Presidents during the Nigerian First Republic
President Term Party
Nnamdi Azikiwe October 1, 1963 - January 16, 1966 NCNC

Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu overthrew Nigeria's civilian government.[2]

spanishkid:
Ojukwu was nothing but a bloody coward who started a war only to flee at the heat of the battle.

DaBullIT:
two things

Or shall i say '' the few things i know ''

Far beyond 1940 , The tribes lived together in harmoney, traded, intermarried, traveled together , lived together and died together

1960 , The country of a vast land where everything happened as described above fought together to carve an authority for themselves

1963 , These different people got the ultimate power , became recognized and accepted formally ,Someone was chosen to lead by the British , Abubakar T Balewa then these another was immediately chosen to support the first chosen


Everything was fine , the people traded and intermarried and more but Killing the most important king from the Northern Tribe

While the norther tribe protested by killing the Easterners , they staged reprisal attacks again the Northerners in thier city, apparently in solidarity with what Nzeogw did , the first coupist in the history of 6 year old Nigeria


The point is , they started things and a lunatic was their leader


In the end, the aggressor became the vanquished

fourty years later , these same set of people are still fighting and dreaming , starting something everywhere and there

hakeem4:
he didn't want to go on exile , but his people told him

DaBullIT:
[b]two things

Or shall i say '' the few things i know ''

Far beyond 1940 , The tribes lived together in harmoney, traded, intermarried, traveled together , lived together and died together

1960 , The country of a vast land where everything happened as described above fought together to carve an authority for themselves

1963 , These different people got the ultimate power , became recognized and accepted formally ,Someone was chosen to lead by the British , Abubakar T Balewa then these another was immediately chosen to support the first chosen


Everything was fine , the people traded and intermarried and more but Killing the most important king from the Northern Tribe

While the northern tribe protested by killing the Easterners , they (Easterners }staged reprisal attacks again the Northerners in thier city, apparently in solidarity with what Nzeogw did , the first coupist in the history of 6 year old Nigeria


The point is , they started things and a lunatic was their leader


In the end, the aggressor became the vanquished

forty something years later , these same set of people are still fighting and dreaming

starting something everywhere and there and again

As history will have it


Another Lunatic is leading them


Hear me o Eastern voices, What shall it profit a tribe who choses to break a bond of love out of greed [/b]

xtrorse:


N.B.: This is mainly for the notorious history distortionists and wicked propagandists who insult and malign others continually with lies and falsehood, and shout and make much noise on every available media. The same treacheerous beings who precipitated the January 1966 coup and the 1967-70 civil war with their bloody 'Operation Wetie ' in the SW. They start trouble and heat up the polity only to run cowardly to hide in their evil Soka forest when the jungle matures. 


Before examining the January coup I must ask Awoyokun and those who share his position: why were the Igbo the primary target of the 1953 Kano Riots? Southern-Yoruba, Igbo, Niger Delta-politicians argued for independence in 1956 as against the Northern demand for independence as soon as practicable. Southerners, not only the Igbo, reacted hostilely to the Northerners’ carrying the day at the end of proceedings in the Legislative Chamber in Lagos. Chief S. L. Akintola, the chieftain of the dominantly Yoruba party, Action Group, set for a rather provocative tour of Kano shortly afterwards. Though the tour was called off the violence was not. In his autobiography ‘The Story of My Life’ Sir Ahmadu Bello stated: ‘Here in Kano, as things fell out, the fighting took place between the Hausas…and the Ibos; the Yorubas were oddly enough out of it.’

It is clear that it was not in 1966 that the ritual of killing the Igbo in the North at the slightest whim started.

Adewale Ademoyega, a full blooded Yoruba army officer, was deeply involved in the planning and execution of the January coup. His book ‘Why We Struck’ gives insight into the coup’s antecedents; planning; modus operandi and partial success. Any study of January 15 that ignores Ademoyega’s book is incomplete.

In a September 5 2010 interview with ‘The Nation’ newspaper, Matthew Mbu, then a Junior Defence Minister, narrated how, at an Air Force base in Kaduna on an official assignment on 5 January 1966, he was bluntly told by Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun that the military was going to sack the government. Ademulegun made no bones about their plan to shoot key members of the political class, notably Chief Okotie-Eboh, the Minister for Finance.

