₦airaland Forum

Akinrinade raises fear of Nigeria’s disintegration
By Dayo Benson & James Ezema
Thursday, November 12, 2009

LAGOS—A former Chief of Army Staff and ex-Chief of Defence Staff, Lieutenant-General Alani Akinrinade (rtd), yesterday warned that the country risks disintegration unless true federalism is restored.

He also regretted his participation in the Nigerian-Biafran civil war.

[B]Akinrinade said if he had known that the country would find itself in its present state, he would not have fought in the war to keep the country together.[/B]

He spoke at a forum, “The New Nigeria Dialogue” organised by the International Centre for Reconstruction and Development to mark the 55th birthday of Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly in Lagos.

According to him, [B]”If I had known that the country would turn to what it is today, I would not have fought the civil war to keep Nigeria one.”[/B]

He stressed that as a soldier he would fight to defend the country against external aggressors but would never fight internal war again.

[B]He described the sacrifice and patriotic duty as a waste of time and efforts, declaring that post-civil war Nigeria is not a country of his dream.[/B]

Speakers, including Professor Ropo Sekoni, Mr. Alfred Ilenre, Chief Fred Agbeyegbe and Mr. Tony Nnadi spoke on: ”The Nigerian Federation: Fundamental Flaws and Creative Reforms.”

At the event, chaired by ex-governor of Lagos State, Rear-Admiral Ndubusi Kanu (rtd), were ex-Osun State Gov, Chief Bisi Akande; Dr. Amos Akingba, Mr. Wale Oshun, Mrs. Jumoke Anifowose, Mr. Tokunbo Ajasin, Mr. Bisi Adegbuyi, Mr. Adedapo Adeniran, Mr. Sam Ayedogbon and others.

http://odili.net/news/source/2009/nov/12/318.html

Vanguard (Lagos)
Nigeria: Economy May Out Grow South Africa's Economy By 2012 - Sanusi

25 October 2009

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Lamido Sanusi, has projected that the Nigerian economy will be bigger than that of South African by 2012. Sanusi said at the policy dialogue of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group on Friday in Lagos that his projections were based on the growth of the gross domestic products (GDP) of the two countries. The governor, who was visibly taken aback by the reaction of the audience, said: "I am the CBN governor, people should believe me and show some respect".

On the larger economy, Sanusi described as unfortunate the national economic growth without the manufacturing sector. He said that while the CBN remained disposed to a shift in lending to the manufacturing sector, "we will not support policies that will compel commercial banks to be exposed to the challenges facing manufacturing sector

The manufacturing sector is seriously challenged by the absence of power, tariff regime and policy that encourages dumping of foreign goods in Nigeria," he said. Sanusi, who singled out the nation's textile industry as the most challenged, said that the collapse of that sector exposed banks to huge non-performing loans.

How Orkar’s coup was planned by Turner Ogboru
Special Reports Aug 8, 2009

Chief Turner Ogboru graduated from the University of Benin with LLB in Law and got a Phd in
Theology while in prison. In this interview, this businessman turned preacher speaks about the
coup years and why his name featured during the Gideon Orkar coup. He also speaks on the Niger Delta problems and sees government action on militants as triviliasing the whole issue.
Excerpts.

The name Turner Ogboru is synonymous with coup plotting. The last time some of my colleagues saw you, they referred to you as a coup plotter. How did you get involved with 1990 coup?
Turner Ogboru

Turner Ogboru

Well, my simple involvement with the coup had to do with the fact that our company’s facilities were used during the coup.

It was in our premises at Ikorodu that participants in the coup were assembled, It was our company’s vehicles that were used in refrigerating the drinks that were used on that day.

It was our company’s vehicles, the J5s and other station wagons which we had purchased to go into transportation business a few days from the date of the coup that were also used. So to that extent , we were linked to the coup because of the use of our facilities as sponsors of the coup but for me, my link was that I escorted my elder brother who was believed to have sponsored the coup to the border to travel out of the country .

That was my link for which they said was concealment of treason and that given my back ground and social standing, I ought to know that by escorting my elder brother who was involved in a coup to travel out of the country, it was a treasonable offence. So you see, that was my link but I knew nothing about the coup.

Sincerely ?

Sincerely, and God is my witness.

Even as at the time your brother was leaving the country?

As at the time my brother was leaving the country, the coup had already taken place.

And he had been declared wanted?

No, he was not wanted as at that time, but in the circumstance of the case at that time, it was wise and better for him to escape because when tempers are high, you cannot predict the foolish things that people can do .So it is better to be on a safer ground to be able to explain your position.

So at that time he was not wanted. It was through my information that he was declared wanted because I had to incident the matter. In the process of doing so, I had to see the then Governor of Lagos State Raji Rasaki and the former Brigade Commander Ikeja cantonment, General Ishaya Bamayi .

So we had to make some moves to be able to incident the matter and finally went to the security group where I met Aliu Tongo and others who were able to arrange and link that fact of the position of our involvement in the matter . So they initially took me in for protective custody which finally ended in life imprisonment and to God be the glory, we were judiciously given amnesty by Chief Ernest Shonekan, who gave amnesty to all political prisoners including the dead,

Somewhere in the process of effecting the amnesty, Abacha took over and the process was scuttled .When Abacha took over, he tried all he could to withhold the amnesty Shonekan had granted, but thank God for people like Femi Falana and Dele Aturu who were bold enough to challenge Abacha’s moves to scuttle the amnesty and they went to court.

Finally, they won the case against Abacha saying that it was wrong for the Government to continue to keep people in custody after they have been granted amnesty and that it was unconstitutional. Thank God for Justice Gbolahan Jinadu (retired) of the Federal High Court who gave judgement that I should be released from prison custody. In spite of all of Abacha’s resistence, he finally gave in.

Turner-Ogboru1

After his death, the government of Abdulsalam Abubakar came and with the help of people like Opadokun and NADECO and the Afenifere led by Pa Adesanya who were part of the negotiating team ,they convinced the government on the need to have all political prisoners released.

The government in its wisdom conceded to them and we were all released

Do you have any idea how the soldiers were recruited in that coup?

You see the coup was a very unique one. First and foremost, we had this security outfit that was floated by Saliba Mukoro and others . They floated a security outfit where they had to recruit a lot of ex-servicemen into their fold and these ex-servicemen were posted to various companies where they were supposed to be doing their security assignment.

They had no inkling that they were going to be involved in a coup. So on the day of the coup, they were all told to come for confirmation of appointment and so they assembled in our premises in Ikorodu with a view to having their appointments confirmed because that was what they were told. By the time the whole matter ended, it turned out to be something more than mere confirmation of appointment, it was not what they expected that they met.

The military boys, that is most of the coup plotters, were commanders of various units. Most of these commanders asked their boys to come for a party and by the time they arrived at the party, they were all conscripted into the team.

Then they went to the armory in Mile 2, got the people around that place, got all the guns and ammunition and every thing that they needed for the coup. By the time they arrived at Ikorodu with arms and ammunition and spoke to the people who had come for confirmation of appointment, it was a different ball game. So they were unknowingly conscripted. So that was how they got involved in the coup.

The major kingpins, that is the commanders who Babangida had strategically put in various commands were the very trusted boys of Babangida who rose up against him and they were able to pull down his government, they were able to over throw his government for some minutes but by the Grace of God, he was able get back power before he finally left on his own.

At what point did you get to know that it was a coup?

In the morning of 22nd of April, I woke to pray in the house, as we woke to have our morning devotion. I heard a coup broadcast. It was in that coup broadcast that I heard there was a coup. And I did not know that the coup was in my house.

That same morning a brother and I went to the Love Family church to preach. It was after that church appointment that I got to know that the people actually assembled in our premises for the coup. That our facilities were used in one way or the other. So by the time I got to know about all these, I had to take immediate action to be able to remedy the situation .

The high point of the coup was to curb corruption and other anomalies in the society. If you cast your mind to the Nigeria of that time of the coup and the Nigeria of today, would you see any changes?

If you listen to the coup broadcast properly, you will find out that one thing that the coup plotters wanted to correct was a situation where the Northern Oligarchy thought that it was their birth right to rule this country and that no other federating unit had a right to that because politics is just the game of number and so since they have multiplied their numbers, they were the only ones ordained by God to rule us perpetually and they said the six core Northern States were suspended from Nigeria until they lead a delegation to accept that other federating units of the country had a right to rule. Banbagida, for what is worth was a listening president.

He was very careful about public opinion. So he was able to gauge that aspect. That was why he handed power to Shonekan who came from the South West the same place with Abiola when he was leaving, . It was also the same thing that informed the handing over of power to Obasanjo by Abdulsalam’s transition. Because of the position of the coup plotters , power was shifted to the South West .

Whether head or tail, Obasanjo or Falae were both from the South West because they felt the heat brought about by the coup also brought about a lot of sober reflection and the political class in the North was very careful about it and that was why they conceded. It was not because they could not hold on to power but because they deliberately allowed the South to have power for the next eight years before the power went back to the North.

What you are trying to say is that the likes of Shonekan and Obasanjo were beneficiaries of the coup?

Yes they were beneficiaries of the Orkah coup. The issues that brought about the creation of OMPADEC was also a fall out of the coup, the appointments of women as deputies , the issue of NDDC are fallouts of the coup. The issue of corruption and the fight against indiscipline which Idiagbon and Burhari started were just part of it .

Homosexually-centered government, personal character issues were not really the core issues. The core issue was to have a true federation where every person that is part of this federating unit has a right to aspire to the highest office. In the military, you had the royal army that is made up of the sons of Emirs and Sultans who were posted to special units because there was a plan.

This group of officers are sent to the best and choicest military training colleges in the world. Meanwhile, their course mates that were better and more intelligent were being sidelined because they are not from a privileged part of the country.

The issue of nepotism and favoritism was so prevalent because within the Nigerian army, you had the royal army and this was an issue that bothered some very intelligent officers because there were so many intelligent officers in the army.

You will be shocked when you get to know the crop of intelligent people in the Nigerian Army , I mean well informed, well educated people who would not play second place to their counterparts from any where in the world.

If you saw the intelligent officers who were interviewing people during the coup, the civilized way they went about their duties, you would be proud of the Nigerian Army, you would be proud to be a Nigerian.

Name any field of professionalism, they are there, these guys are well trained. The situation of this group of people facing oppression within the system was part of the restiveness.

The Bible says that too much wisdom is sorrow to the heart, when you get to know things, you get seriously offended at the type of injustice that is being perpetuated in the name of quota system, in the name of catchment area, Federal character or whatever it is called.

When mediocrity is being celebrated and excellence is being pushed to background, it is painful and these were the things these young men wanted to correct. We could not have a Nigeria where we could not have a say, we cannot have a first or second class Nigerians and that was the thrust of the action .

Recently, one of the coup plotters Seliba Mukoro came into the country and the first thing he did was to visit Babangida. What is over reaction to this? Did he consultat before he met Babangida and do you think that was the right thing for him to do?

First and foremost, some things must be made clear. The coup plotters had nothing personal against Babangida. He just happened to be the President at the time of the coup and like I told you, most of the boys involved in the coup were his boys, they were his commanders, these were the boys that knew Babangida and he knew them by names and that was why none of them had the guts to go into where Babangida was when they struck because they were so sure that if they entered the house where Babangida was, he would call them by name.

He was very familiar with them. So it was not strangers that came after him. They knew Babangida’s hidden agenda because they were the ones that carried out research projects for him and they knew what they prepared for their boss, but they were not happy with what the man was proposing and so they wanted to terminate it and the y were all of one mind to terminate and they went ahead and attempted it.

From 1990 to 2009 that is almost twenty years, time heals all wounds, it is normal for people to begin to realign. Even Babangida in his private moments when he looks back at what he was planning then would know that it was foolish to have conceived such a plan and would not do it if given another life. Besides, you reap what you sow. He came into power through a coup against his best friends because he was not pleased with them.

So he also had a situation where his own best friends were not pleased with him. After everybody leaves an exalted office, we all come to the normal civilians that we are and at that time, we can appreciate our positions on certain issues better and that we are first humans and first friends before you came into power and so there is always a need for reconciliation because you always see the need to reappraise your position, the older you become, the wiser you get about the issues of life.

So people change with time no matter how radical they had been in the past and they begin to see issues from an entirely different perspective because the world had been before we came and it will be after we are long gone. It is what we did in our life time that will be the beginning and end of the world to us.

