Genesis: The Beginning Of North-South / Hausa-Igbo Beef in Nigeria

June 20th, 2012

Lekan Abayomi, New York

I was born in 1975. I grew up believing that the Hausa/Fulani of Nigeria were a very intolerant ethnic group of people.

That the Hausa’s were so wicked they simply picked on Igbo’s in Nigeria living up North and slaughtered them in droves. And that the unprovoked massacre of Igbo’s in the North prompted the Biafra secession event, which again resulted in another Hausa Muslim leadership led slaughter and genocide of Igbo’s in the South.

I believed for the first two decades of my life that the Hausa Muslims for no reason despised Igbo’s so much and that they ruled Nigeria almost entirely throughout its 50 years post independence, never giving an Igbo an opportunity to rule.

I associated Military rule and Military coups with Muslim Northerners.

I even associated the North of Nigeria with Islam and the South with Christianity. ‘Roughly divided’ between the two, as I always read in the news.

Little did I know that I was wrong in almost everything I grew up reading from the Nigeria predominantly Southern press, and European media.

They say that had Hitler won the war, history today would have been written in his favor. Perhaps the one great mistake the Hausa-Fulani-Kanuri and all Northerners ever made was not getting involved in western media, press and propaganda.

No Beef Till ’66

Igbo’s draw first blood in 1966

All was going well in Nigeria, post 1960 independence, with Tafawa Balewa, aka, the golden voice of Africa, was prime minister of the federation, and Nnamidi Azikiwe was commander in chief and president till January 1966.

In January 1966 an Igbo Major in the Nigerian army, Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, who was born in Kaduna and had such family affinity to Kaduna, that he was popularly called, ‘Kaduna Nzeogwu’, a Catholic by faith decided to embark on a mission that will change Nigeria’s history forever.

In the early hours of January 15th, Kaduna Nzeogwu disgruntled over a list of items with the ruling political class, led an army of fellow Igbo Majors and a Yoruba, Ademoyega Adewale, in a military coup against the political leadership of Nigeria.

He and his team of Igbo comrades murdered Nigeria’s top brass Hausa’s in that Coup. Prime minister, Tafawa Balewa, a federal minister and two top regional premiers were among those murdered.

Kaduna Nzeogwu’s Igbo squad killed he premier of the Northern and Western regions but of course left the Igbo Eastern premiere alive.

He killed the Finance minister, who was Nigeria’s #3 man, but left the number #2 man.

The coup started failing when the ethnic nature of it was noticed. Neogwu confronted Captain Isong, the second-in-command at the 1 Recce Squadron, on account of a rumor that Isong was allegedly spreading in the barracks about the ethnic coloration of the unfolding events.

Azikiwe was left alive.

In essence Kaduna Nzeogwu’ coup was not a coup against the establishment only, but a targeted ethnic war, waged by himself and his fellow Igbo patriots against the Hausa-Fulani, who he grew up and served with.

Nzeogwu assassinated very many top Northern brass. Included and very significant was the Sardauna of Sokoto who was shot dead with his wives too.

In the video below, late Kaduna Nzeogwu describes how he plotted the coup and killed the Sardauna.

Read more: http://www.newsrescue.com/2012/06/genesis-the-beginning-of-north-south-hausa-igbo-beef-in-nigeria/#ixzz1yWwbkscd




Read more: http://www.newsrescue.com/2012/06/genesis-the-beginning-of-north-south-hausa-igbo-beef-in-nigeria/#ixzz1yTijzvVk