Setting Forth from Ebrohimie Road

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’.