Saliba Mukoro had been to this country before but he did not see IBB. They were lots of under ground moves before he met with IBB. He came into Nigeria shortly after Obasanjo gave him amnesty. It was this last visit that made people like Oyinlola and others to broker peace between IBB and Mukoro because IBB is in politics. IBB is also strategising, everybody is strategising and when this is done, there also will be the need to realign with others. So it is normal for people to reconcile.

The government has just given militants amnesty, do you think this will solve the crisis in that region?

Amnesty cannot solve the crisis in the Niger Delta. Amnesty can never and will never solve the problem. The issue of Niger Delta is the issue of a people who were imprisoned for whatever reason and the people are revolting because their leaders are in prison. Amnesty for prisoners works.

When you have rebels in castration and members of their group are demanding for their release and you proceed to release them, then the cause of hostilities will cease . So giving amnesty to people who have not been convicted of any offence seems to be superfluous and presumptuous by the government because the core issues in the Niger Delta have nothing to do with the imprisonment of anybody. The core issue in the Niger Delta is primarily the issue of under development and exploitation .

If you do not address the economic situation in the Niger Delta, if you do not address exploitation of the people in the Niger Delta, it would be like what Shakespeare said, if you scorch the snake not kill it, she will grow and be herself again.

Every day, people are getting enlightened in the Niger Delta, they travel to Abuja, they see the roads, the sky scrappers and these projects are financed with monies from the Niger Delta and you cannot name a single road with federal presence that is motor able in the region and you are talking of amnesty. What amnesty ?

The amnesty is rubbish because that is not the solution to the problem. The Federal Government must make sure that Governors and Local Government Chairmen that are elected into offices in this area are not rigged. They must ensure that responsible leadership emerges from the popular vote of the people from the area.

They need leaders that are responsible and accountable to the people. Not leaders imposed on them because when impose leaders by fraud, they will sustain themselves by fraud. So whether the people like them or not is immaterial because they believe they can continue to buy themselves into power. So what needs to be done, fundamentally first, is to make sure that the people get their own leaders, not Abuja’ s leaders, not any political party’s leaders.

They should allow the people to have free and fair elections. This is the only way a wise government will help in solving the problem because if you do not have leaders that the people love and are enthroned by the people, nobody will listen to you .So whatever the government does, nobody cares, people will be doing their own thing.

But when you have a leader that is popularly elected by the people, they are loved by the people, what ever they say, the people will listen because this is the voice of the king that they have made. And the leaders also are conscious of the fact that they have been enthroned by these people, not some godfathers whom they have to consistently service by ensuring that their so called godfathers are given fraudulent contracts so as to sustain the patronage.

So the sovereignty of the people is taken away and when you remove the sovereignty of the people and enthrone the sovereignty of crooks and so called godfathers, then you have created lawlessness, you have created perversion, you have created injustice and no proper governance can come out from this type of people.

From 1999 when we returned to democratic rule, if you check the amount of money that the states in the Niger Delta have gotten, it is no where compared to the physical development on ground. You cannot find anything to justify the amount of money they have collected.

Instead, the leaders of the that area have become multi-billionaires over night. People just move from penury and joblessness to become multi-billionaires over night. People who did not have a dwelling, people who could not afford three square meals but because they rigged themselves into power would want to cure the poverty of their generations in arrear.

They have no antecedents, they have never done any successful business in their lives. Slaves are ruling while princes are walking on foot. It is a curse. So these are the core issues. The developmental areas and development cannot arise without responsible leadership. Responsible leadership cannot emerge except responsible, credible process of brining about these leaders is put in place and so these are the core issues .

When these issues are addressed, the issue of responsible leaders who take their allocation and add value to the lives of the people come about. When you address these issues, then you are pulling down the strong hold of restiveness and militancy in the area. But to just announce amnesty for a free man is stupid.

The militants are seen as the creation of politicians and at a point, they became uncontrollable and have now turned against the politicians. How would you react to this?

The militants are the creation of politicians, they are the creation of injustice and pervasion and exploitation in the Niger Delta. The politicians only acted as catalysts.

When they came in, and because they were looking for thugs who they would use against their opponents, use to rig elections, and use to carry ballot boxes; they had to go into the pool of these militants who had been there but in a low profile and local way. When the politicians came into them (militants) , they empowered them, they brushed them up. They gave them arms and special boats.

They gave them a lot of facilities to help them further their cause. A lot of these things they did was for their selfish interest, but after the elections, these arms remained with the boy. So the materials remaining with boys could not be collected and these boys used these arms to rob, abduct and they now graduated into the rich trade of crude oil.

These boys want their share of the national cake . Crude oil trade is a very lucrative trade and if you understand trade by barter, the people who are standing outside our shores to have these boys supply them crude oil also supply them sophisticated arms in exchange for crude oil and so the boys have become very sophisticated because a lot of them are very educated.

The politicians were the ones who increased their capacity. They were a big catalyst to help them to mature.

I have touched upon this point before, but there seems to be a dearth of northern opinion on NL, and on Nigerian-centric websites in general. Internet forums seem to be southern hotspots. They do not have Federal Character!

In all seriousness what drives northerners away from net forums? Is it because of derogatory anti-northern talkbacks?

The views here are largely southern views. We rarely hear the northern viewpoint here and one must go to sites like Amana Online, Gamji and Arewa Online to get the northern viewpoint. Comments please.

proudly9ja makes a very good point. It is not just the Nigerian NATION that needs to rebrand, the people need to rebrand too and present themselves in a better light.

http://www.news.dailytrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8185:yaradua-will-send-obansanjo-to-prison-el-rufai&catid=46:lead-stories&Itemid=140

Former FCT Minister, Malam Nasir el-Rufai has alleged that President Umaru Yar’Adua is desperately looking for reasons to send former president Olusegun Obansanjo to prison.

Chatting with newsmen at the Nigeria High Commission in London on Tuesday, shortly before submitting his application for the renewal of his passport, el-Rufai claimed that Yar’Adua has been looking for any excuse to send the former president to jail.

“It is just that Yar’Adua has not got enough proof to send him (Obasanjo) to prison. What do you think the power probe was all about? They want to get him. I know Yar’Adua very well. He is vicious and unforgiving”.

El-Rufai said when the fall-out between him and Yar’Adua started, he told Obasanjo that he did not want his intervention or reconciliation, stressing that President Yar’Adua was a person who will only reconcile when he is down on his knees. “As President, he is not going to be on his knees”.

“Obansanjo hand-picked Yar’Adua as president. Yar’Adua was his project and now he is after him. You can’t create a problem and then intervene. I would rather Obansanjo spends time saving himself than saving me”.

On his declared intention of going home to Nigeria, El-Rufai said: “I intend to spend my Christmas in Nigeria by God’s grace, but I haven’t fixed a date a yet”.

He said many people have told him not to go because they were concerned about his safety and security, but he insisted that he was more concerned about his safety that anyone else.

He said he was very much aware of the risks he would face if he went home, but stated that he was prepared to take the risk for the sake of Nigeria and his desire to bring about positive change in the governance of the country.

“You can’t change a bad system without taking risks”, he said. “If we all keep away from Nigeria, the country will not change (for the better) and the criminals will continue to dominate”.

El-Rufai said Nigerians must learn to stand up and fight for their rights, lamenting that Nigerian liked blaming others for their problems instead of standing up to challenge those responsible for their woes.

“Nigerians should group together and put pressure on President Yar’Adua to make him wake up to his responsibilities”.

He blamed Yar’Adua for the waning of influence Nigeria used to have on issues and events in Africa and the world at large. “Under Obansanjo, when Nigeria goes to summits, it speaks for Africa, but under Yar’Adua, Nigeria sits in the back row.

The former FCT minister who stated that he had no immediate plans to vie for any elective position in the near future however said he was ready to team up and work with anybody to change the way things were being done in the country.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e85dd6a-bc04-11de-9426-00144feab49a.html

Nigeria offers ‘revolutionary’ delta deal

By Tom Burgis in Port Harcourt

Published: October 18 2009 18:14 | Last updated: October 18 2009 23:37

[B]Nigeria plans to transfer 10 per cent of all its oil and gas ventures to the inhabitants of the oil-producing Niger Delta, [/B]in an attempt to end a rebellion that has hampered production in sub-Saharan Africa’s leading energy supplier.

The initiative, which comes against the backdrop of a sweeping attempt to overhaul Nigeria’s oil industry would, if approved, by parliament signal a bold new phase in government efforts to broker a lasting settlement in the delta. But first it has to overcome the anticipated objections of representatives of other regions.


The latest overture follows an amnesty that has lured into the open some of the main leaders of the militants who have led a sustained campaign in the delta region against the federal government and the oil industry.

Emmanuel Egbogah, the president’s special adviser on oil, told the Financial Times that [B]Umaru Yar’Adua, president, has backed the idea of transfering to delta communities 10 per cent stakes from the holdings of the national oil company in the joint ventures that exploit Nigeria’s vast reserves,[/B]

Mr Egbogah said he intended to add the proposal to [B]reforms that the government hopes to enact by the end of the year, which would also impose tougher terms on oil companies[/B] but which are currently embroiled in a tortuous debate in parliament.

A Chinese offer for up to a sixth of the country’s reserves – including stakes in some blocks operated by Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron – has raised the stakes still further.

The plan for the delta was “a serious one, a major one, something quite revolutionary”, Mr Egbogah contended.

The initiative is aimed at answering a longstanding demand from the delta’s fighters and activists, ethnic leaders and aggrieved communities for a share in the ownership of the oil that generates 80 per cent of government revenue.

[B]All citizens of oil-bearing communities would be entitled to cash benefits, delivered through a trust-style mechanism, which they could use individually or pool for social projects. [/B]It was unclear how the government would apportion the stakes and avert competition between different communities for a larger slice of them.
[B]
The rest of Africa’s most populous nation could face reduced income as a result but potentially this would be offset by higher output, if the initiative led to a reduction in sabotage of the oil industry.[/B]

Mr Egbogah said [B]the 10 per cent stakes would pay dividends on revenues after taxes and costs to communities, bypassing powerful governors of the eight oil-producing states who were instead calling for an increase in the extra share of petroleum revenues they already receive. The stakes could not be resold.[/B]

The government hopes to provide a disincentive to oil-theft and sabotage by linking the earnings of each qualifying community to production from the joint venture that extracts its resources.

[B]“These benefits will flow directly to them,” Mr Egbogah said. “Every community, whether blind or deaf or dumb, every citizen will say: ‘I own a part of this business.’ ”[/B]

Attacks on oil facilities have cut production in Nigeria, an important supplier to the US, by as much as 40 per cent in recent years. A multibillion dollar trade in stolen oil has flourished while the majority of the delta’s estimated 28m people live amid despoiled waterways often lacking basic services.

The misery persists in spite of the oil-state governments receiving an additional 13 per cent of national petroleum revenues, making their budgets two or three times the size of those in some other regions.

Mr Egbogah said the plan would cover “all petroleum assets in the country” but added that “obviously there are no oil-producing communities in the offshore”, which is home to major deepwater fields.

Seven onshore joint ventures between the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and foreign oil groups in the delta account for 70 per cent of Nigeria’s production. The NNPC holds between 55 per cent and 60 per cent in each.

Officials believe the community stakes could see well over Naira50bn ($338m €227m, £207m) diverted to the communities in its first year.

Shell said its joint venture, which produced 17 per cent of Nigeria’s output last year, has contributed $34bn (€23bn, £21bn) to the government in the past four years. The Anglo-Dutch group said the government received 95 per cent of all onshore revenue after costs.

http://odili.net/news/source/2009/sep/15/301.html

Military govts and Gani’s 32 detentions
By Adekunle Adekoya
Tuesday, September 15, 2009

TODAY, the final rites of passage would be completed with interment for an exceptional Nigerian, a man who dedicated his life to the struggle for improvement in all areas of our troubled national life – Chief Abdul-Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi (SAN), better known to the rest of us as Gani.

Looking at the man’s life, and his somewhat immature passing (even at 71), it is near inescapable to equate Gani’s sojourn with detentions for one cause he fought or the other, democratic civil rule in the last 10 years notwithstanding.

For Gani, life, and the living of it was a struggle, at least in Nigeria. It is not unlikely that this icon of our times might not have chosen a life of struggle if his father had not passed on while he was just about halfway through university. For him, scraping to pay school fees in Britain was a turning point experience that would shape his beliefs and define his life of struggles. Of course, this life of struggles inevitably pitted him against the ruling elite – represented by the various military juntas that ruled the nation until 1996, when last he was detained (See box).