Much has been made of the non-killing of Igbo members of the political class; that no coup was carried out in Enugu; and Ifeajuna tipped off President Nnamdi Azikiwe. Till date, in certain circles, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the killing of Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Unegbe is attributed to his possession and non-surrender of the Lagos armoury keys to the plotters.

As professional soldiers the plotters knew this. Going by the accounts of Ademoyega and Gbulie who wrote ‘Nigeria’s Five Majors,’ what the plotters desperately needed were armoured vehicles to consolidate their gains in Lagos on January 15.

In page 60 of his book, Ademoyega mentioned Unegbe as one of the officers he and his colleagues had marked down for arrest.

Northern officers and men were involved, especially at the execution stage. Max Silloun, the military historian, mentions them in his landmark online article ‘The inside story of Nigeria’s first military coup Parts 1 and 2.’ It can be accessed from most search engines. Prominent among these Northern officers was the then Lieutenant John Atom Kpera who later became the Benue State governor in the Babangida regime. Kpera participated in the coup under Captain Ben Gbulie, Nzeogwu’s right hand-man in Kaduna. (See Ben Gbulie: ‘Nigeria’s Five Majors.’).

Although Ademoyega is the most prominent Yoruba participant in the coup, there were other Yoruba officers who were involved at the dangerous execution stage of the coup. One of them is Second Lieutenant Olafimihan, an officer serving under Madiebo in Kaduna. He was sent by the plotters to gauge his commander’s loyalty. (See Madiebo pp.17-18). Another is Lieutenant (some books refer to him as a Captain) Fola Oyewole. He, like Ademoyega, went on to fight for Biafra and wrote a book on his coup and wartime experiences. The book’s title is ‘Reluctant Rebel.’ There is also Captain Ganiyu Adeleke who became an instructor in the Biafran Infantry School. For confirmation, see the list of coup plotters detained by Ironsi’s regime in Ademoyega pp.106-108, and this quote from Nowa Omoigui’s online account: ‘Mid-Western Invasion of 1967’: ‘Captain Ganiyu Adeleke, who had taken part in both the January 15 coup and the Mid-Western invasion before becoming an instructor in the Biafran School of Infantry was released at a later date after his co-plotters had been freed.’ Omoigui’s work is significant because, though he exhibits a high level of professionalism in his research, he has no sympathy for the January 15 coup. If his facts corroborate Ademoyega’s they are worthy of attention.


http://www.naijastories.com/2013/04/the-facts-and-fiction-of-the-january-15-1966-coup/

xtrorse:


BLOOD ON THE NIGER: THE FIRST BLACK ON BLACK OCTOBER 1967 GENOCIDE OF ASABA PEOPLE BY MURTALA, GOWON  AND AWOLOWO

...Like my father and elder brother that were part of the over 1000 youths that were killed on October 7, 1967, in Asaba, most of them were members of the Action Group (AG). The people that believed in the NCNC at that time left for the east. My father who worked in Enugu, Nsukka, Uzuakoli and Kafanchan as a civil servant could have gone to the east. But he believed in that war. He was an apostle of the Awo ideas-free education and free medical services. In fact, the Asaba General Hospital that is now a Specialist Hospital was brought to us by the AG led by Nduka Eze, another AG hardliner who left the Zikist Movement to join Awolowo. But Nduka Eze's wife was killed by the federal troop under the command of Murtala Mohammed because she refused to be touched because they were defiling women at random when they came in.

The genocide against the Igbos has been proved beyond reasonable doubt by the apology made to Asaba people by General Gowon when he came there after the release of the Blood On The Niger. The genocide against the Igbos was proved beyond reasonable doubt at the Oputa panel which the federal government has up till now refused to publish the findings. Bishop Desmond Tutu chaired the Truth and Justice tribunal in South Africa to find out what happened in South Africa during the apartheid period. It was accepted by both sides and just look at the peace that has prevailed there since then. Why would Nigeria not publish the findings of the Oputa Panel where it has been proved beyond reasonable doubt that pilots were throwing bombs at random into market places in Uzuakoli, Uzuitem and Nsukka, where bottles and implements were also used against women during the war.

History is an account of the actions of actors in a community or in a state recorded that made impacts during their time. Awolowo was a great leader; great politician and great performer in government but his activities during the civil war were negative. If you are a writer, you cannot defend his position that starvation is an instrument of warfare. Starvation cannot be an instrument of warfare when you are fighting a civil war. 

