₦airaland Forum

After the revenge coup, neither the
triumphant NORTH nor you Damola,
expressed sympathy to Igbos because
of the over 200 Igbo casualties
compared to the about 26 casualties
of the first coup by your account from the American secret files! .” You went
on to say” that the Igbos in the North
were widely taunting their hosts on
the loss of their leaders. Celestine
Ukwu,a popular Igbo musician,
released songs titled Ewu Ne Ba Akwa (Goats Are Crying) and others
celebrating “Igbo power….”. I do not
intend to comment on your assertion
that Igbos in the North celebrated the
death of northern leaders because it is
neither here nor there. But the record song you referred to, was a high life
number released by Cardinal Rex Jim
Lawson a Kalabari, long before the
first coup. You had to foist authorship
of that highlife record, on Igbos to
further criminalise and calumnise them. At that time, once a highlife
record was released, whether by
Bobby Benson, E.C.Arinze, Stephen
Amechi. Victor Olaiya, Eddy Okonta,
Chief Bill Friday, Roy Chicago, Victor
Uwaifo, Agu Norris, Baby Face Paul, Ambrose Campbell and His West
African Rhythm Brothers, Stephen
Osadebe or any others, those of us in
the know, would immediately and
correctly name the author. May be, you
were not in circulation then. To be continued. MAZI CHIKE CHIDOLUE , was former Officer, 12 Commando Brigade, Biafra Army.