Gani detained 6 times during Gowon’s tenure

Forty years ago, during the thick of the civl war, in 1969, Gani was detained for the first time at Kaduna Police Headquarters; General Yakubu Gowon was then Head of State. The Gowon administration detained him four times that year; at Jos Police station, at Ilorin Police station, and at Police Headquarters in Lagos. There was a breather between 1969 and 1972 when he was detained again at Police Headquarters in Lagos. Altogether, Gani was detained by the Gowon government six of the 32 times he was gaoled.

In detention three times during Obasanjo’s tenure

In the aftermath of the popular student uprising of 1978, the Federal Government banned the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) and rusticated its leadership. Of course, Gani was part of the students’ struggle, for which he was detained at C. I. D. Alagbon, Inter-Centre Detention Outpost, and Ikoyi Police Station, all in Lagos, in 1978.

Detained 17 times during Babangida’s tenure

But by far, the Babangida administration had the singular honour of being the one that detained Gani the most – a record 17 times of the total 32 he was detained. Gani enjoyed relative “peace” after the detentions of 1978; a transition to civil rule programme instituted by the Obasanjo administration ushered in the civilian administration headed by Alhaji Shehu Shagari as President in October 1979.

It was short-lived however, by December 31, 1983, a military putsch which sent Shagari packing saw Geneal Muhammadu Buhari emerging Head of State. Buhari ruled only 20 months; in August 1985 General Ibrahim Babangida succeeded him, and a little over a year after, in 1987, Gani was back on familiar turf – in detention. His first detention under the IBB administration was at the dreaded Panti Police Station in 1987.

After release , the following year, in 1988, Gani was to be detained at the same station three times. By the time Babangida left office in 1993, Gani had been in and out of detention seventeen times, and was detained in various locations from Lagos to Abuja and Maiduguri.

Locked up 6 times during Abacha’s tenure

It is ironical that the late legal icon and rights activist would be detained only six times during the tenure of the nation’s most dreaded military ruler, late General Sani Abacha. When Babangida stepped aside in August 1993, he left Chief Ernest Sonekan, erstwhile chairman of the Transtion Council in charge of the federal administration; Babangida’s stepping aside itself being a fallout of crises surrounding the June 12 1993 election which was annuled by his government.

82 days later, the nation was told that Chief Sonekan had resigned his job, and that General Abacha had emerged the new Head of State. That was November 17, 1993. A few months later, Gani recommmenced his detention run when he was detained again at panti Police station in 1994. Also the same year, he was detained at the Federal Investigations and Intelligence Bureau (FIIB), Alagbon Close, and in 1995 he was back at Panti twice. Later in 1995, he was detained by the SSS at Shangisha, and the following year, 1996, he was also detained by the same outfit in the same place.

In between the initial detentions at the Police stations and security cells, Gani was transferred to other prisons. In 1969 after his initial detention at Kaduna Police station, he was transferred to Gombe Prisons, where he remained gaoled till 1970. Other prisons where Gani had been guests of the ruling junta included Ikoyi Prison, 1978; Gashua Prison, 1989; Nigerian Prison Ikoyi, 1990; Nigerian Prison Kuje, 1992; Nigerian Prison Kuje, 1993 and Nigerian Prison, Bauchi 1996.

Other travails Gani’s international passport had been seized 10 times while his house had been searched 16 times. On May 18, 1987, he was charged before an Ikeja Chief Magistrate’s Court for assault and obstruction against government agents. On March 17, 1988, Gani was charged with Mr. Nojeem Jimoh (then Punch Editor) before an Ikeja Chief Magistrate’s Court for Criminal Defamation against government on March 17, 1988. A particularly celebrated case was when he was charged with Mr. Nduka Irabor for criminal defamation against government before an Ikeja High Court on April 20, 1988. Two days later, April 22, 1988, Gani’s 50th birthday, he was docked before an Ikeja high court, again, for criminal defamation against government.

Later same year, he was before another magistrate in Ikeja for breach of the peace. The following year, in 1989, Gani appeared before Justice Fred anyaegbunam at the Transition to Civil Rule (Anti-sabotage) Tribunal, Lagos for sabotaging the Babangida transition programme, and in 1990, he was charged and imprisoned by late Justice Ayorinde of the Lagos High Court in 1990 for contempt of Court. The Court of Appeal in Lagos however set aside the judgment. In June 1992, Gani was made to answer charges of treason before a Gwagwalada Magistrate’s Court, Abuja, while in 1993, he faced sedition charges before another magistrate’s court in Abuja. All these took place during the Babangida administration.

During the Abacha junta, Gani was charged before another Ikeja magistrate’s court for unlawful assembly against government and forming illegal an political party, while in 1995 he appeared before a Yaba Chief Magistrate’s Court on charges of conducting a political rally without permission. He also faced charges on holding a political rally against government without permission the same year.

IBB on Gani, June 12

Curiously, General Babangida whose government detained Gani the most is on record as saying he has enormous respect for the fallen activist. His words: “If there is one man I respect, it is Gani. It sounds strange. I appreciate you that you have a strong conviction and fight for it consistently. This is the context in which I see Gani. I was a consistent “evil” and he was … a dogged fighter and I respect him for this. Infact there are three of them I respect like that. They are Gani, late (Professor) Awojobi and Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman. None of them says anything without doing his homework first.

In addition, General Babangida deployed a curious sense of humour when asked by newsmen why his government detained Gani. His reply: “What kind of question is that? Every Nigerian president arrests Gani Fawehinmi. Why should my turn be different? It’s all in a day’s work. It’s just part of the job description.”

DETENTIONS:

Police Headquarters, Kaduna, 1969

Jos Police Station, 1969

Ilorin Police Station, 1969

Police Headquarters, Lagos, 1969

Police Headquarters, Lagos 1972 (twice)

C. I. D. Alagbon, Lagos, 1978

Inter-Centre Detention Outpost, Lagos, 1978

Ikoyi Police Station,1978

Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1987

Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1988 (three times)

Police Station Ikeja, 1988

Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1989 (twice)

Ikoyi Police Station, 1989

SSS Cell Maiduguri, 1989

SSS Cell Awolowo Road, Ikoyi 1991

C. I. D. Police Station Ikoyi, 1992

Police Station Wuse Abuja, 1992

Inter-Centre Cell, Lagos 1993

SSS Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, 1993

C. I. D. Police Station Ikoyi, 1993

Police Station Wuse Abuja, 1993

Police Headquarters, Abuja, 1993

Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1994

F. I. I. B. Alagbon, Ikoyi, Lagos 1994 (Once)

Panti Police Station, Lagos, 1995 (Twice)

SSS Shangisha Cell Lagos, 1995 (Once)

SSS Shangisha Cell Lagos, 1996 (Once)


PRISON EXPERIENCE

Kaduna Prison, 1969

Gombe Prison, 1969 – 1970

Ikoyi Prison, 1978

Gashua Prison, 1989

Nigerian Prison Ikoyi, 1990

Nigerian Prison Kuje, 1992

Nigerian Prison Kuje, 1993 and

Nigerian Prison, Bauchi 1996

No problem Chucks. I didn't intentionally ignore your question. I try to be a provider of info rather than shape opinion/provide know it all solutions. Also, I have had some bad experiences of my words being deliberately misconstrued and taken out of context by some unscrupulous elements. So these days I try to provide info and leave the reader to make up their own mind.

ndu_chucks:
Thanks again.

abeg, you fit comment on my question?

The only part of the Aburi debate that was NOT tape recorded was the part where Gowon revealed what happened to Ironsi. The only people who heard this part of the debate were the military officers. The microphones were switched off, and the officers went in to an inner room where Gowon told everyone the full grisly details of what happened to Ironsi. They did not want that part of the debate being tape recorded. It was a highly emotive issue at the time and perhaps they did not want to record grisly detailsof Ironsi and Fajuyi being murdered.

ndu_chucks:
maxsiollun, thank you sir for the information above.

de problem wey i get be say, i no find de recordings or transcripts of de closed door meetings(at the so-called inner room) wey mobolaji johnson talked about in his recent interview. i really would like to see those transcripts, so if you know where dem dey, book or web site, i go appreciate de information.

de tings wey dey undisputed be say, aburi agreement was entered into, federal government reneged on de agreement, and we don fight civil war since then.

as a world renowned historian, how you tink say we fit, as a country, escape from the conundrum of post civil war failure?  personally i no tink say seccession go work, dat go just lead to another war wey go dey more deadly than the first one.

de ting wey i no dey hear from people be postulations or suggestions as to, how we fit take our country to the next level. what are your thoughts on this issue?

Ndu Chucks, we DO know what was said at Aburi:

1) The debate was tape recorded and released by Ojukwu to the public as a set of long playing gramophone records.

2) The tape was also transcribed into text and written out. The text was also released as a booklet. That booklet is still available and you may even be able to find a copy of it in your local library.

3) The Aburi agreement was publicly released as a communique. The communique is still available and is even out there on the internet!

http://www.dawodu.com/aburi1.htm

ndu_chucks:
my own view of de conference be say, ojukwu secured an excellent deal for his people. if he succeeded and biafra became a country, dat would have been excellent for the igbos. dat fact is not in dispute at all. we also sabi say ojukwu appeared to be more brilliant than de people wey attend the conference.

from my stand point, we no know most of what happened during the closed door meetings yet. mobolaji johnson shed some light with recent interviews. until most of what happened during those closed door aburi session come to light, i no fit judge the participants fairly. we know say federal government no follow up on their agreement with ojukwu, but i no sure say, they were legally bound to do so. they must have found out after the fact that the deal was extraordinarily lopsided.

i agree say we, as a country need to address several constitutional issues. i however,  believe say we need to do am within our established system of government. we no need to dismantle every ting in order to fix things.

those wey dey call for seccession go surely fail.

by the way, e go hard to draw a map of dis igbo land wey you describe, because de map go meander through the whole of niger delta area, old mid west, all the way to benue! correct me if i'm wrong, the igboland wey you decribe to me is different from Biafra as depicted on the map here

you tell us say boro and wiwa no be igbo, but biafra map include their land! abeg explain the discrepancy to me, sir.

Give Mobolaji Johnson credit for being largely honest with this interview. His recollection is spot on in almost all parts. He has a good memory after all these years.
[b]
He is right that Ojukwu did agree to endorse Gowon as leader IF:

(a) the federal government kept to the decisions reached at Aburi.
(b) Gowon's title was changed from "Supreme Commander" to "Commander-in-Chief". [/b]It was Ojukwu that introduced the phrase "Commander-in-Chief" into the Nigerian lexicon.

The full interview is reproduced below.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2009/oct/17/national-17-10-2009-001.htm
Civil war expose
Aburi meeting secret
• Ojukwu endorsed Gowon as head of state – Gen Mobolaji Johnson
By DURO ADESEKO
Saturday, October 17, 2009
General Mobolaji Johnson
Photo: Sun News Publishing
More Stories on This Section

Ever since the civil war ended, much have been said about the things that led to it and the roles played by the actors, especially as regards the meeting the then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon and leader of the secessionist Biafra, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, held at Aburi, Ghana. However, one of the military chief, who attended the Aburi, General Mobolaji Johnson, has sensationally revealed some of the things that transpired.

[B]He revealed that Ojukwu actually endorsed Gowon as head of state[/B], before making a volte-face to declare the Republic of Biafra.
In an exclusive interview with Saturday Sun, General Johnson, who was the first military governor of Lagos State, revealed that Gowon told the Aburi meeting that the late General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi was picked up at Ibadan and killed, [B]Ojukwu rose from his seat to shake his hands.
[/B]
He said: [B]“We went inside the inner room. That was when Gowon briefed us as to what happened to Ironsi at Ibadan; how the boys picked him up and killed him. That was when Ojukwu now got up and shook the hands of Gowon.”[/B]

[B]According to General Johnson, Ojukwu also agreed that Gowon should be head of state, revealing that the only request Ojukwu made was that Gowon should not be addressed as the Supreme Commander, as Ironsi was.[/B] Instead, he revealed, Ojukwu wanted Gowon to be addressed as head of state, adding that he also requested that the meeting give him something with which he could go back to his people, who were aggrieved.

General Johnson also spoke on why Brigadier Ogundipe, who was next to Ironsi in rank, could not succeed him as head of state. According to Johnson, Ogundipe sacrificed his career and his status to restore peace to Nigeria.

General Johnson spoke on these and many other issues.

