By Ifeoma Okeke (Abia writers) It is a well-known fact and truth that the January 15, 1996, coup was not an Igbo coup. Any person claiming t...
By Ifeoma Okeke (Abia writers)
It is a well-known fact and truth that the January 15, 1996, coup was not an Igbo coup. Any person claiming that they did not know the truth about the coup until Ibrahim Babangida said so is either a newcomer or a hater of Igbos. The British labelled the coup an Igbo coup because they wanted revenge on how the Igbo politicians disgraced them before the world during the struggle for independence.
They were baffled by the eloquence and intelligence of people like Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mazi Mbonu Ojike, Michael I. Okpala, and others from the Eastern region, as well as Igbos. That was why the British ensured that Alhaji Tafawa Belewa became the Prime Minister and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe the president. The British rigged the election in favour of the North because they feared that things wouldn't go the way they wanted it if the Prime Minister came from the East. Still, they were disappointed because the Prime Minister paid more attention to Saudi Arabia than Britain.
The British did not like that, so they wanted to try somebody from the West. So they picked Obafemi Awolowo, whom they saw as the best from the West. Awolowo fully assured British support and started attacking and criticizing the government of the day. They accused him of Treasonable felony and jailed him in Calabar prison.
Now, the British, who want to deal ruthlessly with the Igbos and also take power from the North to the West, know that their only option for making Awolowo the Prime Minister is to plan a coup and use an Igbo military officer, Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, as the leader, and co-opt some Yorubas and also some other tribes to carry out the plan. They used an Igbo man as the leader and instructed them on who to kill and who not to kill. The plan was that if the coup failed, it would look like an Igbo coup; if it were successful, they would bring Awolowo out of prison and make him the prime minister.
What annoyed the British the most was that the coup failed because the men who quashed it were Igbo men. Today, nobody talks about the good works of the IGBO men who quashed the coup. Still, Major Nzeogwu is on every Igbo hater's lips as an evildoer.
If we should tell ourselves the truth, we will agree that the January 15, 1996 coup was a British/Awolowo coup and not an IGBO coup, as the British made the world understand. The British, who instructed the coup plotters not to kill any Igbo politician, also told the Northern elites that the coup was an Igbo coup because the coup plotters did not kill any Igbo politician, and that made the Northerners kill more than three million Igbos residing in the North including pregnant women and children.
It was clear from the onset that the coup's leaders were not only Igbos but from across the country. Another straightforward point is that the man to benefit from the coup is not Igbo but Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba man. Still, the British convinced the world to believe the coup was an Igbo coup. General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida confessed in his book that the January 15, 1996, coup was not an Igbo coup. He should tell Nigerians and the world if the coup was an Awolowo coup, a Yoruba coup, or a British coup.
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