Deadlytruth:

I quite agree with the guy you quoted. If you critically examine Adegboyega's claims in that book, you can't but notice the logical self contradictions and inconsistencies which actually give him away as trying to rationalize an ethnic cleansing which was presented as a nationalistic project to him.

Please share said “self contradiction and inconsistencies”. Thanks...
>

KADUNA NZEOGBU THE GALLANT GREAT SOLDIER..

Continue to rest in, gallant Hero

If you go in a hurry, coming back may be slow and painful

femarse:


thanks for that insight, but there is something we should note , looking at what was about to unravel assuming you are opportuned to be in the picture of things , do u think it's ohk for them to keep waiting for azikwe?? knowing fully well that things can not always remain the same and transfer of military men happened all the time , as a matter of fact, the coup went ahead because of two very important reason , position of nzeogwu himself, his assess to weapon , the fact that he can get them and said he want to use them for training like the exercise damisa which was a full blown rehearsal for the coup right under everyone nose,
secondly position of ifeajuna in Lagos , which gives him access to command distribution of weapon and vehicle , and another captain like that(I forgot his name , adeleke or so ) the timing and their position was perfect , do u think it is alright to have waited for azikwe to return ?? knowing fully well that in 2 weeks time they may all be transfer to other units , besides it's as a result of this transfer all the time that makes all this majors to meet each other in the first place

that azikwe escape is solely ifeajuna fault which is a person decision not shared by other members of the group , that ironsi escape Is just chance or luck , he was not in the right place at the right time and that saved him , 6 month later thou , the guy was done

The ultimate point I am even trying to make is that the coup was totally uncalled for regardless of how tense the situation was. First and foremost, the independence constiution which we all sent and sponsored duly elected delegates from all federal constituencies to draft did not make any provision for military intervention. Rather, it made it clear that whichever military officer found anything wrong with the system should remove his uniform and contest election to enable him have a chance to correct the problem and show the example.
Secondly, at the peak of the Western Region crisis, Okotie-Eboh had regained his humanity and had therefore begun to caution Balewa on the need to retrace his steps in witch-hunting the opposition. A few days to the execution of the coup, Balewa granted a press interview in which he disclosed that they the politicians were already seeking a political solution to the imbroglio. In fact they has concluded to release Awolowo, Enahoro and other political prisoners and then bring everyone to a round table. Politicians are politicians as they have no permanent friends or enemies within themselves but only permanent interests, hence they would always sort themselves out in the end irrespective of how acrimonious their differences might be. So why the coup?
And come to think of it, after the execution of the coup, who and who in that regime was later actually investigated and found to have looted the treasury so much as the coupists made people believe through their corruption allegations?

Can you in all honesty say that Nigeria is better off today than how it would have been if the coup had not happened? Would we have later had to lose 3 million innocent lives through an avoidable war if Ifeajuna and Nzeogwu had just let the political events run their natural courses then without intervention?
If the coup had not been staged at all, would we have ended up being ruled and misruled by a succession of idiots and and crass mediocres like Gowon, Murtala Muhammed, Obasanjo, Buhari, IBB, Shonekan, Abacha, etc who put the country on the reverse gear for 33 years thus derailing us totally away from the path to world powers status on which we stepped foot at independence?
Despite the challenges at the younger days of countries like USA, Germany, Canada, etc which we hoped to be like, did the military ever take over power in defiance to the sovereign constiution of the people?
Fourthly, while fighting for independence, were the likes of Enahoro, Awolowo, Azikiwe, etc looking forward to a country that would later be snatched and overrun by trigger happy boys in military uniforms?

9jaRealist:


Please share said “self contradiction and inconsistencies”. Thanks...
>

For example, Adegboyega wrote somewhere in that book that Ifeajuna and some other different military officers started nursing the idea of staging a coup as far back as 1961. In another page of the book, he claims that the coup plot was to arrest the official corruption of the day.
From October 1960 to the middle of 1961 was just a 9 month period. Now what level of corruption could a nine month old government have so much perpetrated to warrant being sacked by a coup?