As one of the first set of rulers of Nigeria, what is your assessment of the development of the nation at 49?
Yoruba says: Oba mewa, Igba mewa (Ten kings, ten different times). We had a different type of set-up when we were in government. It was a military set-up. It was a set-up that people, like me, could operate. Then I could just talk to my colleagues and do things the way I knew it. So, I believe that many things done in our time were possible because we never thought of politics. In my time, they investigated all the governors after we left office.

During the Murtala Muhammed regime, the military investigated itself. [B]General Rotimi of the West and I were the only two who were found to be clean. What did my fellow governors do? They bought one government property or the other.[/B] But what we are hearing today makes a different kind of corruption. There is no accountability. We talked of millions of naira in my time, but it is billions and trillions they are talking about now. So, to compare is not easy. We had different circumstances. But the nation must still go on. It seems as if Nigerians are being shortchanged by the type of administration they get. The system is different. Our own was military; we ruled by decree. But now, they have to combine the American presidential system before they take decisions.

As the first military governor of Lagos, what legacy did you leave behind?
Well, I think I can talk about different legacies in the state that was created. I was not just the first military governor; I was the first governor of Lagos. When people talk of military governor and civilian governor, you are giving prominence to confusion. I was the first governor of the state. I had my priorities then and they are there to be seen today. We believed in getting people outside closer to the centre. I opened roads to achieve this. The road network that I put up became the first expressway in Nigeria. I told them it was taxpayers’ money at work and if they paid their tax, more would be achieved. So, that is one of the things we did in those days. We did the Apapa-Oshodi Express road without which you wouldn’t have had Festac Town.
There was a lot of armed robbery at the end of the civil war. Many guns were flying around and we had to hold the bull by the horns. We set up tribunals to try armed robbers and they were shot publicly and I think that arrested the problem of armed robbery at the time.

On health, we did a lot. We had the first doctors’ strike on our hands and we arrested that by building quarters for resident doctors in Marina, Lagos. In education, we did a lot. Adeniran Ogunsanya built schools so as to accommodate the students who were interested in furthering their education.
In agriculture, we did a lot too. We produced eggs. We had farms in places near Badagry and Epe areas.

Can you briefly recount the process that led to the creation of states, including Lagos?
If you remember, we were having a civil war when Odumegwu Ojukwu created the state of Biafra and the military didn’t believe in the division of this country. We believed that there should be one country, no matter the difference. So, when he heard that Ojukwu wanted to create Biafra and that the whole of the East, including Rivers State and Cross River State would be included in it, we acted. We felt that Ojukwu should be used as a catalyst.

We just used the opportunity to create more states. That is how we thought of creating states and we drew the carpet off Ojukwu’s feet. It was a masterstroke. By the time he announced the state of Biafra, the other states and parts of Biafra were no more with him. South East and Rivers states were created out of that area. They became autonomous states and we gave them money from the centre to organise their states, though they couldn’t operate as states in time, because of the civil war. Ojukwu was just a catalyst in the creation of states.

In the creation of state, I said Lagos should not be left out. Administration began from Lagos. There was a time Lagos belonged to the West and there was a time it belonged to the Federal Government. By the time I came on board, Lagos was a federal capital.

So, you pushed for the creation of Lagos?
I didn’t push for it. The people of Lagos have been agitating for their own state before I came (as governor). So, we saw it as an opportunity to create Lagos State along with others and then have a balance. There had been agitation in other areas, like Ogoja State. People like Joseph Tarka agitated in Benue. Middle Belt people agitated for their states too. So, we just took it as an opportunity to satisfy or at least make attempt to satisfy the yearnings of the people from various parts of the nation.

What informed the decision by the military to take over government from the civilians in 1960?
Well, if you go back to the first coup, which was on January 15, 1966, you find out that I was not part of the coup. But I was in a strategic position to know just a bit of what happened. I didn’t know the minds of the coup plotters, but I knew enough of what was going on. Kaduna Nzeogu and Emmanuel Ifeajuna were there. Ifeajuna and I were in the same brigade headquarters. He was what we called Staff Officer Grade I and I was grade II. I didn’t know what was going on. I was just doing my job. With hindsight, I found he was trying to drag me into the coup.

He went to my wife and said: ‘Look, this one is just a Jacky, working, not even looking if anything is going on. He is just a British trained, a Yes Sir type of man. He takes orders without blinking.’ I never knew what was in their minds, but I know there was Operation Wet e in the West; there was insecurity in the West and they believed that it couldn’t continue. The country was very unstable and they wanted to bring stability to the country. It was a turning point in Nigeria’s history. Blood was shed; it led to a civil war and led Ojukwu to want to pull out the country to form Biafra.

How did you hear about the first coup and how was it foiled?
I didn’t foil the coup. Before the coup, I was agitating for a posting. I said I was being short- changed. You have to pass exams to go up in the military. I passed my Captain to Major exams and I said that I should be sent abroad to Staff College. But then, I was shortchanged and I was very bitter about that. So, I was asking for a posting. One of the things they said was that I was not commanding troops. David Bamigboye and Ogbeya were under me then as my staff captain. Ogbeya was Captain A and Bamigboye Captain Q. Because I was agitating for a posting, Ifeajuna tried to use that to get me. He said my posting was changed from Enugu to Ibadan. There were rumours then that they were trying to plan a coup. So, I was going to be posted out of second brigade. [B]The party Brigadier Mamailari had that night was to welcome new officers and send off the other ones who were leaving. That was the party we had before the coup.[/B] I won’t go into all those details now. But I didn’t know about the coup.

How did you hear about the coup?
I didn’t know about the coup.

Sir, how did you hear about it? Where were you?
In the morning, when I was going home after the party, Ifeajuna took my wife home because she just had a baby on December 15 and the coup was January 15. She had to come home and breastfeed the baby. Ifeajuna brought her home. When I was coming home I passed through Iyala Road, where Ifeajuna was leaving. I saw cars in his house and I thought since it was a Friday night, maybe they were having suya night. So, I didn’t branch. I went home. When I got home, my wife told me that she didn’t like what happened in her dream. She said she saw a picture of Julius Caesar the day he was killed, how the plotters came together and then killed Julius Caesar.

She said we were in a car from Kaduna to Lagos and how the car ran into a house and nobody came out except Ademoyega. She said there was no light in the house and that it was like a plot and she didn’t like it. I just thought she was talking about Ifeajuna going after a woman or something. I didn’t take it seriously until about 6am. They came and told me that something had happened and some people were killed in Lagos.
I went to the brigade headquarters, where I was the second in command to Ifeajuna at Apapa. [B]The gate was opened for me and Murtala Muhammed told me what had happened. [/B]The Minister of Finance, Okoti Eboh and the Brigade Commander could not be seen. So that was how I got to know about it.

Was there any directive from the headquarters to you?
No directive. We were just to make sure that we stabilised things. Then the army headquarters told us to look out for those they believed were part of the coup. We were to make sure we stabilised our various units.

You were close to the first military head of state, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi. Was he the one that appointed you as governor?
Ironsi appointed me as administrator of Lagos in 1966. Don’t forget that he became head of state in January and I was brought back from Benin in February. He appointed me administrator of the Federal Capital. There used to be Minister for Lagos Affairs. [B]The last Minister of the Federal Capital before my appointment was Musa Yar’Adua, the father of the incumbent President of Nigeria. [/B]So, Ironsi appointed me and I learnt that he had too much pressure in Lagos. They didn’t allow him to look at the whole country. So, he said there should be somebody who could take over the problem of Lagos. That is how he brought me from Benin. I was always a trouble-shooter. I was sent to Ibadan and I stopped the shooting that was going on and I collected all the weapons. I diverted the thinking of the soldiers from wreaking havoc to sports. David Ejoor was crying, asking how he could be military governor without having military presence in the mid-west. I was again sent there to establish the first military formation. I was second to Ejoor. That was when I had my first experience with public administration. Ironsi brought me back to Lagos to be military administrator.

What kind of person was the late Aguiyi Ironsi?
[B]Ironsi was the old type of soldier. [/B]He was one of those who rose from the rank, not those just commissioned straight from school. I served with him at the Brigade headquarters when he came back from the Congo. He was the head of the United Nations operation in Congo and he took care of the UN troops. After the expiration of his tenure, he came back to Nigeria and that was when there was agitation for who should be the head of the Nigerian army. He was chosen and I was his staff officer. [B]I found him to be knowledgeable. He had the background of the army in him. You may say that he was not too academically sound, like people who got commissioned. But, he was very effective and very sound. I found my time with him to be very pleasant.[/B]

How did Ironsi emerge as head of state? Was his emergence controversial within the army hierarchy?
No. Don’t forget we didn’t have many generals then. He was the head of the army. He had become the General Officer Commanding (GOC) the Nigerian Army. He was in charge of the whole army. When the coup happened, he told the parliament that the only way they could control the situation is to transfer power to the military. That is how the parliament called an emergency meeting.

Was he acceptable to the military top brass?
I don’t know what you mean by being acceptable.

There was open rebellion that resulted in his killing within six months…
If you look at the January coup, it was against the people of the North and the Yoruba. The Igbo were left out and people now felt that it shouldn’t just go on like that. You find that Ironsi, being an Igbo man, had a problem in his hands on how to contain the boys who did the first coup and then to keep the country going. So, it wasn’t easy for him. It wasn’t easy for him to punish most of the boys who did the first coup and majority of them were Igbo.

The North felt that they should not sit down and watch the development like that. The cream of the elite of their officers was killed. Yoruba lost Shodeinde and Ademulegun, who were killed. So, it was in retaliation that the people carried out the second round of the coup. Before the second coup there was a rumour about it. There was so much distrust. You don’t know who was who. It was in that atmosphere that the second coup happened. That was what brought Gowon to power. He was the only senior northern army officer available. [B]Martins Adamu and Danjuma said he was the only one they could take orders from.[/B] So, they struck.

[B]There is the story that one Brigadier Ogundipe was next in rank to Ironsi and Ojukwu insisted he should be the next head of state after Ironsi, but that he ran away.
Well, he did not run away. That man sacrificed his career for the unity of Nigeria. He sacrificed his rank and status for peace in this country.[/B] I say this because I was present that day at Obalende police headquarters when Ogundipe opened the window and asked us to look outside. He told us to look at the killings going on, saying that it must stop. He talked to a few of us because the boys were at Ikeja cantonment. We were just talking by telephone. Ojukwu was talking from the East, saying that he (Ogundipe) shouldn’t allow it and that by status he should be the next head of state since they could not find Ironsi. Ogundipe said they must stop the killing and that there must be peace in the country. [B]He said if he were going to be an impediment to peace, he would leave the country. He said he would sacrifice his career and leave the country, so that there would be peace. He said if that was the sacrifice he had to make, he would. He didn’t run away.[/B]

So, it is true Ojukwu insisted he should be the next head of state?
[B]Ojukwu said that he should be the next head of state if Ironsi was not found. [/B][B]He was sitting down there in the East not knowing what was going on in Lagos. Ogundipe said that he had to sacrifice his career and Ojukwu was saying that he should be head of state and not Gowon. Ojukwu and Gowon were of the same rank. So, Ojukwu said it shouldn’t be anybody from the North. But the northern boys, who staged the counter coup, said that is the only man they could take orders from was Gowon. That was it.
[/B]
When the Federal Government met Ojukwu at Aburi, Ghana, why did Nigeria renege on the agreement reached with Gowon?
We went to Aburi on the invitation of the then head of state in Ghana, General Akran. As a senior man in the military, he invited all of us to come to Aburi, in Ghana to talk and that we should not allow the bloodshed to continue. We went as colleagues, not seeing each other for a long time. Ojukwu came with the press and everything. He had made up his mind to secede.

Did he tell you that?
He didn’t say so in many words. You could see that from the action. I told them that when we moved apart we would never be friends again. I told them that we should have one nation and keep the nation going. During the discussion, it came to a point when Ojukwu said that since we were talking about head of state, what happened to the other head of state, Ironsi. I think Gowon then told General Akran that we should not talk before the press. We went inside the inner room. That was when Gowon briefed us as to what happened to Ironsi at Ibadan; how the boys picked him up and killed him.

Gowon briefed you?
He briefed all of us. [B]That was when Ojukwu now got up and shook the hands of Gowon. Gowon told Ojukwu that he believed in the continuation of the country as one and that we should not divide the country. Ojukwu then said well, we should let him go back with something to his people who were aggrieved. Ironsi was addressed as the supreme commander of the Nigerian Armed Forces. He said we should change from supreme commander to head of state. He wanted the word supreme removed. Gowon became head of state. I think it was Babangida who changed it to President later on. [/B]That was what happened then.