With this type of treatment given to
the corpse of a dead man, only God
knows what they did to Colonel Tim
Onwuatuegwu who was captured
alive! They may still be killing
Onwuatuegwu up to this day! Your American files said again, ”At the
Kano airport, soldiers seized an Igbo
stewardess from a plane on which she
flew in from London. She was never
heard of again.Chinua Achebe had
extensively discussed the prevalent national resentment of the Igbos by
other Nigerian ethnic groups. Ndigbo
cannot help this unjustified, diabolical,
conspiratorial, animosity against them
by volunteering their extinction from
the planet earth. Almighty God placed Ndigbo in this part of the globe, and
they will not betray the responsibility
of preserving their specie. You
concocted all types of fables to portray
the IGBOS as being unsympathetic on
the size of the northern casualties during the first coup. Ademoyega speaks again “….It would
be recalled that by late 1965 the
efforts of the Balewa Government to
Northernise the top echelon of the
army was already bearing fruit. Some
Northerners were already holding most of the strategic positions in the
Army. Those positions could easily be
used to thwart our attempt to change
the Government. Sheer caution
dictated that we would be sure to
neutralize those officers so that our revolution would have a chance of
taking off and succeeding. Later
events did fully justify our
apprehension, since it was the escape
of only one of those marked down for
arrest that brought us intense hardship and finally compromised our
success. There was no plan to arrest or kill all
the officers above the rank of Major as
was later claimed by extreme
Northern propagandists. Even among
those earmarked for arrest, only four
were Northerners, two were Westerners and two were Easterners.
But the North had always had more
than 50% of the intake of officers into
the Army since 1961, and more than
70 % of the intake of the other ranks.
Therefore if casualties were to happen, it was more likely to be in
that proportion than anything else. The wicked propaganda that followed
the coup was only made possible by
the weakness and non – revolutionary
principles of the Ironsi regime, which
bore no semblance to the well ordered
and well controlled government that was envisaged and could have been
run by us if our plans were fully
executed…” In your prejudiced mind, you
trivialized the critical and crucial
safety valve that ABURI ACCORD
provided by saying “All his (Ojukwu’s)
performances in Ghana that
culminated in the Aburi Accord of January 1967, or discussion with the
Awolowo led National Conciliation
Committee five months later, turned
out to be ruse. ” You overlooked the
very important fact that at Aburi, an
agreement was reached, signed and sealed by Ojukwu and Gowon. When
they returned to their countries,
instead of implementing the accord as
signed, Gowon allowed his ‘super’
permanent secretaries, to interpret
that document which was not written in Greek or Latin language, but in
plain simple English language, and
ended up, refusing to implement it
and therefore PRECIPITATED THE WAR.
If Gowon had implemented the ABURI
ACCORD as signed in Ghana, on January 5, 1967, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO
WAR. I should have closed my case
here in ABURI, but could not resist the
urge to respond to some of your other
foibles. Nigerian commentators on the civil
war always fight shy of the ABURI
ACCORD and its tremendous and
strategic importance, because by so
doing, IGBOS are set up for the kill on
the guillotine of ethnic cleansing. Every unbiased umpire will agree that
THE CIVIL WAR WAS CAUSED BY
GOWON BECAUSE HE REFUSED TO
IMPLEMENT THE ABURI ACCORD! Any
objective and sincere inquirer on the
cause of the war, should go no further than the ABURI ACCORD! In Biafra, we
had as our mantra, ON ABURI WE
STAND, while Gowon, instead of
standing on ABURI with Biafra,
torpedoed and demolished the good
work done at Aburi. Even though the credibility of your
American Secret Files is hanging in
the balance, I am curious to note what
they said here. “The secret US
document called Njoku the best Enugu
has (and one of the very best Nigeria has produced).The UK defence advisor
who had known Madiebo as
subordinate officer First Recce
Squadron for several years, said he is
“perfectly charming socially, but quite
worthless professionally. He is weak, ineffective
commander and consistently had
worst recce squadron.” To affirm what
he was saying, he showed the US
defence attaché, Madiebo’s file at the
Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Madiebo’s records were abysmal…..” The coup was purely a Nigerian
enterprise by patriotic citizens.
Ndigbo or The Igbo State Union as at
the time had no hand in the coup, as
confirmed by Ademoyega when he
said “It was in mid – November 1965 that we held the one and only formal
meeting that preceded the coup .The
meeting was held in Lagos, in the
military quarters of Major Ifeajuna……
The meeting was very short. There was
a consensus that something had to be done quickly
to save Nigeria from anarchy and
disintegration and to restore peace
and unity to the nation. It was agreed
that only the use of force could bring
immediate end to the violence being perpetrated in many parts of the
country. It was, however, agreed that
the use of force should be minimal.
Political leaders and their
collaborators were to be arrested, but
