₦airaland Forum

A formal declaration of the Northern Region's secession was narrowly averted on Monday August 1, (1966) when Col. Gowon was elevated to power in Lagos. Lt. Col. Gowon had prepared a radio address proclaiming the North's intention to break away from Nigeria but was dissuaded by the Yorubas in the army.

Appeals to Gowon for restraint from northern secession were also made by several ambassadors from Western nations, especially Britain. Although Gowon was dissuaded from the secession, he did declare that it seemed to him to be "no basis for Nigerian unity, which has been so badly rocked, not only once but several times."

"The creation of the 12-states structure by Col. Gowon on May 27, 1967 was an act of expediency aimed primarily at completing their siege of Ndi-Igbo and frustrating their survival and struggle for Self-determination.

It dismembered the Igbos as they were split into fragments & put into different non-Igbo states. Thus, there were Ndi-Igbo of Port Harcourt, Ahoada, Ikwerre /Etche divisions placed into Rivers State, Ndi-Igbo of Asaba, Aboh and Ika placed in the Mid-West.

Some other Ndi-Igbo from Azumini and Opobo put in Cross-river state. The rest of Ndi-Igbo were isolated and land-locked into East Central State. This act was calculated to paralyze Ndi-Igbo and incite our neighbors

 against us."

The rigged elections of 1959, Federal elections of 1964 and regional elections of 1965; rigged and annulled census figures of 1962, 1963 and workers strike of 1964. The Western Regional crisis in which the unpopular Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola was undemocratically foisted on the Western Region mainly Yorubas, by NPC-led Federal government with Tafawa Balewa as Prime Minister and Northern Premier Ahmadu Bello as sectional Party head behind this abuse of political power.

Awolowo's incarceration in 1962 on treasonable charges and arbitrary use of the army against its constitutional role to slaughter over 3,000 Tiv ethnic minority in a civil agitation for regional autonomy from the Islamic north which was poised to maintain that hegemony; brazen corruption, nepotism and utter mismanagement etc led to the January 15, 1966 coup-de-tat.

Yakubu Gowon in conspiracy with other northern officers, murdered Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, his supreme military commander and Nigeria's head of state and government, former Commander of the United Nations Peace-Keeping Mission in Congo and first African to lead such mission, doing so creditably and excellently.

Ironsi, a distinguished career military officer appointed Gowon as army chief. He attained his position by merit untainted by what later became Nigeria's endemic ethnic favouritism that spawned mediocrity and gross incompetence in governance.

Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon was a conspiratorial partner to the mass killings of Easterners, particularly Igbos and Eastern Officers and military personnel throughout Nigeria, except the Eastern region, prior to and after the ethno-regional counter coup of July 29, 1966.

This genocide led by Gowon and cohorts totally employed the military might of the nation in personnel and equipment, in violation of the protective constitutional role of the Nigerian military towards its citizens, in the gruesome slaughter of about 100,000 Nigerians of Eastern region extraction.

Gowon usurped the powers & position of Commander in Chief of the armed forces and head of state devoid of consensus of regional military leaders, respectively that of Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu of the Eastern Region. He appointed himself over and above his superiors in utter disregard of military command structure and hierarchical order.

He dismantled the regional governments for a unitary structure for Ironsi's unitary system which unified only the civil service for efficient military command structure & effective administration. Yet Gowon and his group falsely claimed the reason for ousting Ironsi was because he promulgated decree 34 which unified the Nigerian government.

In fact he went further to name the structure as "federal" even as the supposedly federating units were created by Gowon and his military cabal and the old regional units which retained some autonomy, lost them totally.

This false accusation against Ironsi was in line with what became all too familiar Nigeria's sinister and false accusations against the Igbo and pronouncing them guilty at all cost to engender mass hatred and hostility toward this group; a pattern that yielded the genocidal epic between 1966 - 1970.

Gowon, as the military intelligence agent of the British Government aborted the constitutional conference resolutions of September 12, 1966 geared to calm the troubled polity and halt the mass killings of Easterners in Nigeria.

He went on to renege on another critical resolution on January 4th and 5th at Aburi, Ghana, after being a signatory to its sensible & collective recommendations meant to usher in peace and reconciliation. Gowon and partner in what later transformed into Africa's worst 20th century war crime of genocide.

Obafemi Awolowo, finance and prime minister of war cabinet, usurped ownership & control of Oil resources of South-East and Mid-West Regions to prosecute the genocidal war that cost the nation untold African lives by enforcing blockade of humanitarian aids, against the Geneva Convention, leading to its consequent starvation of mainly women and children. Churches, schools, refugee centers, hospitals quartering internally displaced persons with aid agencies that risked flights into Biafra were indiscriminately strafed and bombed.

Gowon's slogan was: "To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done" but Gowon in the course of what became a war of attrition, had given away a part of the South-East region, Bakassi, to neighboring Cameroun to hedge the Biafrans who only defended themselves from a cruel and wicked aggression fueled by sheer ethnic and unjustified hatred."