Nigeria was being supplied arms from all countries. For the first time there was an unholy alliance between the Soviet Union and the West. It had never happened before. Any place that there was a war of revolution, the USSR is always taking the place of the revolutionary. How come that the USSR for the first time allied with the West against Biafra? So, let somebody go and disprove Achebe; that is what we want to see not that somebody did not commit genocide. Genocide has been proved to be committed. If there were no genocide, the World Council of Churches, the Caritas wouldn't have come in droves. If genocide was not committed, why did Biafra lose two million casualties, most of them civilians and children? And if people are not apologising to Igbos, why should they now come out to talk because one man has been put to where he belongs in history. He was the principal protagonist of using starvation as an instrument of warfare against his fellow citizens. Remember that Nigeria was fighting a war of unity. They were not as desperate as the other camp that was fighting a war of secession. So, in international convention Geneva included, you don't use starvation against civilians, you don't use firearms against civilians and you don't use bombs. Are they saying they didn't bomb civilians during the war? The Nigerian Air Force was very pronounced in its use of bombs on civilians and their targets were churches, market places and hospitals. These were recorded by missionaries and foreign journalists. 

Awolowo was the Minister of Finance under Gowon. He was the de facto prime minister of Nigeria during the war and he performed. I don't grudge him for winning the war for Nigeria; for changing the currency. He can win the war by all means but the fact that he prevented massive aid from coming is genocidal.

There was an inhuman instance. There was an incident where a Red Cross plane coming with medication and food was blown off the sky for the beleaguered people of Biafra. Even after the war, what was the purpose of denying Igbos their primary source of protein-stockfish? How can you defend the policy of giving people who have lost everything only 20 Pounds? If there is anybody that should have been given more, the returning war battered people of Biafra should have received more.

The Igbos have always accepted Awolowo as a great leader but his activities during the civil war shocked them. BY THE OBJECTIVE OF THE JANUARY 15 COUP, as quoted by Odia Ofeimun, the poet, the boys believed he was the greatest leader. 
THE LEADERS OF THE COULD, WERE TO MAKE CHIEF AWOLOWO THE PRIME MINISTER OF NIGERIA. These coup leaders didn't go for Azikiwe or Balewa. They wanted Chief Awolowo as quoted by Odia in a 1999 edition of The Guardian. Awolowo was supposed to be released by the Nzeogwu coup, which didn't have its assumed ending; it was aborted half way. It was Nzeogwu's colleague, Major Nzegwu that was supposed to pick him from Calabar prison and release him. So, I'm proving to you that the Igbo literality have always accepted Awo as one of the best and great leaders the country has ever produced but his activities during the war did not only shock them but betrayed the trust they had in.

During the whole peace conferences from Niamey to Kinshasha, Awolowo, Enahoro and Alison Ayida, who was a permanent secretary, always took a hawkish stand. That was why in the Niamey conference of 1968 Alison Ayida quoted Awo exactly that starvation is an instrument of warfare. This was at a time when millions of Biafran children were dying off. And death by starvation is not an ordinary death. It is for you to experience it. It was horror and the photographs are there but Awolowo and his henchmen never batted an eyelid even after the war. That is why we glorify other great literality like Wole Soyinka who told us in his book A Man Died that extermination was committed in Asaba. He was the first courageous soul in Nigeria that told the world about the Asaba massacre.


http://nigeriavillagesquare.com/forum/main-square/73341-most-those-murdered-asaba-muritala-gowon-awo-were-action-group-members-emma-okocha-author-blood-niger.html

Closecall:

Systemic

kingslly:
Ojukwu had no other option but to Declare and defend the state of Biafra . Ojukwu remains a Hero

hakeem4:
he didn't want to go on exile , but his people told him

xtrorse:

Closecall:
Ojukwu: Hero Or Villain?
By
Max Siollun
maxsiollun@yahoo.com
 
 
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu is a man that inspires conflicting emotions in people.  To some he is a born leader and hero.  To others he is an ambitious man that tried to break up the federation of Nigeria.  Where Ojukwu is concerned, no one is a neutral.  The conflicting opinions on him are consistent with his inconsistent personality and history.  Ojukwu is an educated man that entered a profession that many Nigerians regarded at the time as a profession for the uneducated, a southerner born in the north who fought a three year long war against the north, a man who once led an attempt to secede from Nigeria, but later ran for President of Nigeria.
 