Secondly, he claims in the book that the coup was also aimed at releasing Awolowo and making him the Prime Minister. The question now is, how could a set of coupists whose objective was to impose a national government with a strong center (i.e. unitary system) have rooted for the most consummate and unrepentant federalist (i.e. the foremost advocate of weak central government) in the land to head such a government?
I can go on and on

Deadlytruth:


The ultimate point I am even trying to make is that the coup was totally uncalled for regardless of how tense the situation was. First and foremost, the independence constiution which we all sent and sponsored duly elected delegates from all federal constituencies to draft did not make any provision for military intervention. Rather, it made it clear that whichever military officer found anything wrong with the system should remove his uniform and contest election to enable him have a chance to correct the problem and show the example.
Secondly, at the peak of the Western Region crisis, Okotie-Eboh had regained his humanity and had therefore begun to caution Balewa on the need to retrace his steps in witch-hunting the opposition. A few days to the execution of the coup, Balewa granted a press interview in which he disclosed that they the politicians were already seeking a political solution to the imbroglio. In fact they has concluded to release Awolowo, Enahoro and other political prisoners and then bring everyone to a round table. Politicians are politicians as they have no permanent friends or enemies within themselves but only permanent interests, hence they would always sort themselves out in the end irrespective of how acrimonious their differences might be. So why the coup?
And come to think of it, after the execution of the coup, who and who in that regime was later actually investigated and found to have looted the treasury so much as the coupists made people believe through their corruption allegations?

Can you in all honesty say that Nigeria is better off today than how it would have been if the coup had not happened? Would we have later had to lose 3 million innocent lives through an avoidable war if Ifeajuna and Nzeogwu had just let the political events run their natural courses then without intervention?
If the coup had not been staged at all, would we have ended up being ruled and misruled by a succession of idiots and and crass mediocres like Gowon, Murtala Muhammed, Obasanjo, Buhari, IBB, Shonekan, Abacha, etc who put the country on the reverse gear for 33 years thus derailing us totally away from the path to world powers status on which we stepped foot at independence?
Despite the challenges at the younger days of countries like USA, Germany, Canada, etc which we hoped to be like, did the military ever take over power in defiance to the sovereign constiution of the people?
Fourthly, while fighting for independence, were the likes of Enahoro, Awolowo, Azikiwe, etc looking forward to a country that would later be snatched and overrun by trigger happy boys in military uniforms?

yeah you are right , the coup is not necessary but sincerely, Nigerian politicians are funny and the coup happening at that time is something they brought upon themselves

one negative side effect of the coup is the fact that it allowed useless uneducated people who were only trained to shoot dane guns in the forest , suddenly found themselves at the helm of affairs of the whole nation and the fact that they now realize they can sack the country with their dane guns

delamb01:

Sorry Sir I'm not igbo. I am from Mallar in Bogoro LGA of Bauchi State so I'm a northerner. And it may interest you to know that the then Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was my tribe's man because he was Sayawa just like myself. But I'm still wondering sir, why is that when people speak the truth or have different opinions from popular opinions are simply referred to as IGBOS. why could not you just correct me without playing the tribal card �. With this kind of your reasoning, Nigeria has a long way to go in her journey to civilization.

wow..I love your tribe..once had a babe from there.. very beautiful and cool.

femarse:


yeah you are right , the coup is not necessary but sincerely, Nigerian politicians are funny and the coup happening at that time is something they brought upon themselves

one negative side effect of the coup is the fact that it allowed useless uneducated people who were only trained to shoot dane guns in the forest , suddenly found themselves at the helm of affairs of the whole nation and the fact that they now realize they can sack the country with their dane guns

I agree with you now except on the claim that Nigerian politicians brought the coup upon themselves. As long as politics is a game of Interest, either selfish or selfless, there must always be clashes among politicians. Are our present crop of politicians not far more useless than the first republic ones? In fact the first republic politicians were all saints compared to the opportunists we have today. But does that justify military intervention now?

BabaOwen:
it was his parent that named him Kaduna. Go and make your research well.

Not according to Wikipedia

lonelydora:


In terms of security

And his Attorney General,Bola Ige was slaughtered like a Chicken,in his bedroom under his regime

Just shut up!

Deadlytruth:

For example, Adegboyega wrote somewhere in that book that Ifeajuna and some other different military officers started nursing the idea of staging a coup as far back as 1961. In another page of the book, he claims that the coup plot was to arrest the official corruption of the day.
From October 1960 to the middle of 1961 was just a 9 month period. Now what level of corruption could a nine month old government have so much perpetrated to warrant being sacked by a coup?

Secondly, he claims in the book that the coup was also aimed at releasing Awolowo and making him the Prime Minister. The question now is, how could a set of coupists whose objective was to impose a national government with a strong center (i.e. unitary system) have rooted for the most consummate and unrepentant federalist (i.e. the foremost advocate of weak central government) in the land to head such a government?
I can go on and on

Nigeria may have become an independent nation in 1960...
But politics and internal self-governance did not start in 1960.

