The Nigerian high jumper was the first black
African to win a gold medal but his remarkable
story had a tragic end. He was tied to a stake and
executed for treason. Read the story below
written by former Sports Editor of the Observer,
Brian Oliver... The first time Emmanuel Ifeajuna appeared
before a crowd of thousands he did
something no black African had ever done.
He won a gold medal at an international
sporting event. “Nigeria Creates World
Sensation,” ran the headline in the West African Pilot after Ifeajuna’s record-breaking
victory in the high jump at the 1954 Empire
and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. He
was the pride not just of Nigeria but of a
whole continent. An editorial asked: “Who
among our people did not weep for sheer joy when Nigeria came uppermost, beating all
whites and blacks together?” Continue In the words of a former schoolmate, Ifeajuna
had leaped “to the very pinnacle of Nigerian
sporting achievement”. His nine track and field
team-mates won another six silver and bronze
medals, prompting a special correspondent to
write “Rejoice with me, oh ye sports lovers of Nigeria, for the remarkable achievements of our
boys”. Ifeajuna, feted wherever he went, would soon see
his picture on the front of school exercise books.
He was a great national hero who would remain
Nigeria’s only gold medallist, in Commonwealth
or Olympic sport, until 1966. The next time Ifeajuna appeared before a crowd
of thousands he was bare-chested and tied to a
stake, facing execution before a seething mob. He
had co-led a military coup in January 1966 in
which, according to an official but disputed
police report, he shot and killed Nigeria’s first prime minister. The coup failed but Ifeajuna
escaped to safety in Ghana, dressed as a woman
and was driven to freedom by a famous poet.
Twenty months later, he was back, fighting for
the persecuted Igbo people of eastern Nigeria in
a brutal civil war that broke out as a consequence of the coup. Ifeajuna and three fellow officers were accused
by their own leader, General Emeka Ojukwu, of
plotting against him and the breakaway Republic
of Biafra. They denied charges of treason: they
were trying to save lives and their country, they
said, by negotiating an early ceasefire with the federal government and reuniting Nigeria. They
failed, they died and, in the next two and a half
years, so did more than a million Igbos. The day of the execution was 25 September,
1967, and the time 1.30pm. There was a very
short gap between trial and execution, not least
because federal troops were closing in on Enugu,
the Biafran capital, giving rise to fears that the
“guilty four” might be rescued. As the execution approached, the four men –
Ifeajuna, Victor Banjo, Phillip Alale and Sam
Agbam – were tied to stakes. Ifeajuna, with his
head on his chest as though he was already dead,
kept mumbling that his death would not stop
what he had feared most, that federal troops would enter Enugu, and the only way to stop this
was for those about to kill him to ask for a
ceasefire.

As the execution approached, the four men –
Ifeajuna, Victor Banjo, Phillip Alale and Sam
Agbam – were tied to stakes. Ifeajuna, with his
head on his chest as though he was already dead,
kept mumbling that his death would not stop
what he had feared most, that federal troops would enter Enugu, and the only way to stop this
was for those about to kill him to ask for a
ceasefire. A body of soldiers drew up with their automatic
rifles at the ready. On the order of their officer,
they levelled their guns at the bared chests of the
four men. As a hysterical mass behind the firing
squad shouted: “Shoot them! Shoot them!” a
grim-looking officer gave the command: “Fire!” The deafening volley was followed by lolling
heads. Ifeajuna slumped. Nigeria’s great sporting
hero died a villain’s death. But he had been right.
By 4pm two and a half hours after the executions,
the gunners of the federal troops had started to
hit their targets in Enugu with great accuracy. The Biafrans began to flee and the city fell a few days
later. Of all the many hundreds of gold medallists at
the Empire and Commonwealth Games since
1930 none left such a mark on history, led such a
remarkable life or suffered such a shocking death
as Ifeajuna. His co-plotter in the 1966 coup, Chukwuma
Nzeogwu, was buried with full military honours
and had a statue erected in his memory in his
home town. But for Ifeajuna, the hateful verdict
of that seething mob carried weight down the
years. His name was reviled, his sporting glory all but written out of Nigeria’s history. His name is
absent from the website of the Athletics
Federation of Nigeria, appearing neither in the
history of the Federation nor in any other section. There is no easy road to redemption for the gold
medallist who inadvertently started a war and
was shot for trying to stop it. Nigeria’s first foray into overseas sport was in
1948, when they sent athletes to London to
compete in the Amateur Athletic Association
Championships, and to watch the Olympic Games
before a planned first entry in the next Olympiad.