[B]Did Ojukwu agree that Gowon should be head of state?
Yes. He agreed. Gowon and Ojukwu embraced each other. [/B]We said nobody should do anything about the communiqué until we met again. That was what happened in Aburi. That is what happened there. Coming from Aburi, Gowon emphasised that he would make sure that we kept the country as one irrespective of anything.

If that was the situation, why did you create states in order to draw the carpet from Ojukwu’s feet, as you said earlier?
The states were created after the meeting, when we were informed that Ojukwu was going to create the state of Biafra. Gowon moved quickly to create states.

You said that when Gowon narrated how Ironsi was killed, Ojukwu shook his hands. Why was that?
Until then, nobody knew what happened to the past head of state. Gowon, for the first time, explained how he was killed. The announcement before then was that the head of state was missing. That was what the media said.

If Ojukwu only requested that Gowon should not be addressed as the supreme commander, how was this supposed to benefit his people?
The mentality was that supreme appendage was somebody who is supreme. So, for him it was let Ironsi go with supreme and call the next person head of state.

What was actually discussed at Aburi?
We discussed issues concerning the country. [B]Ojukwu said we should move apart for a while to let things cool down. We said that once we pulled apart, it was not going to be easy to come back together. [/B]That was it. Ojukwu also talked about troops not being loyal; that there were killings of the Igbo. He asked how we could live together in such circumstance. We told him that we should try and forget those things and continue living together.

Did he agree with you?
Yes, he agreed.

Why did Ojukwu and his people later make the famous declaration: On Aburi we stand?
He said we agreed to move apart and we didn’t agree to that one. The meeting didn’t believe all he said and we said nobody should issue communiqué until after the second meeting. That was the way they saw it. They wanted to push the situation so that we would separate. We believed in one country. Admiral Wey said and Gowon too said it. The consensus was that whatever we did, we must remain one.

There was no agreement to pull apart?
No. The Aburi meeting was to forestall that.

Why did Ojukwu then declare a state of Biafra when you granted him his request not to call Gowon supreme commander?
Well, that is left to him. He made up his mind before he came to Aburi that the country should be divided. He wanted the oil area and the Igbo enclave to be state of Biafra. We didn’t believe in that.

Was Ironsi concerned about federal or unitary government?
I was close to Ironsi when he brought me back to Lagos to make me administrator of the federal territory. I can even remember what happened when my name was announced as administrator. It was a time they were doing a lot of enquiries into some of the parastatal corporations. I think they were dealing with the Nigeria Railways. They were making a list of people to pick for the board. I found out that all the names they put there were from one part of the country. Ironsi always wanted me to comment when situation was like that. So, he asked me to comment. I told them I was not trying to be a tribalist but that I knew that one wanted to suggest names, the names that would come to one first were the names of the people one knew. I told them that by coincidence, names of the people that would be on the board were from one part of the country. I said we might have to revisit the list and suggest other names.

Ironsi looked at them and said: ‘I told you that Bolaji is sound.’ He said they should go and look at the list again and correct it. I think it was the following morning that my father said: ‘Congratulations, your name has been announced as the administrator.’ That was the last thing I did to convince Ironsi, who I worked with as staff officer when he was Brigade Commander.

Was he committed to central or unitary government?
The regional governors were there. When we talked, he was talking about centralising administration and that there was too much powers for the regions. I think Nwokedi’s report said that. So, he made that decree that centralised the public service and that authority would be from Lagos. That was the mistake Ironsi made.

He did not consult regional governors and the supreme military council?
There was no supreme military council. But he used to meet with governors and the administrators.

Did he just make the decree without consultation?
Well, I think it was the report he announced. The North said it couldn’t work.

What was your own attitude and what did you tell him?
I wasn’t called to comment. I just know that it happened at the time and there were reactions.

Was the Nigerian civil war avoidable?
I don’t think the civil war was avoidable. The alternative was to allow Ojukwu to go with the East. We could see he had made up his mind to secede.

Is it true you married at age of 24 and stopped child bearing at 30?
I married at the age of 26 and my wife was about 23 then. In two years time, I would mark 50 years of marriage.

Did you stop child bearing at the age of 30?
I had my last boy when I was about 30 or 31.

[B]You married at 26 and stopped child bearing at 31, that is five years. How many children do you have, sir?
I have three boys by my wife and I have one away game. The away game would be 40 this year.[/B]

How did you meet your wife and what do you like about her?
My wife is a lovely woman. In her, I found a companion and confidant. The courtship was for five years. It is marriage arranged from heaven. She is a mother, a housekeeper and everything to me.

[B]How did she take the child you had by another woman?
She didn’t make too much fuss about it. She asked what we were going do. She related with the boy. This boy is getting married this year. The first marriage he had didn’t work.[/B] We were at Warri to do the introduction with the family.

[B]Did you marry the mother?
I didn’t marry the mother.
[/B]
How did you adjust to civilian life after retirement? How are you fairing as a bloody civilian?
You can say bloody civilian, indeed. We were not prepared for retirement. Retirement came overnight. We were lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself. But thank goodness for the grace of God. I followed a friend of mine to a golf course one day and there was an argument on who was taking a shot and who was not taking a shot. The argument got so heated up; we went back to the golf course. One of them said to me: ‘You always said sportsman, sportsman and you laugh at us. Now put the ball down and give it a shot.’ I swung at the ball and they all burst out laughing. The ball was at the same spot. That was the day I asked myself how this small thing could beat me. That is how I got into golf. In the mornings when I took my children to school, I would go to the golf course at Ikeja. I used it to while away time and kept my mind off all problems.

[B]Is it true that you brought Julius Berger to Nigeria and that you are the chairman?
I was the chairman of the board up till August last year.[/B] I didn’t bring Julius Berger to Nigeria. It came to Nigeria through international tender to build the Eko Bridge.

Was this during your administration?
It wasn’t during my administration. But they were completing the Eko Bridge when I became administrator of Lagos. I saw the lovely job they were doing and I said these are the people I like to work with. The states were created and they too wanted to stay in Nigeria and we worked together.

What year was this?
I am talking of 1966/67.

At 73, do you still attend social functions like social parties?
It depends on the type of person celebrating. I am not a socialite. I attend functions of people whom I know.

Who is your hero?
My father has always been my hero. He was the man I took after. I joined the military because of him. His name is Joshua Omotola Johnson. He lived up to the age of 96. I wanted to be like him. The military uniform was so good on him and I thought, one day I would wear the uniform myself. He was a strict and friendly father. We were lucky to have the kind of parents we had.

You introduced house rent edict and specified how much landlords could take from tenants. What informed your decision at the time?
Landlords over charged the tenants. In Lagos, there were different types of houses. I sent people out to categorise the houses, to know which ones were mud, bricks and flats. We categorised them. We fixed the rent per room. We set up a tribunal to try disputes between landlords and tenants. In praise of this, Ayinla Omowura, the ace Apala musician, waxed a record, Aiye e ma ta pa sijoba, e fara mo Mobolaji (Do not kick against government, support Mobolaji).

[B]Is General Mobolaji Johnson a rich man?
By Nigerian standard or what?

By any standard
I am not a rich man. I have enough to eat and look after my family and myself. I am not a businessman. God gave me the talent to plan ahead. I own property and I collect my rent. I don’t receive two years rent. I collect every year and I plan my life according to what I have.

What do you do as chairman of the board of Julius Berger?
I supervise the company as chairman of the board.

Did they pay you?
We had sitting allowance. They don’t pay salary to board chairman.[/B]

1) I have read the entire Aburi report word for word, page for page verbatim.  On the transcript, Lt-Col Katsina (as he then was) described in great detail how he overcame his fears and confronted murderous mobs that were killing Igbos in the north. This was after Ironsi had been murdered and all hell had broken loose (months later than the Decree 34 drama you described). Katsina's role in trying to stop the mayhem has also been referenced by other authors, and even Ojukwu himself responded to it at Aburi by saying that he refused to believe that Katsina killed anybody. There is a passage at Aburi where Katsina says that if Ojukwu knew how much he (Katsina) had tried to save Igbos, Ojukwu would give him a medal.  [/b]The entire discussion about this aspect is chronicled in my book which I am not going to reproduce verbatim for you on an internet forum.

2) Katsina (in Oct 1966) also confronted the northern soldiers who mutinied in Kano. Again, consult my book for further details of this incident. Just so you know, things were so serious that the battalion commander in Kano (a northerner) fled and hid from his own troops as he was afraid of getting killed also.

3) [b]There was no "Recce Squadron Jos" as erroneously stated in your post. The 1 Recce Squadron was stationed in KADUNA. That Recce squadron was sent to deal with the Tiv insurgency in Jos because Jos was under the operational command of the 1st brigade (to which the Kaduna Recce squadron belonged).

Military units don't only execute operations in the city they are based in. They can travel too. For example, the army operation against the recent Boko Haram violence in Borno State was under the overall responsibility of Maj-Gen Saleh Maina - the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 3 Armoured Division, Jos.  Maina was an "overseer" of the operation because it fell within his field of operation as the GOC of 3 division (he is responsible for north eastern Nigeria). The same thing happened several years earlier when Maj-Gen Buhari (as GOC of 3 Div in Jos) moved his troops to the north eastern border with Chad to deal with Chadian rebels.

4) This forum is about the free exchange of ideas and opinions. You are perfectly entitled to disagree with me. But when you do so, please refrain from using invectives and inflammatory language such as referring to my valid points as "ridiculous cr*p". There is no need to speak so rudely. If you disagree, just tell me why your point of view is better than mine without resorting to invectives. It detracts from what might otherwise be valid points that you wish to make.

[/quote][quote author=Dede1 link=topic=334770.msg4749078#msg4749078 date=1255731355]This is one of the ridiculous crap I had to read from this board and more so from a person with Nigerian historical pedigree such as Maxsiollun.

Major Hassan Katsina, as the military governor of northern region, stood steward to one of the heinous act of man’s inhumanity aganist mankind in the annals of Nigeria history. I would want you to furnish us with the instances where Major Hassan Katsina attempted to stop the orgy of massacre of southerners, particularly Ndigbo, during the pogrom of 1966. Katsina was the military governor that was overseeing a region fraught with military installations and yet he looked the other way when the killings were going.


The only instance Lt. Col. Katsina was accredited with such compassion took place when was returning from Lagos afte meeting with Maj. Gen. Ironsi about the decree #34. The rumor had it that Katsina had been detained in Lagos by Ironsi. However, when his touched at Kano airport, the northern region soldiers had surrounded the airport. It was alleged that Lt Chris Ugokwe, ADC to Katsina, was trying exit the plane before his boss. At this juncture, rumor had it the Katsina urged his ADC to step back because he could be shot.

Guys just a few points:

1) Lt-Col Arthur Unegbe was an Igbo officer from Ozubulu in Anambra State. He was murdered by the Jan 1966 coup plotters. This has nothing to do with him refusing to hand over any weapons. At the time of the coup he was the Quartermaster-General of the army and thus did not have control of any weapons stores.

2) Lt-Col Katsina was not in charge of the 1st Recce Squadron when it was used to suppress the Tiv riots. Major Anuforo was in charge of the 1st Recce Squadron at the time and his anger at being ordered to shoot Tiv protesters was one factor that pushed him to take part in the coup.

3) Lt-Col Katsina actually risked his life to save Igbos during the bloody pogroms of 1966. He personally confronted some of the murderous mobs in order to stop them from killing Igbos.

Aburi was a missed opportunity. The whole question of our national corporate existence, and form of co-existence was debated. Should we be together or not? How can we live together? It is a shame that the civil war overtook events and we never got to practice/test the formula of Aburi: confederation.

MEND and the other Niger Delta militants are essentially fighting over the same issues debated at Aburi. Yar'Adua's amnesty is actually aimed at a problem that was exhaustively debated by Nigerian leaders 43 years ago. Imagine how many lives could have been saved. The tape recording of the Aburi debate is still out there. It was released by Ojukwu as a set of long playing gramophone records.

Astonishing info. I was under the impression that MKO's wealth was enough to fund the June 12 presidential campaign AND have much left over.

Bravo. Kudos to this board. Up Naija. :-)

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2009/10/12/n300bn-transportation-contractssenate-report-indicts-anenih-okonjo-iweala-ciroma/comment-page-8/
N300bn TRANSPORTATION contracts:
Senate report indicts Anenih, Okonjo-Iweala, Ciroma
[/b]Headlines Oct 12, 2009

ABUJA — THE Senate investigation into the alleged utilisation of more than N300 billion in the transportation sector during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, [b]has recommended the prosecution of thirteen former Ministers of that era for the alleged abuse of the due process mechanism of that administration.