wherever an arrest was resisted, it was to be met with force. Otherwise,
no one was to be killed. Only the heads
of government, that is, the Prime
Minister, the four regional premiers
and their right – hand men, were
considered most essential to arrest throughout the country. And among
their military collaborators, only the
top echelon and those holding
strategic positions were named for
arrest. These included the GOC of the
Nigerian Army, General Ironsi, the commanders of the two brigades,
Brigadiers Ademulegun and
Maimalari, the Chief of Staff Army HQ,
Colonel Kur Mohammed, and the
Adjutant General of the Army,
Lieutenant – Colonel Pam. Others were the Deputy Commander of the NDA,
Colonel Shodeinde, the Quartermaster
– General of the Army, Lieutenant –
Colonel Unegbe and the Commander of
the 4th Battalion which was based in
Ibadan and was the most politicised unit of the Army, Lieutenant-Colonel
Largema. *Gowon and Ojukwu Contrary to the load of wicked
propaganda that has since been
heaped on us, there was no decision in
our meeting to single out any
particular ethnic group for elimination
or destructionOur intentions were honourable , our views were national
and our goals were idealistic. We
intended that the coup should be
national in execution so that it would
receive national acclamation. We
planned that the use of force should be minimal so that our methods could
at once be seen as superior to those of
the politicians, who simply went on
killing the very people they were
called upon to govern. The need to
bring more of the middle level officers (Majors and Lieutenant – Colonels)
was discussed. But the few names that
could be mentioned had to be dropped
because their interpersonal
connections would compromise the
security of the planning. After ninety minutes of discussion, the meeting
was over. We dispersed as if from a
prayer meeting since it was a Sunday
and the Lord was in our midst……..“ NNA Plan to Wallop the West “It was at this time that I met Chief H.
O. Davies for the first time. He was a
famous politician who had been in the
nationalist struggle since 1941. He
was a Federal Minister under the
Balewa Government….I soon got into deep conversation with him on the
political situation in the country, I was
particularly interested to know what
the Federal Government’s view was,
apart from Balewa’s public
statements. Chief H. O. Davies made it clear that
the Federal Government had no,
solution to the political crisis” (Damola
are you hearing this? Since the Federal
Government had no solution to the
crisis the January boys not the IGBOS had to step in.)” He said that
everybody was just waiting to see
what would happen next and that
nobody knew exactly what that would
be; but surely something was bound to
happen. I left Chief Davis feeling that the
Balewa Government had something up
its sleeve .Otherwise, the minister
would not be so emphatic that
something was bound to happen…“ . On January 3, 1966, I went to work
with Ifeajuna. After extensive
prodding, we discovered that the
Balewa Government had a terrible
plan to bring the Army fully to operate
in the West for the purpose of eliminating the elites of that region,
especially the intellectuals who were
believed to be behind the
intransigence of the people against
the Akintola Government. It was for
this reason that the government had attacked the intellectuals of the
Region, especially those at Ife,
intimidating and victimizing them for
their refusal to support it. People like
Solarin of May Flower School, Ikenne,
were among those marked down. It was also intended that if the plan
succeeded in the West, the next target
would be the East. The Federal
Government was to use loyal troops for
this purpose and the 4th Battalion at
Ibadan commanded by Lieutenant – Colonel
Largema and the 2nd Battalion
temporarily commanded by Major
Igboba, but soon to be taken over by
Lieutenant ‐Colonel Gowon, were
designated for this assignment.” If the January boys had not intervened,
Sardauna and the Balewa Federal
Government would have recolonised
and severely subjugated Southern
Nigeria and placed it in a condition far
worse than Southern Sudan experienced before her independence.
Damola, I hope you can now see that
the January coup was very divinely
timely. Ademoyega continued ” The
operation was fixed for the third
week of January 1966, when the Sardauna would have returned from
his pilgrimage, and Lieutenant –
Colonel Gowon would have completed
his takeover of the Ikeja Battalion. In
preparation of this horrible move by
the Federal Government, the high echelons of the Army and the Police
were being reshuffled. Major – General Ironsi was ordered to
proceed on leave from mid – January.
He was to be relieved by Brigadier
Maimalari, over the head of Brigadier
Ademulegun…..In the Police, Inspector
– General Edet was sent on leave from December 20,1965.The officer closest
to him was retired and the the third
officer, Alhaji Kam Salem was brought
in as the new Inspector – General. The
stage was thus set for the proper
walloping of the West……. “Late on the 14th, news reached us
that the Sardauna had been having a
meeting in Kaduna on that day with
Chief Akintola of the West, and that
both Brigadier Ademulegun and
Lieutenant Colonel Largema were in attendance. It was obvious to us that
they were putting finishing touches to
their planned “walloping of the West”.
But we felt confident that we were
one step ahead.”