By 1957, full internal self-governance had been installed in both the Western and Eastern regions (and subsequently in the North) before political independence in October 1960. Even prior to that, there had been partisan politics and general elections electing regional representatives in 1954 (and even further back to partisan political elections into the Legislative Councils going all the way back to the 1920s). Nonetheless, perhaps the reason the coup did not actually happen until SIX YEARS after independence in 1966 was that many of the plotters (and prospective plotters) shared your sentiment that 9 months was too little a time to properly judge and/or condemn the government.

Either way, how is that a “contradiction”? Some people may think that one month of corruption is too much, while you obviously do not.
>

Deadlytruth:

For example, Adegboyega wrote somewhere in that book that Ifeajuna and some other different military officers started nursing the idea of staging a coup as far back as 1961. In another page of the book, he claims that the coup plot was to arrest the official corruption of the day.
From October 1960 to the middle of 1961 was just a 9 month period. Now what level of corruption could a nine month old government have so much perpetrated to warrant being sacked by a coup?

Secondly, he claims in the book that the coup was also aimed at releasing Awolowo and making him the Prime Minister. The question now is, how could a set of coupists whose objective was to impose a national government with a strong center (i.e. unitary system) have rooted for the most consummate and unrepentant federalist (i.e. the foremost advocate of weak central government) in the land to head such a government?
I can go on and on

On Awolowo, I don’t think your assertion came from Wale Ademoyega’s book (you probably confuse it with co-plotter Ben Gbulie’s book). I believe that Ademoyega’s book only referenced a plan to immediately release all “political prisoners” including Awolowo, Enahoro, Jakande, Onitiri, Omisade, etc. (p.33), but obviously the coup-plotters shared more of the socialist aspirations of Chief Awolowo than what they considered to be the feudalism of the NPC. Nonetheless, Chief Awolowo (a supposedly committed democrat) went on to serve as virtual “prime minister” in the the quasi-unitary (actually defacto unitary) military government of General Gowon, in the position of Vice-Chairman of the Federal Executive Council. It’s how things work in Nigeria, where MKO’s running-mate joined the military government that imprisoned him.
>

Deadlytruth:
I agree with you now except on the claim that Nigerian politicians brought the coup upon themselves. As long as politics is a game of Interest, either selfish or selfless, there must always be clashes among politicians. Are our present crop of politicians not far more useless than the first republic ones? In fact the first republic politicians were all saints compared to the opportunists we have today. But does that justify military intervention now?

Comparisons between eras can be odious...
In those days, coups were a quick means of replacing corrupt govts in Asia, Latin America and Africa (even the US supported some coups).
>

delamb01:

Sorry Sir I'm not igbo. I am from Mallar in Bogoro LGA of Bauchi State so I'm a northerner. And it may interest you to know that the then Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was my tribe's man because he was Sayawa just like myself.

But I'm still wondering sir, why is that when people speak the truth or have different opinions from popular opinions are simply referred to as IGBOS. why could not you just correct me without playing the tribal card �. With this kind of your reasoning, Nigeria has a long way to go in her journey to civilization.

Igbo amaka.

delamb01:
Thank you for being such a gentleman. There was chaos in Nigeria between 1964-1966. This chaos was caused by so many factors such as the 1963 census, the 1965 general elections, the Action Group crisis in the Western region. As at that the comments coming from The Action Group, the Northern People's Congress were such that could break the nation into pieces. Also there was a sort of ethnic cleansing in the Middle Belt region which made the people of the region to demand for a separate autonomous region but this was denied by the Regional government of the north under Ahmadu Bello in collaboration with his puppet Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa. Instead of granting granting the request of the middle belt people, the central government took the opportunity of AG crisis in the western region and declared state of emergency in that region and eventually created the Mid Western Region out of the defunct western region just to deduce the political power and influence of the AG and by extension that of Awolowo. Don't forget that the mid western people never demanded for a separate region. All these events were being observed and monitored by the some military officers who felt that politicians were dividing the nation along tribal, religious, ethnic, political, sectional divides. So, they felt that a central government would be the solution to all those issues. They consulted among themselves and came up with the coup that ousted the government of the day. Although they were motivated by other coups that took place in other African countries. But the same officers that agreed to the coup later denied any knowledge of it let alone agreeing or taking part in it. My dear, time will not avail me of the opportunity to explain things in details to you. However, I wish you can lay your hand on the account of these events written by an insider, Adewale Ademoyanga WHY WE STRUCK. he wrote from the facts of the events not out sentiments, sympathy or empathy. And don't forget that Adewale was a Yoruba man and one should not expect him to have taken side with an igbo man.