The Senate report indicted seven former Ministers, five former Ministers of State and four permanent secretaries who served in the Obasanjo administration between 1999 and 2007. Besides, a serving Minister, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, was also indicted and recommended for prosecution for the alleged transfer of N1.2 billion into the private account of a toll company without due process and in breach of concession agreement.

The former Ministers recommended for prosecution include the erstwhile chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former Minister of Works, Chief Tony Anenih; erstwhile Finance Minister and Chairman of the Presidential re-election committee of the PDP, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe, Dr. Obafemi Anibaba and Chief Cornelius Adebayo.

The Ministers of State also indicted by the Senate report are Senator Isaiah Balat, Chief Garba Ali Madaki, Ambassador Aderemi Esan, Alhaji Shehu Saleh and Malam Yahaya Abdulkarim.
The four Permanent Secretaries indicted by the Senate panel include Dr. Godwin Odumah, Dr. Ramsey Mowoe, Alhaji Abubakar Umar and Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed.

The Senate panel in its fourth recommendation demanded that Anenih, Madaki, Ogunlewe, Balat and the other former Ministers of Works, Ministers of State and permanent secretaries above “who awarded contracts without budgetary provision in the Appropriation Acts, Designs and Bills of Quantities, be prosecuted for violation of the ICPC Act and other extant laws.”

In its fifth recommendation, the committee deposed that:

“The Honourable Ministers of Finance and the Accountants-General of the Federation and other officials who authorised payments and released funds for the payments of contracts not appropriated by law and or released funds above provisions in the Appropriation Acts, be prosecuted for violation of extant laws. They are: Mallam Adamu Ciroma, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Mrs. Nenadi Usman, Kayode Naiyeju and Alhaji Mohammed Argungu.”

In its sixth recommendation, the committee stated thus:

“That the Director-General and other officials of the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit (now Bureau of Public Procurement) who issued certificates of award and payment for contracts not appropriated by law be prosecuted for violation of extant laws.

They are: Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwezili, Appolonia Okigbo, Prof. Kunle Ade Wahab, Tajudeen Oyawoye and Abimbola Ogunseitan.”

The Senate panel in its eighth recommendation indicting the immediate past Minister of Transportation, Mrs. Allison-Madueke deposed thus:

“That the Honourable Minister of Transportation and the Permanent Secretary who approved and transferred the sum of one billion, two hundred and ten million, five hundred thousand Naira (N1,210,500,000) into private account of Digital Toll Gates Company Limited without due process certification and in violation of the terms of concession agreement be prosecuted and this amount be recovered from this private company.[/b]

[b]“They are: Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke [/b]and Mrs. Amuna Ali.”
Besides, the committee in its 58 page main report recommended that Dr. Baba-Ahmed, a former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Works be prosecuted for “contract splitting and award of contract to non-existing companies.’’

The Senate report also recommended that officials of the Federal Ministry of Works in charge of toll collection be made to account for all the proceeds of the toll gates and its utilisation as at the time of its existence from 1999 upwards.

The Senate investigation was upon a motion moved on the Senate floor on April 29, 2008 by Senator Ayogu Eze demanding investigations into the utilisation of more than N300 billion of government funds in the transportation sector during the Obasanjo regime.

The ad-hoc investigative committee which was inaugurated on April 30, 2008 had Senator Heineken Lokpobiri as chairman and the following Senators as members, Patricia Akwashiki, Aloysius Etok, Ayogu Eze, Anthony Manzo, Umar Argungu, Sylvester Anyanwu, Felix Bajumo, Mohammed Jibril, Bala Mohammed, Ayodele Arise and Otaru Ohize.

All but one of the Senators signed the committee report which was submitted to the Senate last Thursday.

Incidentally, the exclusive report by Vanguard of Wednesday October 7, 2009 giving an indication of the indictment of PDP chieftains by the Senate investigations is now the subject of an enquiry by the Senate committee on Ethics. The Senate had upon a motion moved by Senator Nimi Barigha-Amange (PDP, Bayelsa East) demanded an investigation into the leakage of the report before Senate debate on the report.

Iweze is from Delta State. He is not the only Igbo soldier that fought Biafra. Ike Nwachukwu fought for the federal army too.

Nigeria: How Ghanaian Ecomog Commander Betrayed Sgt. Doe

Benjamin Njoku

26 September 2009

Lagos — The story of the Liberian civil war cannot be complete without references to [B]Nigeria's Major Gen. C.C. Iweze(rtd)[/B]. Currently, a director with Multimesh Group, (a digital cable satellite pay-TV service provider, based in Port-Harcourt), Major-Gen. Iweze served as Chief of Staff of the West African Peace Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in 1990.

He also led a two-man delegation of the then Military Government of Nigeria to retrieve corpses of the eight Nigerian soldiers killed in a clash with supporters of the late Somali warlord, Mohammed Farah Aidid during the United Nations Peace Keeping mission in Somalia. For his gallantry at the ECOMOG in Liberia, Iweze earned the respect of many officers in the Nigerian Army.

Despite his military accomplishments, Major-Gen. Iweze bears a grudge against the military high command. [B]He said he was retired from service because of "greed, back-bitting and inordinate ambition of younger officers."
[/B]
Thirteen years after his retirement, Major-Gen. Iweze finally breaks his silence in his Hilton Hotel room in Nairobi, Kenya. Enjoy it.

Since your retirement from service, you have remained silent. Does that suggest you are not happy with your retirement?

As a Major-General in the Nigerian Army, I was expected to have gotten at least six months retirement notice.

But in my own case, it was a sudden retirement. I was out of the country where I was representing my nation in a conference abroad, only for me to be retired unnoticed. My retirement was something I did not plan for when it happened.

I cannot understand a system that would prefer to flush out its generals overnight. When I signed to become an army officer, I did not sign to take things unexpectedly. But it happened to me and nobody was ready to give me any excuse for my retirement. To be precise, I didn't like the way I was retired from service. But after 13 years of retirement, I have moved on with my life.

The most important thing is that where I am at present, I appear to be much more comfortable than when I was in the army. While I was in service, I devoted all my life doing what I knew how to do best. And then, my retirement came as a blow. But like I said, it's behind me now and I have moved on.

Can you briefly let us into your various exploits while in service?

No matter how one would want to hide himself or herself, you cannot deny your identity.[B] First and foremost, I am an Igbo man from Delta State. I passed out from the Defence Academy, only for me to face the civil war. Here was I, an Igboman fighting against my brothers.[/B]

[B]But at that time, I didn't see the war as Igbos versus other ethnic groups or a kind of tribal affair. Rather, I saw the civil war as a national issue to keep Nigeria as one nation.
[/B]
In that process, I fought on two fronts: one, I fought against the Biafrans and secondly, I fought to keep my sanity considering my rank in the Nigerian army at that time.

Suspicion

I was viewed with suspicion that I might sell out the Nigerian troops under my command to the Biafrans. However, I thank God that He saw me through to the end of the civil war. That was one of my military exploits I consider very remarkable .

The next exploit I must remember was during the Liberian war. Before then, I was a Brigade-Commander in Calabar. One day, I was listening to BBC news and the correspondent was praising the Nigerian Army, saying that they remained the most equipped institution within the sub-region to bring the situation in Liberia under control.

After listening to that news, I expressed my reservation to one of my brothers who paid me a visit. And true to my prediction, when I got back to my house, I was confronted with a signal that I should proceed to Lagos; informing that I ha been appointed the Chief of Staff of the Peace- Keeping Operation in Liberia(ECOMOG). Immediately the news was relayed to me, I burst into laughter.

The next day, I hurriedly handed over to my successor and left for Lagos. But when I got to Lagos where the Defence Head Quarters was situated then, the brief I got there was quite different from what I met on ground when I arrived Free Port of Monrovia. Monrovia served as the headquartres of ECOMOG at that time. And General Arnold Quainoo, a Ghanaian was the Commander of the Peace Keeping Operation.

Given the directive from my home country and because of my personal relationship with most senior army officers then, I made arrangements on my own to proceed to Sierra-Leone to take up the command of the sub-regional force. When I got to Sierra-Leone, the troops were already on ground and at that point, we started strategising on how to tackle the situation in Liberia. There and then, I appointed staff officers to run the affairs as the Chief of Staff. Then, we prepared to storm Liberia.

I remember that the Ghanaian government released some of their war-ships. Nigerian Navy also was on ground. At the headquartres of ECOMOG, there was this perception that the rebels would abandon their guns the moment the peace enforcement operation arrived in Liberia. But from my experience, I advised against taking the rebels for granted which the Force Commander, General Quainoo ignored.

Not withstanding the consistent threats and reports we were daily receiving concerning how Charles Taylor had boasted of destroying any ECOMOG troop that ventured into the Liberian soil, the Force Commander did not believe we were going to wage a war against the rebels. Under that kind of condition, I didn't see how we were going to keep peace in Liberia.

In the first place, there was no peace to negotiate for . Therefore, I wondered how we were going to keep peace in a hostile environment.

Rather, I stated categorically that we were going to Liberia for peace enforcement operation. All the troops that made up the ECOMOG operation drawn from Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra-Leone, Gambia and Guinea, believed that we were going to Liberia on a peace keeping operation . As a result, none of the soldiers was prepared to fight in Liberia.

Some even came there with a truck load of their civil party dresses. But I never believed we were in Liberia to make peace, following the fact that the enemy had vowed to destroy any ECOMOG troop that touched the soil of Liberia. And true to my prediction, the moment our foot touched Liberia, the rebels opened fire on us.

We managed to secure our flanks, moved forward and the rest is now history.

The operation

But one thing I noticed during this debacle was that it's a dangerous decision to send officers who are in the infant stage of their career to a peace enforcement operation. When we arrived Monrovia, the Force Commander had no clue whatsoever about what we were to do in Liberia.

I remember that on a number of occasions, when I asked General Quainoo his plans in the event of the possible influx of refugees into the ECOMOG quarters, having been convinced that we would surely play host to some army of refugees, he was indifferent and ignored the need to put into consideration the possible influx of refugees into our base.

At that point, I couldn't understand why a commander of a peace enforcement operation couldn't envisage that in the theatre of war, the refugees usually seek protection in the camp of the troops. As the Chief of Staff, I gave instruction to the troops at designated areas to make adequate provision for the influx of refugees.

And again, true to my prediction, the refugees or better still, the displaced Liberians were the first set of people we encountered on arriving Free-port in Monrovia.

While we strove to advance forward, we had the refugees to cater for and protect. On arrival, the information available to us was that there was a standing cease-fire between Prince Johnson who was commanding the Independent National Patriotic Front (INPF) and Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia( NPFL), as well as Sgt. Samuel Doe, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Liberia. Strategically, we drafted the Nigerian troop to the East of Liberia, while the Sierra-Leonian troop was positioned at the centre and the Gambian troop was stationed to protect the headuarters of ECOMOG.

Also, the Guinean troop was drafted to the outskirts of Liberia, protecting the Supreme Head Quarters. After establishing a cease-fire, I initiated a peace move between Prince Johnson and President Doe, requiring each one of them to send a representative in form of liaison officers to open up a communication channel between the two forces.

So how was Doe killed?

The mediator then was Guinean Deputy Force Commander, Lamin Mangasouba. But while the peace move was still on course, Johnson formed the habit of visiting the head quarters regularly, pretending to be friendly.

I didn't like the way he was frequenting the headquarters and I summoned him one day and warned against his coming to the head quarters with his men fully armed to the teeth. I insisted that he must leave his arms at the HQ's main gate before attempting to gain entrance into the premises.

However, he pretended to have heard me and then climbed upstairs to see the Force Commander in his office. As soon as he left, I climbed upstairs too to brief the Commander of what transpired between myself and Prince Johnson.

But rather than seeing reasons with me, the Commander disappointedly told me how Johnson did not like the way I was blunt to him. I replied by saying 'of course, I didn't expect him to like it but for our safety, he must comply with my order.'

To my surprise again, the Commander told me that he had countered the order. I felt very bitter and disappointed as I made him understand that he was making us vulnerable . Hardly had we finished discussing when we heard a siren advancing towards the headquartres.

And when I looked through the window, I saw series of assorted cars led by a Limousine, decorated with the Liberian flag and that of the Armed Forces of Liberia. I told the Commander that the August visitor must be President Samuel Doe and suggested that he remained in his office while I went downstairs to receive him.