BY MAZI CHIKE CHIDOLUE When I read your trilogy on Biafra,
published in The NEWS Magazine of
25, February, 4 and 11 March 2013,
based on 21,000 pages of American
Secret Files, as you claimed, I
wondered whether it was the same Damola Awoyokun who wrote
EINSTEIN AND THE EXPRESSWAY
CHURCHES in resplendent logic and
language that is writing again. To
read 21,000 pages is quite a feat, even
if each page contains one line only! The time needed to read 21,000 pages
will certainly tend to infinity as we say
in mathematics. I do not intend to take you up on the
possibility of such a task. You sought
to create the impression that since
your source is American Secret Files,
all you said is unquestionable truth.
The USA being the world capital of present day CAPITALISM, every
political opinion emanating from
there is ideologically suspect by people
of different political orientation.
Reason being partly because of what
John Buchan said in his novel – THE THIRTY NINE STEPS, ‐“ Capitalism has
no conscience no fatherland!”, and
partly because the USA is the sponsor
of a very deadly type of international
terrorism detailed by John Perkins in
his book – CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN in which he said
“Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly
paid professionals who can cheat
countries around the globe out of
trillions of dollars. They funnel money
from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), and other foreign “aid”
organizations into the coffers of huge
corporations and the pockets of a few
wealthy families who control the
planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports,
rigged elections,payoffs, extortion,
sex, and murder. …..I should know; I
was an EHM……Jaime Roldos, president
of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos,
president of Panama both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths
were not accidental. They were
assassinated because they opposed
that fraternity of corporate,
government,and banking heads whose
goal is global empire. We EHMS failed to bring Roldos and Torrijos
around,and the other type of hit men,
the CIA – sanctioned jackals who were
always right behind us, stepped in. “……Because of my fellow EHMs and
me, Ecuador is in far worse shape
today than she was before we
introduced her to the miracles of
modern economics, banking, and
engineering. Since 1970, during this period known euphemistically as the
Oil Boom, the official poverty level
grew from 50 to 70 percent, under – or
unemployment increased from 15 to
70 percent, and public debt increased
from $240 million to $16 billion. …….Third World debt has grown to
more than $2.5 trillion, and the cost of
servicing it – over $375 billion per year
as of 2004 – is more than all Third
World spending on health and
education, and twenty times what developing countries receive annually
in foreign aid….” With this background
of American insatiable quest for
global economic domination
established by an American, who was
an insider, the credibility of your source of information on Biafra, is
blowing in the wind, coupled with the
fact that you are apparently the
Obasanjo type who swallows
everything from the white man; as
illustrated in his hiring of Baroness Lynda Chalker as his omnibus guide,
counselor and supervisor. 21 million pages from American secret
files cannot match the account of
MAJOR ADEWALE ADEMOYEGA who
was not only an ear and eye witness,
but also, participated throughout in
the planning and execution of the January 15, 1966 coup, from Genesis to
Revelation so to speak. He was one of
the SEVEN MAJORS who held the one
and only formal meeting of the coup,
one of the FIVE MAJORS that planned
and executed the coup and also one of the THREE MAJORS that formed the
inner core! Odia Ofeimun’s regrets and
lamentations that the FORGOTTEN
DOCUMENTS OF THE WAR including
Major Ifeajuna’s account of the coup
did not see the light of day is unhelpful. Ifeajuna and Nzeogwu
being Igbos, their account, will not be
accepted by most non – Igbo Nigerians
because of the igbophobia that has
poisoned their reasoning. The unfriendly and destructive
outburst from a section of the Yoruba
nation against Achebe’s new book on
Biafra, confirms that Ademoyega’s
book on the coup ‐ WHY WE STRUCK,
received scant or no attention from the Nigerian reading public. This has
remained so even though it is known
that ADEWALE ADEMOYEGA is non–
Igbo, but a FULL AND RED BLOODED
YORUBA IN NAME AND BEING! His
‘offence’ is that because of Nigeria’s victory over Biafra, in that war,
facilitated by the strange and most
unusual collaboration and collusion of
COMMUNISM AND CAPITALISM, to
suffocate a people struggling for
survival, the first of its kind in world history and made possible by the
intellectual domination of Ojukwu by
Britain our former colonial master, he
did not join the band wagon of anti –
Igbo feeling to hold the Igbos as the
sponsors of THE GLORIOUS JANUARY REVOLUTION. I will quote
Ademoyega’s book copiously and
extensively in an effort to bring out
the true picture of that event even
before an unwilling audience. . History is also taken to mean his story.
Emeritus Professor Chinua Achebe has
written his “THERE WAS A COUNTRY ‐
A PERSONAL HISTORY OF BIAFRA”,
laying emphasis where he chose.
Damola, you can write your own history of Biafra or Nigeria and lay
emphasis as you like. Nobody has the
right to task anybody on where
emphasis is laid. It is most improper if
not immodest of you to assault
Achebe on this score. On the January 15, 1966 revolution, it
is now known, settled and agreed that
the FIVE MAJORS who planned and
executed it, had as the final part of
the operation, to free Awolowo from
Calabar prison and make him their leader. With this in view, why do you
persist in calling it an Igbo coup? The
best interests of Ndigbo will not and
cannot be served by Awolowo, as the
new leader of the revolution, were
the coup to have succeeded in Lagos. If it were an Igbo coup, the
arrangement would have been that
power would be ultimately handed
over to an Igbo man not to AWOLOWO.
Because of your uncritical obsession
that it was an Igbo coup, which did not have the welfare of Awolowo at
heart, you said “ In reality, there was
no army unit heading to Calabar to
spring Awolowo from prison.” Major Adewale Ademoyega counters
your stand thus “……Yet there was one
arrangement we had left till the date
was fixed. It was the arrangement for
the release of political prisoners,
particularly Chief Awolowo. Now that our own date had been tentatively
fixed for mid ‐ January, it became
necessary to gear up that
arrangement. At the end of the first
week in January, Major Anuforo and I
arranged to meet Captain Udeaja……….Having briefed
Udeaja generally and got his consent,
we gave him his task. He was to fly in
a special plane provided for the
purpose to Calabar on the morning of
the D – Day , to effect the release of Chief Awolowo and bring him to Lagos
on the plane…”. Damola, you seriously
need to note the above point even if it
goes against the grain.Yet, if all the
FIVE MAJORS were Igbos, their
intention was national. Entre Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu in ‐
13 YEARS OF MILITARY RULE by James
O. Ojiako, a Daily Times Publication.
“We seized power to stamp out
tribalism, nepotism and
regionalism .There were five of us in the inner circle and we planned the
details. On Saturday morning, the
officers and men thought they were
going out only on a night exercise. It was not until they were out in the
bush that they were told the full
details of the plan. They had bullets,
they had been issued with their
weapons but I was unarmed. If they
disagreed, they could have shot me. It was truly a Nigerian gathering and
only in the army do you get true
Nigerianism…….They did it for the
good of their country……” Where did
Ndigbo come into this business in the
light of Nzeogwu’s statement? Tell me Engr. Damola Awoyokun, the all
knowing authority on the January coup
and the Nigeria – Biafra war. You said” Ojukwu”, said Stephan, (the
West African correspondent of
Bavarian Broadcasting, Munich) “was a
supporter of the coup, the first in the
country’s history. He sympathized with
the January 1966 plot makers, but was careful enough to avoid any
overplayed attachment to them.
Ojukwu told me later that it had been
him who had requested General
(Aguiyi) Ironsi to crush the coup…”
How amazing?Ojukwu an Igbo man, advising Ironsi another Igbo man, to
crush an Igbo coup! The two parts of
this sentence are mutually exclusive.
Though your belief in an Igbo coup is
very strong, you went on probably
subconsciously to quote your American Secret files where they said,
‘According to Lieutenant Colonel Abba
Kyari, military governor of North
Central State, “there is no question
that Major Nzeogwu, Ibo leader of
1966 coup in Kaduna, had been a nationalist, not a tribalist, who was
acting for the good of all Nigeria.”
Damola, Nzeogwu was acting for the
good of all Nigeria not for the good of
the IGBOS, SO SAID A NORTHERN
MILITARY GOVERNOR! When Nigeria engages in dastardly behavior it does
not attract your attention as in this
case where your American files
continued to quote Abba
Kyari“….explaining that Nzeogwu
having been falsely informed that Nsukka was in Biafran hands, boldly
entred Ubolo Eke, near Nsukka at
night and was killed. Nzeogwu’s
corpse was transferred to the North
and given full military burial, but not
before northern soldiers had plucked out his eyes so that he would never
see the North again.” What an effort,
a dead man being prevented from
seeing again!