Have you read Nigeria's 5 Majors by Ben Gbuile? The accounts are very similar to this

9jaRealist:


Comparisons between eras can be odious...
In those days, coups were a quick means of replacing corrupt govts in Asia, Latin America and Africa (even the US supported some coups).
>

Rightness vs wrongness of anything has nothing to do with era. Those who drafted our independence constiution in that era chose not to make any provision for military take over because it was and will forever remain wrong. The US never allowed coups on her own soil despite they existed long before the era you are referring to for Nigeria. Moreover, the US' support for coups in other countries was not necessary for the coups in themselves but support for the ideological changes which the coups only served as a means to. The US would never support a coup meant to bring communism into any country however much the plotters claim and demonstrate sincerity in ridding the country of corruption and misgovernance.

9jaRealist:


On Awolowo, I don’t think your assertion came from Wale Ademoyega’s book (you probably confuse it with co-plotter Ben Gbulie’s book). I believe that Ademoyega’s book only referenced a plan to immediately release all “political prisoners” including Awolowo, Enahoro, Jakande, Onitiri, Omisade, etc. (p.33), but obviously the coup-plotters shared more of the socialist aspirations of Chief Awolowo than what they considered to be the feudalism of the NPC. Nonetheless, Chief Awolowo (a supposedly committed democrat) went on to serve as virtual “prime minister” in the the quasi-unitary (actually defacto unitary) military government of General Gowon, in the position of Vice-Chairman of the Federal Executive Council. It’s how things work in Nigeria, where MKO’s running-mate joined the military government that imprisoned him.
>

It is rather ironical for the coup plotters to have shared Awolowo's aspirations in the sense that Awolowo's intense pro-federalism stance contrasted sharply with the coupists' main objective of imposing a strong national government on the country.

Awolowo was not a committed democrat but a committed federalist. I hope you know the difference between these two terms and stop using them interchangeably. If Awolowo was a committed democrat, how come he ever plotted a civilian coup which was partly responsible for his incarceration?
His decision, however, to serve in Gowon's government resonated perfectly with his federalist stance as Gowon had demonstrated a commitment to refederalization by his commencement of reversal of Ironsi's centripetal decrees. It can safely be argued therefore that even though Gowon's government was military in nature, it was federalist in character thus
rightly justifying the attraction to it of Awolowo the foremost federalist in the country.

9jaRealist:


Nigeria may have become an independent nation in 1960...
But politics and internal self-governance did not start in 1960.

By 1957, full internal self-governance had been installed in both the Western and Eastern regions (and subsequently in the North) before political independence in October 1960. Even prior to that, there had been partisan politics and general elections electing regional representatives in 1954 (and even further back to partisan political elections into the Legislative Councils going all the way back to the 1920s). Nonetheless, perhaps the reason the coup did not actually happen until SIX YEARS after independence in 1966 was that many of the plotters (and prospective plotters) shared your sentiment that 9 months was too little a time to properly judge and/or condemn the government.

Either way, how is that a “contradiction”? Some people may think that one month of corruption is too much, while you obviously do not.
>

If your argument above is anything to go by, then one would assume you are trying to assert that as long as indigenous rule started courtesy of existence of the regions which were created long before independence, then corruption started far before independence hence the coup wasn't really too early. Beautiful twist, no doubt! However, recall that even before the regions were created, Azikiwe had been indicted of corruption not even by an indegeous government but by the colonial authorities which can't be accused of ethnic bias based political witch-hunting.
So how come a set of coup plotters supposedly trying to rid the country of a culture of corruption born before independence allowed the very individual who introduced that pre-independence culture escape on their own tip off and assistance?

Major chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu.

His parent were from delta state, but lived in Kaduna, they so much love Kaduna that they name it after their son.

no, it was their neighbours who named him 'Dan Kaduna' since they could not pronounce 'Patrick' and 'Chukwuma'. As time passed, Dan Kaduna metamorphosed into Kaduna.

shugabasbn:
The guy was one of the army that Nigeria brought from nowhere and make him great but betrayed the country trust. Imagine he was born in 1937 and died in 1967 just 30yrs of existence, he enjoyed everything on plater of gold but failed the country. Many of his mate nowadays still roaming the street for unexisted jobs

Nzeogwu is a product of St. John's College, Kaduna. He was never a pushover.