There and then, I rushed downstairs to receive President Doe but the Commander would not listen and he surprisingly followed me downstairs to receive the President. Protocol demanded that I should be the one that would have ushered the visitor into the Commander's office.

But this was not so in this case. The Commander decided to come down and receive the visitor by himself. At that point, there was nothing I could do, other than to join him in ushering the President and members of his cabinet into the Commander's office.

The Cabinet members were later moved into the Deputy Commander's office, while President Doe was kept in the Commander's office. At the Commander's office, the President berated the Commander, fuming that he desired to be paid a homage by the troops as the President of Liberia, no matter the situation. But as the Commander was trying to apologise to him, he heard another siren advancing towards the headquarters again.

[B]And before he knew what was happening, it was Prince Johnson and his men who had returned to the headquarters. Sensing danger, I advised that the Commandant should remain with the President in his office while I went downstairs to confront Prince Johnson to leave the headquartres or remain outside the quarters with his armed boys.

But by the time I got downstairs, Prince Johnson had already gained access into the headquarters and was giving me option that I must tell Sgt. Doe to join the Ghanaian ship and leave Liberia immediately for peace to return to the country.

I cautioned him and insisted that it was not for him to tell us what to do with the President. I commanded him to leave the headquarters immediately with his troop. As he was attempting to go out, we started hearing continuous gunshots. That was Prince Johnson's men killing the security operatives that came with Sgt. Doe.

What happened? One of the security guys asked to the hearing of Prince Johnson's troops, "What are these rebels doing here?"

KILLING OF SAMUEL DOE

In response, one of Prince Johnson's men challenged him and before we knew what was happening, he opened fire on them, killing all the security operatives. That was the fire that led to the capturing and killing of Samuel Doe. So, while the firing was going on, I commanded Johnson to leave the headquarters immediately.

But the firing was worsened. In the midst of the confusion, I went upstairs to see the Commandant. But lo, he was nowhere to be found. He had escaped to the ship.

Doe was left alone in his office. At that point , I told Doe, "Look, discretion is a better part of valour . Let me take you to the ship so that you remain there until this raging fire is quenched." But he turned down my appeal and rather demanded that I should give him some troops to escort him back to the executive mansion.

But already, I was aware that an ambush had been laid for him. So if I had yielded to his request, they would have killed both Doe and the troops. While the commotion was going on, the Commandant had disappeared into thin air.

I looked for him to persuade Sgt Doe to listen to the voice of reason but he was nowhere to be found, and Doe wouldn't listen.

As I returned to the office to lock up the door, one of Prince Johnson's boys called Rambo traced me to the Commandant's office where he spotted Sgt. Doe and shouted "He's inside the office. He's inside the office."

The shout attracted Prince Johnson who returned to the Commandant's office. But I couldn't let him gain access to the office as I quickly shut the door and stood behind it and ordered Prince Johnson's boy Rambo to leave the place.

There and then, he opened fire around me to scare me away but I stood my ground as I continued to command both Johnson and his boys to leave the place. At a point, something occurred to me. I started asking myself who I was protecting, whether it was Sgt. Doe who had shed a lot of blood and who in the early hours of that fateful day, slaughtered many Liberians? Whether he was worth dying for?

That was how I left him at the mercy of Prince Johnson and his men. Johnson went into the office and fired at his two legs. He advanced to the Deputy Commandant's office and also killed all the members of Doe's cabinet who came with him to the headquarters. Later, he dragged wounded Doe outside the place and began to jubilate that he had captured the President. [/B]But somehow, somebody accidentally touched the President's limousine car and the siren went off.

Johnson Escaped

With Doe Afraid that the ECOMOG troops were coming to attack him, he immediately dragged Doe into his car and disappeared to his base.

After the incident, there were dead bodies on the ground and the Chief of Logistics then who was a Nigerian, Major-Gen.(rtd) Rufai, insisted that we must go and rescue the President from the stronghold of the rebels.

But in an operation of this nature, where troops were contributed by different countries, the Force Commander remained the only officer who could issue instructions to deploy troops. But I couldn't find him.

And I was left with no option than to find out the whereabouts of the Commander in order to brief him and consequently obtain order from him to deploy troops to go and rescue Sgt. Doe from the hands of his captors.

Disappointedly, when I finally found him, he was coming out from the Ghanaian ship where he went to take cover. I saluted him and followed him to his office where I briefed him on what happened and asked for his permission to deploy troops to go and rescue Sgt. Doe. I told him it would be scandalous on our part to have allowed such massive killings to happen within the ECOMOG territory. But he was not interested in my opinion or listening to what I had to say.

Rather, he was concerned about taking photographs of the corpses that littered the place. He asked me to wait for him in his office. When he had finished taking the photographs, he returned to his office and out of fear, he nearly screamed when he sighted me in the office muttering, "You nearly scared me, you know".

And I said to him "So sorry, sir. I didn't mean to scare you but at this moment, we need a decision to go ahead and rescue Sgt. Doe from Johnson and his men'. He was not interested in what I had to say. Instead, he was busy gathering his personal effects and handing them over to his boys who were taking them to the Ghanaian war ship in waiting.

The next instruction he gave to me was to summon a conference of Commanders. I thought he was going to give the instruction by himself but it was not to be. While the Commanders converged, he told them he was on his way to Sierra-Leone from where he would proceed to Gambia to see the Chairman of ECOWAS, who then was the President of Gambia, Dauda Jawara.

He told us that we had no business remaining in Liberia anymore and he handed down an instruction to me to tell anybody that asked of him anything I deemed like telling the person.

I couldn't believe my ears. Before we knew it, he had entered the ship and left for Sierra-Leone. I had to summon the troops. I told them that I was not prepared to take this nonsense from Prince Johnson and his men.

I ordered that we should go and invade Johnson's base but it was too late as we later learnt that Johnson had finally killed Sgt. Doe and deposited his corpse in one of the hospitals operated by a Nigerian doctor who was based in Liberia at that time.

That was how Sgt Doe was killed. At that point, as the man in charge, I gave out orders to clear Charles Taylor completely and banned Johnson from entering the headquarters from that day. As far as I was concerned then, Prince Johnson was a hostile enemy that must be checked. The deaths and occurrences are hazy in my mind right now but I think that was exactly how Sgt. Doe was killed by Johnson and his men.

Deal That Killed Doe

On reflection, one wondered how Prince Johnson got to know that Sgt. Doe was coming to the ECOMOG headquartres that fateful day. Immediately after he had seen and discussed with the Commander, General Quanioo, a deal must have been struck between them.

The two liaison officers we established as a channel of communication between President Doe and Prince Johnson, the one representing Johnson's interest must have gone to inform him that Sgt. Doe was coming to the ECOMOG headquarters that fateful day.

And again, with Johnson's visit to General Quanioo on that same day, I strongly believe that a deal must have been struck between the Force Commander and the rebel because later on, we discovered that two container loads of items were in the Ghanaian ship to be moved to Ghana. And that created another problem for us in Liberia.

Johnson's Atrocities

The second incident was that when we arrived Liberia, he quickly established a refugees' camp but not in the presence of the Commander. Prince Johnson would invade the camp and capture some beautiful women among whom he took away to his base.

The most annoying thing was that he, Prince Johnson, approached the unit commander, requesting us to release some arms for him to attack President Doe then. But I rejected his request. At that moment, the unit commander betrayed us by going to tell Prince Johnson that he had wanted to release some arms to him but Nigerians wouldn't allow him to do so.

Ordinarily, the Ghanaian troop had enough arms. If the Commander had wanted to release some arms to the rebels, he could have instructed the Ghanaian troop to release them to Johnson . But he wanted to indict Nigerians .

That was why he came to us. The implication is that if you give a rebel your arms, he would later turn the arms against you.

[B]The fact that the Commander told Johnson that it was the Nigerian troop that had refused to release their arms to him made Johnson ambush and capture the Nigerian soldiers and took them to his base. When I heard about his action, I was infuriated and had to drive down to his base where I pulled out my hand grenade and ordered Johnson to release my men or the two of us would die instantly.

Out of fear, Johnson ran to his house but I followed him closely, threatening to blow up the grenade before he started shouting out, "Release them, release them." I did not only have him release Nigerian troops, I also recovered our four lorries he confiscated. That was how I got our troops captured by Prince Johnson released.
[/B]
All this time, Gen. Quanioo had disappeared into thin air. I was the only officer who was spearheading and taking decisions on behalf of the operation until General Dogonyaro was appointed to succeed Gen. Quanioo.

After the appointment of Gen. Dogonyaro cum his assumption of office, we started reorganising ourselves to advance, having had more battalions dispatched to join in Monrovia from Nigeria. That was another un-forgetful incident during my career in the military. Peace operation is not an easy adventure.

You must have the confidence of all the troops that made up the enforcement operation before you can record any success, particularly in West-Africa where our neigbouring countries are often suspicious of their dealings with Nigerian citizens.

Distrust Against Nigerian Commanders

To make a Nigerian the Force Commander in a Peace Enforcement Operation, a lot of diplomacy had to be played out.

Indeed, I remember a situation where we were to move from Sierra-Leone to Liberia. I was the most senior officer in the headquartres then, and by the virtue of my rank, I was supposed to have become the Deputy Commander.

But this was not to be as a low ranking Guinean officer, who was later promoted to a Brigade-General by his home country, was appointed as the Deputy Commander of the enforcement operation.

Also, the inability of the contributing troops to take orders from any senior officer from another troop is another factor that militates against any peace keeping operation in Africa.

For instance, while we were to move to Liberia, from Sierra-Leone, I requested the battalion commanders to report the situation to me so that I could properly hand it to the operation commander.

[B]But the Ghanaian battalion commander turned down my instruction, muttering , 'Me, a Ghanaian, to hand-over my troops to you, a Nigerian ." I replied him by saying that he was not handing over the troops to me as a Nigerian but as Chief of Staff of the enforcement operation. Reluctantly, he handed over his men to me.
[/B]
That's one aspect of peace keeping operation that bedeviles a situation where different countries contribute troops. [B]The officers find it difficult to take instructions from any other senior that's not from their home country.
[/B][B]
Also, distrust is another factor that trailed the operation. Each time, I gave an instruction to deploy troops. Such instruction was never obeyed until an approval was sought for and gotten from the troops' various home countries.
[/B]
More appalling was when the Nigerian Air Force was sent on a bombing run, under the Joint Command. The Ghanaian Air Force failed to comply until clearance was given from the home government. Those were parts of the problems we faced while we were in Liberia.

Mission To Somalia

Also, I recall as part of my military exploits when I went to receive the corpses of eight Nigerian contingent to the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission who were killed in a clash with supporters of Somali warlord, Mohammed Farah Aidid. I was also to give the nation's position on the killings of these soldiers to the Commander of the United Nations Forces in Somalia.

As a matter of fact, I found the killing of these soldiers totally unacceptable to the Nigerian Army.

At that time, no Nigerian military officer was ready to go to Somalia to receive the corpses of these fallen soldiers.

But I opted to undertake the venture as the Chief of Operations then. When I got to Mogadishu, I had discussions with the United Nations Enforcement Commander and later, retrieved the dead bodies of our fallen soldiers.

One thing happened while I was leaving for Nigeria. Nigerian journalists who were at the airport didn't bother to find out from me the position of the country in respect of the killing of its eight soldiers. However, when I got to Liberia, one of the BBC Correspondents cornered me and wanted me to confirm that it was the fault of the UN Enforcement Commander who abandoned the Nigerian troops to be slaughtered like cows. But I refused to confirm the report because I wanted to speak while on the Nigerian soil.

But as I landed at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, I had expected our journalists to have cornered me to give them the situation report but they did not. I would have told them exactly what happened but since they didn't ask me, I went straight to brief the then President.

I told the President that Nigerian troops were slaughtered as a result of the dereliction of duties by the contributing troops who would have otherwise protected them while they were embarking on that dangerous patrol.

But they didn't protect the troops and that led to the killing of eight of the soldiers. That's part of the distrust that I was talking about concerning the Liberian experience. It's also available in any peace keeping operation anywhere in the world. Distrust cost Nigeria its eight soldiers.

At the time Sgt. Doe was captured and whisked away by Johnson and his men from the ECOMOG base, were there no troops on ground that could have countered the crossfire?

The ECOMOG headquartres then was occupied by merestaff officers. And around the HQ, we had the Gambian troops who were stationed to protect the HQ from external attack, though they were not all that experienced and the country's army at that time was made up of greenhorns. We wanted to take our time before introducing them to the theatre of war.