"This nation called Nigeria shall be an estate to us from our great-grand father, Uthman Dan Fodio. We shall vigorously resist a change of power. We shall manipulate the minorities of the north, and we shall regard the South as a conquered territory."

"The conquest to the Sea is now in sight. When our god-sent Ahmadu Bello said some years ago that our conquest will reach the sea shores of Nigeria, some idiots in the South were doubting its possibilities. Today have we not reached the sea? Lagos is reached. It remains Portharcourt. It must be conquered and taken"

“By 1960, shortly after Nigeria’s independence, the Prime Minister, Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, had directed the principal of King’s College, Lagos, Mr. P.H. Davies, to provide places annually, for at least 15 boys from the North, whether or not they passed the requisite regular entrance examination.”
-Col. Ben Gbulie (rtd) in “Nigeria’s Five Majors” page 36 published by African Educational Publishers (Ltd) Onitsha 1981.

“By 1964 a group of young Nigerian officer-cadets, mostly Northerners, had been declared academically unfit and hence repatriated by the Canadian military authorities. These cadets were, however, pronounced commissioned by the Nigerian Federal Government no sooner than they had arrived at Ikeja Airport. Consequently, they had had to be absorbed into the Nigerian Army as commissioned officers, even though they had received no requisite military training.”
-Col. Ben Gbulie (rtd) in “Nigeria’s Five Majors” pages 12 – 13, published 1981.

Zak Maimalari had held the rank of Captain in 1960. But before my return from United Kingdom in 1963, he had soared to the rank of Brigadier. In other words, he had risen from Captain to Temporary/Major, to Substantive/Major, to Temporary/Lieutenant-Colonel to Substantive/Colonel and then Brigadier, all within that short span of time. It was just scandalous.”
-Col. Ben Gbulie (rtd) in “Nigeria’s Five Majors” page 13, published 1981.

“In an attempt to catch up militarily with the South, the Northern politicians had thrown out all discretion. They had lowered standards of admission drastically, settling for the minimum.

For as I recalled, all the northerners in my intake had been trained at the Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot. And they had become officers after barely six months of military training, whereas those of us who had been sent to Sandhurst had had to do two long years to earn the Queen’s Commission.

The implications were quite & most disturbing. Not only had these northerners become commissioned officers before we were half-way through our first year at Sandhurst, they had all risen to the enviable rank of Captain before we could even appear at the Queen's sovereign’s parade which served essentially as prerequisite for our passing out as Second Lieutenants.”
-Col. Ben Gbulie in “Nigeria’s Five Majors, pages 12 – 13 Published 1981.

“There was no intention on Chukwuma’s part, to collude or conspire with Ibo officers in the army and with Ibo politicians and academics, to lead a coup for the purpose of ensuring the political leadership of Nigeria by Ibos. No doubt, Ibos and non-Ibos, gave a sigh of relief when the coup took place.”

Non-Igbo officer-participants in the January 15,1966 coup-de-tat – Major Adewale W. Ademoyega (Yoruba), author of “Why We Struck”, Captain Ganiyu Adeleke (Yoruba), Lt. Fola Oyewole (Yoruba), author of “The Reluctant Rebels”, 2Lt. R. Egbikor (Ishan), 2Lt. Tijani Katsina (Fulani), 2 Lt. O. Olafemiyan (Yoruba), Captain Gibson Jalo (Bali), Captain J. Swanton (Middle Belt), Lt. Dag Waribor (Ijaw), 2Lt. Hope E. Eghagha (Urhobo) former governor of Ogun State 1979, 2Lt. Saleh Dambo (Hausa), 2Lt Atom Kpera (Tiv) former Governor of Anambra State 1979.

“…Major Nzeogwu greeted Sir Kashim Ibrahim in Hausa. Then switched to the universal language, he apologized for all the inconvenience we might have caused the ousted (northern) Governor. “You are a good man,” he pursued with a touch of magnanimity. “It is not against people like you that we are staging this coup. Its because of all those corrupt politicians who, for the past five years, have been holding this country to ransom…”

"People were told that it was an Igbo coup but that is not correct. It is a very interesting part of the Nigerian story. In the first place, there have been many serious lies that have been told by our leaders in the last 45 years of Nigeria's history. Our leaders have not been bold enough to tell us the truth...the plan of the coup makers was to release Awolowo from jail and make him their own leader."

"Thousands of Yorubas in Lagos and throughout the West celebrated into the early hours today over the release of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the hero of the Action Group who was jailed for subversion in 1962. The decision to free Awolowo and his associates had already been made a week ago, July 27, by General Ironsi and they were to have been released tomorrow, Thursday, august 4. But the public did not know this.."

"The leader of Nigeria's Western Region Chief Obafemi Awolowo declared today that if the East seceded, the West and the Federal Territory of Lagos would also break away from the federation. Before a cheering throng of Western leaders in Lagos today, Chief Awolowo threw his prestige and the weight of the Western Region behind the East in its confrontation with the Northern-led federal military government."