In 1950 there was cause to celebrate when the high jumper, Josiah Majekodunmi, won a silver
medal at the Auckland Commonwealth Games. He
also fared best of Nigeria’s Olympic pathfinders,
the nine-man team who competed at Helsinki in
1952. Majekodunmi was ninth, with two of his
team-mates also in the top 20. Nigerians clearly excelled at the high jump.
With three men having competed in that 1952
Olympic final, the Nigeria selectors had plenty of
names to consider for the Commonwealth Games
high jump in Vancouver two years later. Ifeajuna,
aged 20, was not a contender until he surprised everybody at the national championships in late
April, less than two months before the team were
due to depart. His jump of 6ft 5.5in, the best of
the season, took him straight in alongside Nafiu
Osagie, one of the 1952 Olympians, and he was
selected. The high jump was on day one of competition in
Vancouver and Ifeajuna wore only one shoe, on
his left foot. One correspondent wrote: “The
Nigerian made his cat-like approach from the
left-hand side. In his take-off stride his leading
leg was flexed to an angle quite beyond anything ever seen but he retrieved position with a
fantastic spring and soared upwards as if plucked
by some external agency.”
Ifeajuna brushed the bar at 6ft 7in but it stayed
on; he then cleared 6ft 8in to set a Games and
British Empire record, and to become the first man ever to jump 13.5in more than his own
height. This first gold for black Africa was a
world-class performance. His 6ft 8in – just over
2.03m – would have been good enough for a
silver medal at the Helsinki Olympics two years
earlier.

The team arrived back home on 8 September.
That afternoon they were driven on an open-
backed lorry through the streets of Lagos, with
the police band on board, to a civic reception at
the racecourse. The flags and bunting were out in
abundance, as were the crowds in the middle and, for those who could afford tickets, the
grandstand. There was a celebration dance at
9pm. Ifeajuna told reporters he had been so tired,
having spent nearly four hours in competition,
that: “At the time I attempted the record jump I
did not think I had enough strength to achieve the success which was mine. I was very happy
when I went over the bar on my second attempt.” After a couple of weeks at home Ifeajuna was off
to university on the other side of the country at
Ibadan. His sporting career was already over,
apart from rare appearances in inter-varsity
matches. He met his future wife, Rose, in 1955.
They married in 1959 and had two sons. After graduating in zoology he taught for a while
before joining the army in 1960 and was trained
in England, at Aldershot. Ifeajuna had first shown
an interest in the military in 1956 when, during a
summer holiday in Abeokuta, he had visited the
local barracks with a friend who later became one of the most important figures in the
Commonwealth. Chief Emeka Anyaoku joined the Commonwealth
Secretariat in 1966, the year of Ifeajuna’s coup
attempt. While his good friend escaped, returned,
fought in the war and died in front of the firing
squad, Anyaoku moved to London, where he rose
to the highest office in the Commonwealth, secretary-general, in 1990. For four years at
university he lived in a room next door to
Ifeajuna, who became a close friend. Why did the record-breaking champion stop
competing? “From October, 1954, when he
enrolled at Ibadan, he never trained,” said
Anyaoku, nearly 60 years later. “He never had a
coach – only his games master at grammar
school – and there were no facilities at the university. He simply stopped. He seemed content
with celebrating his gold medal. I don’t think the
Olympics ever tempted him. I used to tease him
that he was the most natural hero in sport. He did
no special training. He was so gifted, he just did it
all himself. Jumping barefoot, or with one shoe, was not unusual where we came from.” Another hugely influential voice from Nigerian
history pointed out that Ifeajuna, in his days as a
student, had “a fairly good record of rebellion”.
Olusegun Obasanjo served as head of a military
regime and as an elected president. He recalled
Ifeajuna’s role in a protest that led to the closure of his grammar school in Onitsha for a term in
1951, when he was 16. Three years after winning
gold, while at university, Ifeajuna made a rousing
speech before leading several hundred students
in protest against poor food and conditions. The former president also held a manuscript
written by Ifeajuna in the aftermath of the coup
but never published. It stated: “It was unity we
wanted, not rebellion. We had watched our
leaders rape our country. The country was so
diseased that bold reforms were badly needed to settle social, moral, economic and political
questions. We fully realised that to be caught
planning, let alone acting, on our lines, was high
treason. And the penalty for high treason is
death.”