And remember, I told you that I warned Prince Johnson never to enter the HQ again with his men armed to the teeth which the unit commander upturned.

If the troop stationed at the HQ had tried to counter the crossfire, it would have been total massacre. My plans then was if the Commander had obliged me to deploy troops to rescue Sgt. Doe, I would have asked the nearest troop to the HQ , which was the Nigerian troop, to move in and rescue Sgt. Doe from the stronghold of Johnson.

But if I had taken the initiative to deploy troops and in the cause of that action, any troop recorded casualties, the Commander would blame me for illegally deploying troops. That was my fear and why we could not counter the crossfire immediately.

Taylor Killed Ngerians

At this stage of the Peace Keeping Operation, Nigeria recorded many casualties. Was that true?

[B]I must state here that a lot of casualties were not recorded by Nigeria at the early stage of the operation. But it was after we started advancing towards Charles Taylor's territory that we started suffering casualties.

And before our arrival in Monrovia, Charles Taylor and his men had invaded the Nigerian House and killed a lot of our nationals resident in Liberia. It was not about killing Nigerian soldiers but basically, it was about killing Nigerian citizens who were based in Liberia at the time the war broke out.[/B]
[B]
And again, during that period, we asked so many Nigerians in that country to return home. But they would not listen to us because according to our findings, most of them were married to Liberian women and had children and established businesses.[/B]
[B]
They did not believe that Charles Taylor would have anything to do with them. But being a rebel, he invaded the Nigerian House and killed innocent Nigerians who had run there for safety.
[/B]
That brings us to the asylum that was granted to Charles Taylor by the Obasanjo's administration. Was it a right step to have taken by the government?

I do not know what transpired within the government axis regarding the asylum that was granted Charles Taylor in Nigeria. I cannot say whether it was deliberately done to lure him to be captured. But information available to me was that Charles Taylor should not have been granted asylum in Nigeria at all.

Eventually, it facilitated his capture.

Peace Keeping Is Important

Do you think it's still relevant for Nigeria to continue to contribute troops for peace keeping operations?

Yes! I think it's still relevant. Nigeria has been contributing troops to peace keeping operations overseas.

There's no realistic training than what the boys learn while on the battle field. Look at any battalion that embark on a peace keeping operation.

When they return to the country, they appear more seasoned and more trained than they were before they left the shores of the country. We do conduct exercises in Nigeria but those are dry exercises. In peace keeping operations, it's a very real situation and there is no training that money can buy than what our soldiers gain when they embark on peace enforcement operations.

That's the greatest asset that we have gained as a nation from contributing troops to peace enforcement operations.

My Anger

Would you say the country has been fair to you in terms of your unannounced retirement from service?

I think there's a problem of leadership here. I have been saying time without number that the military incursion into the nation's politics is a very big mistake. And most of the time, when it happened, it's the military boys that suffered the consequences.
[B]
This is so because those who took part in any coup got rewarded with juicy appointments. The effect is that when they have gotten to the top, they begin to amass wealth and find themselves no longer amenable to military discipline. So, because of that, indiscipline craved into the military, coupled with greed and extortion.[/B]

[B]These happened to be the same set of people that rose to the position of decision making in the army, thereby distorting the normal flow of communication.

They formed what we now call kitchen cabinet, gossiping and back-bitting, all in attempts to get to the top. They are the ones who now advise that if you do not retire these officers, there wouldn't be positions for us to occupy.

[/B]Look at countries like Ghana, they hardly retire their experienced officers like Nigeria does. They only re-cycle them from time to time.

Even though they do not promote their officers as frequently as we do here, they usually prefer to keep them to tap from their wealth of experience and allow them to acquire more training in all the branches in the military.

[B]So, my retirement was as a result of greed, gossip and inordinate ambition to become a Major-General by the low ranking officers.
[/B]
But one thing they fail to realize is that if you become a Major-General, you are also not far from your retirement. So, it's a no win situation. It's definitely going to come back to you. I'm glad that the situation is getting more suitable than it was when we were there.

Now, let's start thinking of how we are going to move the nation forward. Right now, there is a lot of tribal politics playing out in the military.

Do you have regrets fighting against your kinsmen during the Nigerian civil war?

Not all. The situation at that time detected the action I took. I was at the Nigerian Defence Academy struggling to ensure that Nigeria remained one indivisible entity. If that situation repeats itself and I find myself in the same position, I will definitely behave the same way.

Epiphany - thanks for the great lateral thinking. You have analysed a lot of the issues I had in mind and foreseen some of the obstacles to arresting IBB. Any attempt to prosecute him would open a giant can of worms that would consume much of the ruling class in Nigeria who did shady deals with him.

1) [B]There is a detailed, comprehensive and damning written indictment of corruption and financial mismanagement in the IBB regime which has been in public and govt circulation for over a decade. Yet no one has dared use this incriminating evidence called the "Oputa Report" to prosecute him[/B] - even though others with less clear cut cases have been prosecuted for corruption by the govt.

2) When Abacha died in 1999, who was the first person summoned to Aso Rock? The Chief of Defence staff? No. The A-G? No. The Chief of Army Staff? No. IBB was the first person summoned and it was he who gave instructions on what should happen next. He teleguided the transition programme of Abubabakar and bankrolled OBJ into power. To understand how instrumental IBB was and how much he pulled the strings, after Abacha died in 1998 IBB publicly said that the next civilian president would have to be someone who had:
[I]
"an excellent understanding of our political history……he would have to have an understanding of the military – so we could do business with him”[/I]

Does that sound like someone we know?,

3) IBB is stupendously wealthy. He may be the richest Nigerian alive. In Nigeria we know that money talks.

4) He has the entire army and security establishment in his pocket and they are all his "boys". Remember those army officers once tagged "IBB Boys"?  Most of them are now in the inner recesses of govt/political office:

*The Senate President David Mark (you know - the guy who is third in line to the presidency) is one of IBB's closest confidants. During the June 12 crisis, insiders have testified that IBB saw him as his chosen successor.

*Brigadiers Tunde Ogbeha, Raji Rasaki, Tanko Ayuba and John Shagaya are Senators.

*Throughout IBB's tenure, only 5 officers survived his purges throught his regime. One of them is Admiral Murtala Nyako. He is now the Gov of Adamawa State and his wife is a senior judge.

*Colonel Oyinlola was one his Mil Govs. He is now the Gov of Osun State.

*The current boss of the Nigerian armed forces used to be IBB's pilot.

*The current and prior National Security Adviser are his "boys".

I could go on forever with such examples. Do you think these people were positioned in such high offices coincidentally?  Do you think that people who owe their wealth, power, status, position and influence entirely to IBB's patronage will sit by and let him be disgraced w/o an almighty fight?

Epiphany:
My own thoughts are that anyone that is planning to arrest IBB had better have his hands very very clean or should be prepared to face the wrath of the country also. As far as i know, not many people (politicians, business men, traditional rulers, etc) out there are 'innocent' and have at one time or the other eaten a part of the national cake.

I have the sneaky feeling that IBB, being a former head of state, was and still is privy to a lot of the conspiracy that has gone down in this country. As we know, serving and retired army generals are still being fed with state security updates. I am sure IBB has much more than the 'usual' updates. Being a smart man and an accomplished soldier, i also feel that he has dates, documents and proof at his finger tips to use blackmail, persuasive measures and even outright threats to call a lot of people to order, should they entertain any ideas such as arresting him for trials. The few clean and honest people that tried to take him to court over certain issues (like Gani) did not go very far in their efforts. How many other people out there can boast of being as transparent as Gani?

The mere fact that OBJ is IBB's senior does not matter here. Was it not IBB and his 'cabal' that persuaded OBJ to run for presidency immediately after he came out of prison? I am equally sure that this cabal bankrolled his election. I dont think there is much to the 'seniority' thing in the Nigerian army. Afterall, was Mustapha not terrorizing officers who were much older than him in age and rank?  

Every society has its untouchables (to a certain degree). I think IBB is one of ours. Instead of publicly arresting him and ridiculing him, the powers that be would rather come to some form of agreements with him. Maybe give him a little 'slap on the wrist' like they have done to others like Igbinidion and co.

I'm not asking whether he CAN be arrested. I'm asking what will happen if he is arrested.

The issue of OBJ being IBB's senior is not relevant. You mentioned that Abacha jailed OBJ, was Abacha senior to OBJ? Abacha was a Colonel when OBJ was a 4 star General!
We should not underestimate the power of IBB.In Nigeria we know that money literally talks. Ask yourself why no head of state after IBB has ever dared look in his direction (Shonekan, Abacha, Abubakar, OBJ, Yar'Adua). Not even the dreaded and fearless Abacha dared touch IBB.

Afam:
You are sure that impeachment proceedings will start against the president? How come?

Nothing will happen if he is arrested today just as nothing happened when OBJ and the late Yar'adua were arrested and jailed by Abacha.

The president has too much powers and as such can do anything he likes if he really wants to.

In case you have forgotten, OBJ is IBB's senior both in age and rank and in fact became the head of state before IBB. Whatever rank IBB attained in the army OBJ wore that rank before so let us not make this sound as if IBB was the first to achieve things as a military man or head of state.

Any incumbent leader can do what he likes. Ask former governors or even god fathers of some politicians and you will know this.

Personally I do not believe any sitting President would be brave to go after IBB in the short term. If the EFCC, AG or President ever tries to prosecute IBB in the near future the govt will be brought down via impeachment or the unthinkable, a coup.

IBB has enough power and money to destabilise any govt that does not cooperate with him.

The minute IBB is arrested, I am sure impeachment proceedings will start against the president. Remember OBJ's first term when he upset the powerful oligarchs by going for too many reforms, prosecuting "Big Men" and appointing who HE wanted to the cabinet? He was nearly impeached.

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2002-08/a-2002-08-26-18-Nigeria.cfm?moddate=2002-08-26

If you recall the National Assembly threatened to impeach OBJ after he announced he would probe govt entities including the National Assembly! The NA responded by giving him an ultimatum to resign or face impeachment. The whole thing was a charade sponsored by OBJ opponents who feared being probed.

You might be surprised to hear that the issue of a female leader was considered over 25 years ago by President Shagari. Shagari wanted to have a female running mate as his VP. But powerful male politicians from the south vetoed the idea. One of them swore to commit suicide if Shagari picked a female VP.

IBB has been out of power for over 15 years. Still his comments attract more attention and controversy than comments by the sitting President!

Fajuyi did not give his life for Ironsi. It seems he was a target of the northern mutineers all along and would have been killed with Ironsi regardless. It was the Western Region publication "Fajuyi The Great" that started the myth that Fajuyi "chose to die with Ironsi". The myth was later embellished in subsequent publications. One of the most ridiculous of which was Fajuyi: The Martyred soldier, by Sanmi Ajiki. Ajiki claimed that Fajuyi told Ironsi: "I make bold to declare to you that, I am with you soul, spirit and body. And mark my words, whatever happens to you today, happens to me. I am your true friend, dear J.U.T like the dove to the pigeon, and by the grace of our good God, so will I humbly yet proudly remain till the very end." [/i]According to Ajiki, Ironsi replied [i]"Yes! Francis, I retain my absolute confidence in you. I have never for once doubted your integrity." That might sound nice and heroic for their family members, but the accounts given by the soldiers that were present suggest that no such fluffy dialogue took place.

William Walbe (one of the officers that led Fajuyi and Ironsi to their death in Ibadan) publicly confirmed in an interview that Fajuyi was destined to share Ironsi's fate and that they (the northern mutineers) wanted Fajuyi dead because they were convinced he was an ally of the Janaury 1966 Majors and helped them plan their coup. The interview is quoted in Gowon's biography entitled "Gowon: Biogrpahy of a Soldier Statesman".

Lt-Gen Danjuma later corroborated Walbe's account in an interview with a Nigerian army civil war historical team. Danjuma went even further than Walbe and said that the soldiers that killed Ironsi and Fajuyi could not stand Fajuyi. They felt he deserved to die even more than Ironsi.

Aloy.Emeka:
People tend to forget that both the Eastern Region and the the Federal Government more or less ran parallel government for about one full year including the famous Aburi accord that Gowon signed but Britain encouraged and advised him not to implement.

Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat the same mistake again.

Talking about who a true hero is then talk about Fajuyi who chose death even when he had a chance to remain alive when Ironsi was about being killed. He stood by his guest and commander in chief even in the face of death even though he was a Yoruba man. He remains one of the bravest Nigerian and will continue to earn the respect of all well meaning Nigerians.