"...A war against the East could only be a war favoured by the north alone. Second, if the true purpose of such a war is to preserve the unity and integrity of the Federation, these ends can be achieved by the very simple devices of implementing the recommendation of the Committee which met on august 9, 1966, as re-affirmed by the decision of the military leaders at Aburi on January 5, 1967."

"The leader of Nigeria's Western Region Chief Obafemi Awolowo declared today that if the East seceded, the West and the Federal Territory of Lagos would also break away from the federation. Before a cheering throng of Western leaders in Lagos today, Chief Awolowo threw his prestige and the weight of the Western Region behind the East in its confrontation with the Northern-led federal military government."-New York Times Monday May 1, 1967.

"...A war against the East could only be a war favoured by the north alone. Second, if the true purpose of such a war is to preserve the unity and integrity of the Federation, these ends can be achieved by the very simple devices of implementing the recommendation of the Committee which met on august 9, 1966, as re-affirmed by the decision of the military leaders at Aburi on January 5, 1967."
-Excerpt from Obafemi Awolowo's speech to Western Leaders of Thought at Ibadan May 1, 1967.

"People were told that it was an Igbo coup but that is not correct. It is a very interesting part of the Nigerian story. In the first place, there have been many serious lies that have been told by our leaders in the last 45 years of Nigeria's history. Our leaders have not been bold enough to tell us the truth...the plan of the coup makers was to release Awolowo from jail and make him their own leader."
-Odia Ofeimun, former Secretary to Obafemi Awolowo in Guardian Newspapers Sunday May 6, 2007.

JohnSin97:
Nyamiri revisionists at work again.....Achebe tried it, but died a miserable old fool in a foreign land.

JohnSin97:
Nyamiri revisionists at work again.....Achebe tried it, but died a miserable old fool in a foreign land.

JohnSin97:
Nyamiri revisionists at work again.....Achebe tried it, but died a miserable old fool in a foreign land.

Uchek:
I did a quick check on your postings, and they were all Ndigbo-obsessed. Are you Yoruba? I would have expected you to invalidate his views with evidence-driven points. You only made a vacuous statement, " Nyamiri revisionists at work again.... Achebe tried it, but died a miserable old fool in a foreign land"

The ball is in your court. Debunk his positions with empirical evidence.

Racoon:
“By 1960, shortly after Nigeria’s independence, the Prime Minister, Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, had directed the principal of King’s College, Lagos, Mr. P.H. Davies, to provide places annually, for at least 15 boys from the North, whether or not they passed the requisite regular entrance examination.”
-Col. Ben Gbulie (rtd) in “Nigeria’s Five Majors” page 36 published by African Educational Publishers (Ltd) Onitsha 1981.

“By 1964 a group of young Nigerian officer-cadets, mostly Northerners, had been declared academically unfit and hence repatriated by the Canadian military authorities. These cadets were, however, pronounced commissioned by the Nigerian Federal Government no sooner than they had arrived at Ikeja Airport. Consequently, they had had to be absorbed into the Nigerian Army as commissioned officers, even though they had received no requisite military training.”
-Col. Ben Gbulie (rtd) in “Nigeria’s Five Majors” pages 12 – 13, published 1981.

Zak Maimalari had held the rank of Captain in 1960. But before my return from United Kingdom in 1963, he had soared to the rank of Brigadier. In other words, he had risen from Captain to Temporary/Major, to Substantive/Major, to Temporary/Lieutenant-Colonel to Substantive/Colonel and then Brigadier, all within that short span of time. It was just scandalous.”
-Col. Ben Gbulie (rtd) in “Nigeria’s Five Majors” page 13, published 1981.

“In an attempt to catch up militarily with the South, the Northern politicians had thrown out all discretion. They had lowered standards of admission drastically, settling for the minimum.

For as I recalled, all the northerners in my intake had been trained at the Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot. And they had become officers after barely six months of military training, whereas those of us who had been sent to Sandhurst had had to do two long years to earn the Queen’s Commission.

The implications were quite & most disturbing. Not only had these northerners become commissioned officers before we were half-way through our first year at Sandhurst, they had all risen to the enviable rank of Captain before we could even appear at the Queen's sovereign’s parade which served essentially as prerequisite for our passing out as Second Lieutenants.”
-Col. Ben Gbulie in “Nigeria’s Five Majors, pages 12 – 13 Published 1981.

JohnSin97:
There's no use debunking something that's evidently a lie twisted to suit the narratives of a certain group.....even without history the actions and attitudes of nyamiris speak for itself.

Idiko1:
You do not have intellectual capacity to debunk a twisted lie talk less a natural fact.

JohnSin97:
There's no use debunking something that's evidently a lie twisted to suit the narratives of a certain group.....even without history the actions and attitudes of nyamiris speak for itself.

Idiko1:
You do not have intellectual capacity to debunk a twisted lie talk less a natural fact.