fear continued even though, ironically, two Igbo officers, Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi and Lt. Colonel Ojukwu, were instrumental in resisting the putsch.

When it became clear that the coup was only successful in the North, Nzeogwu turned himself in after assurances of his personal safety and amnesty for his troops. He was flown to Lagos on 18 January 1966 where he was promptly arrested and imprisoned. In response to accusations that the coup was tribally motivated, Nzeogwu explained in a 1967 interview while still in detention:

Nzeogwu was later transferred to Aba Prison in the Eastern Region where he remained until he was released in March 1967 by the governor of the Eastern Region and future president of Biafra, Lt. Colonel Ojukwu. Nzeogwu was then drafted to fight in the civil war which had broken out between the Republic of Biafra (formerly the Eastern Region) and the rest of Nigeria.

Much happened while Major Nzeogwu was in prison. The events he and his co-conspirators had set in motion could no longer be stymied. They had shown that power could be won by force of arms, and Nigeria would suffer the effects for the next three decades. Within six months of the first coup, there was a countercoup in which northern soldiers took ‘revenge’ for the murder of their leaders. This ‘revenge’ was unfortunately meted out not only on soldiers who had no hand in the original coup but also on civilians who were altogether removed from internal military strife. The head of state, General Ironsi was ‘arrested’ by Lt. Colonel TY Danjuma for refusing to ‘deal decisively’ with the ‘January 15 boys’. He was later murdered by the coup plotters and Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon was installed in his stead. The grudge between the Eastern Region (which suffered thousands of casualties in the countercoup) and the North (whose entire political and military elite was eliminated in the original coup) led to mutual distrust and animosity. In addition to this, there was personal tension between the recently installed Head of State, Lt. Colonel Gowon and the governor of the Eastern region, Lt. Colonel Ojukwu. All these factors resulted in the secession of the Eastern Region, and eventually a full-blown civil war.

The reality of military coups, no matter how well-intentioned, is that they set a dangerous precedent for assuming leadership. The illegitimacy of the process of seizing power by force of arms leads to internal strife, hinders state-building and creates a perpetually unstable polity. In addition, by centralizing power within a person/position instead of in institutions, military leadership insulates itself from public accountability and can do as it sees fit, regardless of the public will. This is why Ayo Sogunro, human rights advocate and legal consultant says that ‘…regardless of how dysfunctional a civilian regime may be, it is intrinsically better than military rule because, at least, it diffuses power.’