Rich state, poor people!

What is Nairaland compared to Facebook? Or rather, who is Seun compared to Mark? Seun use template create this site. Because it manage gain 1 million users, his kinmens believes him the "smartest man alive".

Why do you think your opinion even counts? If they decide to bury him in his hometown or anywhere else in Nigeria, what can you do about it?

mediocrity, thats Nigeria's problem. The only solution is to step up our game.

The yorubas are very tribalistic...its just too noticeable.

Nothing that is done or said here on NL can add or subtract from achebe's already established reputation in the international community. Whether we like it or not, he is the most influential african celebrity in the world.

Achebe did not say one thing that isn't true in that book. These are the things we already know of our history; but some just decide to pour abuses on the man, blinded by ethnicity. Awolowo was power-hungry and tribalistic, though he was the finest leader the yorubas ever had; the igbo people are ingeneous and industrious, and perhaps they have a cultural advantage over all the other tribes in Nigeria and west africa; in the early years of Nigeria as a nation, the yorubas were ahead, in terms of education and commerce, mainly because they're located on the coastline, but the igbos changed all that in a short period after the whiteman settled in their land.

All these are facts...if you studied well you might have come accross these things.

I don't know if this makes Rochas Okorocha the best governor in the country, but I think he has the best plan.

These arguments prove beyond reasonable doubts that; there are many more fools than wise people.