A leader must be judged by what benefits or misfortune he has brought to his people.  The question to be asked is: has Ojukwu brought anything positive to Igbos?  His record is grim.  The “accomplishments Ojukwu has brought his people is as follows”:
Dragging them into a brutal civil war they had no chance of winning, and which resulted in 1 million of them dying.
Even when it became clear that his people were starving to death in massive numbers, he continued the war which was doomed from the start.
He fled and left his people after the war.
The civil war caused his people to be stereotyped as disloyal and led to an unwritten discrimination against them.
 
It is remarkable that a man who has brought few tangible benefits to his people is so revered by them.  Although Igbo by parentage (his father was the millionaire businessman Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu), Ojukwu was born in Zungeru in the north and attended Nigeria’s most prestigious school Kings College, before later graduating with a degree in History from Lincoln College, Oxford University (where he joined the communist party) in the UK prior to joining the Nigerian army.  Ojukwu was the first university graduate to enlist in the Nigerian army.  Intellectually, Ojukwu was in a different league to many of his peers.  Joining the army in an era of political crises and increasing officer politicization of the army, Ojukwu found his niche.  During the 1964 federal election crisis, the President and Prime Minister jockeyed for control and loyalty of the army.  In the heat of the crisis some of Ojukwu’s colleagues alleged that he approached them with a plan to overthrow the civilian government and replace it with a military government.  The matter was reported to the army’s then commander Major-General Welby-Everard. 
 
If Ojukwu harboured political ambitions, he was given a chance to showcase his political acumen when a group of young army Majors overthrew the democratic government in January 1966.  Contrary to what has been written in some quarters, Ojukwu refused to cooperate with the Majors – including Major Nzeogwu.  When Nigeria’s first military government emerged, Ojukwu was appointed the military governor of Nigeria’s eastern region.  His appointment to be the east’s Military Governor was also ironic as he had spent very little of his life in the east.  Ojukwu was the most politically active of the four military governors.   By mid-1966 the army was imploding and another army coup was staged by northern soldiers during which hundreds of Igbo soldiers (including Ironsi) were killed.  A central plank of this coup was the elimination of Ojukwu.  The ‘pointman’ who was to execute the coup in the eastern region was a young Lieutenant named Shehu Musa Yar’Adua (the older brother of Nigeria’s current President).  A middle ranking northern officer: Lt-Colonel Gowon was chosen by northern soldiers to replace Ironsi, despite the objections of Ojukwu who insisted that the most senior officer Brigadier Ogundipe should succeed Ironsi.  In the aftermath of the coup northern soldiers and civilians carried out gruesome pogroms against Igbos, and tens of thousands of Igbos were murdered.  As decapitated and badly mutilated corpses began arriving back in Ojukwu’s eastern region, there was a sense of insecurity and revulsion.  Separatist sentiment increased in the eastern region and many Igbos and other easterners began to call for the eastern region to secede from the Nigerian federation which could no longer guarantee their safety.  Contrary to what is widely believed, Ojukwu was actually a moderating voice in a sea of Igbo hawks who wanted immediate secession.  Ojukwu cooperated with Lt-Colonel Gowon as he (Ojukwu) was anxious to limit the bloodshed and to protect the lives and property of Igbos still remaining in the north.  He also ordered all northerners resident in the east to leave for their own safety, and brokered a ceasefire deal with almost 1000 northern soldiers in Enugu which allowed the northern soldiers to leave unharmed with their weapons.  However there were limits to Ojukwu’s cooperation with Gowon, and he was still refusing to recognize Gowon as Nigeria's Head of State.  Ojukwu defiantly continued to address Gowon as the "the Chief of Staff (Army)" (the post which Gowon occupied before the coup that brought him to power).
 