In 1964 the Lagos boxer Omo Oloja won a light-
middleweight bronze in Tokyo, thereby becoming
Nigeria’s first Olympic medallist. It was a rare
moment of celebration in a grim year that
featured a general strike and a rigged election.
Another election the following year was, said the BBC and Reuters correspondent Frederick Forsyth,
seriously rigged – “electoral officers disappeared,
ballot papers vanished from police custody,
candidates were detained, polling agents were
murdered”. Two opposing sides both claimed
victory, leading to a complete breakdown of law and order. “Rioting, murder, looting, arson and
mayhem were rife,” said Forsyth. The prime
minister, Tafawa Balewa, refused to declare a
state of emergency. There was corruption in the
army, too, with favouritism for northern recruits.
A group of officers began to talk about a coup after they were told by their brigadier that they
would be required to pledge allegiance to the
prime minister, from the north, rather than the
country’s first president, an Igbo. Ifeajuna’s
group feared a jihad against the mainly Christian
south, led by the north’s Muslim figurehead, the Sardauna of Sokoto. The coup, codenamed Leopard, was planned in
secret meetings. Major Ifeajuna led a small group
in Lagos, whose main targets were the prime
minister, the army’s commander-in-chief, and a
brigadier, who was Ifeajuna’s first victim.
According to the official police report, part of which has never been made public, Ifeajuna and
a few of his men broke into the prime minister’s
home, kicked down his bedroom door and led
out Balewa in his white robe. They allowed him
to say his prayers and drove him away in
Ifeajuna’s car. On the road to Abeokuta they stopped, Ifeajuna ordered the prime minister out
of the car, shot him, and left his body in the bush.
Others say the Prime Minister was not shot, nor
was the intention ever to kill him: Balewa died of
an asthma attack or a heart attack brought on by
fear. There has never been conclusive evidence either way. Ifeajuna drove on to Enugu, where it became
apparent that the coup had failed, mainly
because one of the key officers in Ifeajuna’s
Lagos operation had “turned traitor” and had
failed to arrive as planned with armoured cars.
Major-General Ironsi, the main military target, was still at large and he soon took control of the
military government. Ifeajuna was now a wanted
man. He hid in a chemist’s shop, disguised
himself as a woman, and was driven over the
border by his friend Christopher Okigbo, a poet of
great renown. Then he travelled on to Ghana, where he was welcomed. Ifeajuna eventually agreed to return to Lagos,
where he was held pending trial. Ojukwu, by now
a senior officer, ensured his safety by having him
transferred, in April, to a jail in the east. Igbos
who lived in the north of the country were
attacked. In weeks of violent bloodshed tens of thousands died. As the death toll increased, the
outcome was civil war. In May, 1967, Ojukwu,
military governor of the south-east of Nigeria,
declared that the region had now become the
Republic of Biafra. By the time the fighting ended
in early 1970, the number of deaths would be in the millions. Arguably, if either of Ifeajuna’s plots had been a
success, those lives would not have been lost.
The verdicts on his role in Nigerian history are
many and varied: his detractors have held sway.
Chief among them was Bernard Odogwu, Biafra’s
head of intelligence, who branded Ifeajuna a traitor and blamed him for “failure and atrocities”
in the 1966 coup. Adewale Ademoyega, one of
the 1966 plotters, held a different view of
Ifeajuna. “He was a rather complicated
character ... intensely political and revolutionary ...
very influential among those close to him ... generous and willing to sacrifice anything for the
revolution.” The last time Anyaoku saw Ifeajuna was in 1963,
in Lagos, before Anyaoku’s departure for a
diplomatic role in New York. He later moved to
London and was there in 1967. “I was devastated
when I heard the news of the execution,” he said.
As for Ifeajuna being all but written out of Nigeria’s sporting history, he noted that: “The
history of the civil war still evokes a two-sided
argument. He is a hero to many people, though
they would more readily talk about his gold
medal than his involvement in the war. There are
people who think he was unjustifiably executed and others who believe the opposite.” One commentator suggested recently that the
new national stadium in Abuja, the Nigerian
capital, should be named after Ifeajuna. It will
surely never happen. The writer Brian Oliver is a former sports editor of
the Observer. This is an edited extract from his
book, The Commonwealth Games: Extraordinary
Stories Behind The Medals. Culled from Guardian