Aburi
 
After Nigeria was dragged to the brink of the abyss by two military coups in 1966, and pogroms which followed them, Ojukwu had refused to attend any meetings of the Supreme Military Council and continually repeated his mantra that "I, as the Military Governor of the east cannot meet anywhere in Nigeria where there are northern troops". 
Ojukwu finally agreed to attend an SMC meeting in the neutral territory of Aburi in Ghana in January 1967.  It was in the writer’s opinion, Ojukwu’s finest hour.  While the other delegates arrived at Aburi with a simple, but unformulated idea that somehow, Nigeria must stay together, Ojukwu prepared thoroughly and came armed with notes and secretaries.  In the words of one writer “Ojukwu was the only participant who knew what he wanted, and he secured the signatures of the SMC to documents which would have had the effect of turning Nigeria into little more than a customs union".[1]  Some claimed that Ojukwu took the SMC for a ride by using his superior intelligence to trap the SMC officers into an agreement they did not understand.  Ojukwu was engaged in a constitutional debate by himself against five military officers, and two police officers, yet still got his way.  He can hardly be faulted for outwitting opponents that outnumbered him by seven to one.  Questions might be asked of the other SMC members of greater numerical strength who allowed Ojukwu to extract such substantial concessions from them.  The agreement was never implemented as each side accused the other of bad faith.  Ojukwu cannot be faulted for the failure to implement the Aburi decisions as it was the federal government that reneged on the agreement. 
 
The federal government attempted to implement the Aburi agreement in diluted form by enacting a modified Constitution (Suspension and Modification) Decree (Decree which turned Nigeria into a de facto confederation.  Ojukwu declined to accept the initial draft and insisted on a full and complete implementation of the accords reached at Aburi.  Nonetheless as the weaker party he could still have showed greater pragmatism to spare further suffering for his people.  At this point Ojukwu’s decision making must be questioned.  Ojukwu would have saved many lives had he shown a greater degree of flexibility by accepting the Decree as it gave him 90% of what he wanted.  In the “winner takes all” mentality that is so symptomatic of Nigerian politics, Ojukwu unrealistically held out for 100% of his demands and in the end, received 0%.  His intransigence placed him and his people in a worse position than they started in.  Rather than turning Nigeria into a confederation (which is what Decree 8 did), Ojukwu’s intransigence gave the federal government an opportunity to overrun the eastern region, carve the country into several states and concentrate massive powers in the central government.  Forty years later many Nigerians now call for the restructuring of Nigeria, and for devolution of power to its regions.  Ojukwu had a golden opportunity to achieve this over 40 years ago but squandered it.  Had he shown some patience he may have achieved his objectives – albeit at a later date.  The old adage is that “the best comes to those who wait”.  Ojukwu could have taken a leaf from the book of another infant country named Israel.  For several decades Jews fought to be given their own state in what was then British Mandate Palestine.  In 1947, they were granted their state but only on half the land that they wanted.  Realizing that it is best to accept what is achievable today, rather than risk holding out for 100% and getting nothing, Israel’s first leader David Ben-Gurion accepted a state but cleverly did not enunciate the borders of this state – this leaving the door open to agitate for more land at a later date.  Today the “green line” borders of Israel encompass more land than it originally had at independence. 
 
The Biafra Story
 
When armed confrontation with the federal government was imminent, Ojukwu knew as a military man that the eastern region had absolutely no chance of victory in a conflict with the federal government.  Yet he declared the secession of the eastern region which he governed, in the knowledge that federal troops would invade immediately after the secession.  Although Ojukwu doubtless possessed outstanding leadership and motivational skills which he used admirably to pull his people solidly behind the war effort, it is uncertain exactly how he possibly believed that the eastern region (armed only with a few elderly World War 2 era rifles) could succeed against an enemy armed with limitless mortars, machine guns, tanks, armoured personnel carriers, trucks and air force jets.  One does not have to be a military strategist to see the folly of this decision.
 
At the time, there was a widely held belief (propagated by Ojukwu and other Biafran leaders) that defeat for Biafra would be met by mass indiscriminate massacres by the federal government.  If Ojukwu believed this, then his escape at the end of the war is deplorable.  After over a million Igbos were killed in the senseless war, Ojukwu fled in the last days of the war when his people were at their lowest ebb, despite repeatedly promising throughout the war that he would never leave his people to the mercy of the federal troops.  If he believed that all his people would be massacred then his flight to a luxurious exile abroad and refusal to stand side by side with them to finish a war he dragged them into, cannot be applauded.  Ojukwu is an iconic leader for his people, but has failed to deliver the aspirations of his people.  The question remains – is Ojukwu a hero or a disastrous strategist?
 

 
[1] John de St Jorre “The Brothers’ War”.
 
http://www.gamji.com/article6000/NEWS7512.htm

Closecall:
General Ojukwu

Freemanan:
looking at it from an Igbo man perspective, he is more than a Hero... But from a general perspective, he is definitely a villain and a traitor.

Closecall:

There are always options

Closecall:
General Ojukwu

general ko ,general ni