A Journey in Service: Warts and all, Babangida enriches Nigerian history

For several years, I wondered whether General Ibrahim Babangida would go to his grave without writing his memoir. He played such epochal roles in Nigeria’s history that he would have done a great disservice to this country had he died without writing his biography and documenting those seismic events. So, you will understand why I was excited when General Babangida recently published his memoir, and why I have read the entire 420-page book.

Whatever anyone may say about the memoir, titled A Journey in Service: An Autobiography, the truth is that General Babangida has enriched Nigerian history by making significant contributions to the body of knowledge about Nigeria’s historical evolution. Babangida truly deserves kudos for not going to his grave with the rich narratives, disputed or not, that he provides in the book. The book is so rich, with great artistic flair and gripping stories and anecdotes, that you will struggle to put it down once you start reading it. Warts and all, Babangida’s memoir is a collector’s item.

Now, the issues that General Babangida covers in the book are so significant that one cannot discuss them in one column. So, I will focus here on one of them: his take on the chain of events that led to the Nigerian Civil War, a monumentally devastating war that claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 combatants; took the lives of over two million civilians, with about five million people displaced; and, of course, left indelible scars on Nigeria’s psyche and internal wounds on its conscience. Inevitably, the question is: Was the war avoidable?

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To answer that question, one must start with Babangida’s take on whether the January 15, 1966 coup was an “Igbo” coup. This is important because if it was an “Igbo” coup, then history must record that the coup took the genie out of the bottle and led inexorably to the civil war. However, if it was not an “Igbo” coup, then the blame for the devastating war lies somewhere else. General Babangida argued both sides. Unfortunately, that equivocation gave ammunition to some people to push their preferred narrative.

For instance, social media was awash with uncontrolled elation by those who claimed that Babangida said the January 15 coup “was not” an “Igbo” coup. Yet, there are people like Femi Fani-Kayode who assert that Babangida called the coup an “Igbo” coup. Fani-Kayode tweeted: “The truth is that the January 15th 1966 coup WAS an Igbo one and I am glad to say that IBB has confirmed it.” He added: “The coup was an ethnic one and that ethnicity was the Igbos.”

But Babangida did not say categorically that it was an “Igbo” coup. True, he said on page 39 that the handling of the coup gave it “an unmistakably ethnic colouration”, especially with the “heinously callous” murder of Sir Ahmadu Bello and his wife, Hafsatu, “compounded by the fact that there were no related coup activities in the Eastern region.” However, Babangida also said earlier on the same page: “Ethnic sentiments did not drive the original objective of the coup plotters.”

“General Babangida went to great lengths to describe, with impressive details, the pressure that northern officers faced from the northern politicians, and even the northern populace, to retaliate against the January 15 killings.”

For evidence, Babangida cited the following facts: a) Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, the head of the plotters, was only ‘Igbo’ in name; born and raised in Kaduna, he spoke fluent Hausa “and was as ‘Hausa’ as any!” b) the coup plotters wanted to release Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba, from prison and make him “the executive provisional President of Nigeria”, which would be strange if the coup was Igbo-centric; c) some non-Igbo officers, such as Major Adewale Ademoyega, a Yoruba, took part in the coup; d) some senior officers of Igbo extraction were also victims of the coup; and e) it was an Igbo officer, Major John Obiena, who crushed the coup. Babangida concluded by saying: “I admit that my position here may be the naïve insights of an unsuspecting young officer who viewed events from a distance!”

In truth, the so-called “ethnic colouration” was one of perception rather than reality. A professional psychoanalysis of the coup plotters would probably show that they were idealistic young officers who were fed up with the status quo in Nigeria and genuinely wanted to bring about a change and were not motivated by ethnicity. Most educated young officers in those days were ideological. They probably shared Chief Awolowo’s welfarist ideology and were impressed with how he governed Western Region and wanted him to govern Nigeria. But Awolowo later made it clear that he would not have agreed to be a military-imposed leader of Nigeria. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the January 15 coup, no northerner was willing to contemplate that the coup was not ethnic, not Igbo!

General Babangida went to great lengths to describe, with impressive details, the pressure that northern officers faced from the northern politicians, and even the northern populace, to retaliate against the January 15 killings. The officers were publicly ridiculed, called “big fools and cowards” and even reportedly denied “conjugal benefits” by their wives! Arguably provoked, their response was brutal. On July 28, 1966, at the Abeokuta Garrison, junior northern officers killed several Igbo officers. The next day, on July 29, the actual countercoup took place as northern officers killed the head of state, General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, and the military governor of Western Region, Lt-Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, among others.

But here’s the point. The conventional wisdom says that the January 15 coup and the July 29 countercoup led to the civil war. Yet, that’s not exactly true. Lt-Col. Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the governor of Eastern Nigeria, did not declare secession because of the July 29 countercoup. He did not declare secession because Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, was killed. In fact, Ojukwu moved on from Aguiyi-Ironsi’s assassination when he said that Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, the most senior Army officer, should succeed him as head of state. That was not the mindset of someone who wanted to secede. But here’s the truth: the North wanted revenge so badly and they had it in the Abeokuta killings of Igbo officers and in the July 29 countercoup. Yet, that did not appease them. Why?

Read also: Babangida: Ghost of June 12 still haunting some people  Atedo Peterside

General Babangida described in gory details the events between May 29 and September 29, 1966, when, according to Official Army Records, more than 213 predominantly Igbo officers and other ranks were killed. In what was described as a “pogrom”, over 30,000 Igbos were massacred and several thousand wounded in the North, while some 50,000 Igbos were forced to flee northern Nigeria for the East by the end of July 1966. Babangida blamed General Yakubu Gowon, then head of state, for failing to protect the Igbos in the North, and seemed to justify Ojukwu’s reaction. Babangida wrote: “Faced with this intolerable situation, Ojukwu, understandably”, felt Igbos were unsafe in Nigeria. The die was cast!

So, yes, the 1966 coup and countercoup were dreadful. But those events were not the proximate cause of the civil war. It was the then northern politicians’ endless and insatiable braying for revenge against the Igbos, and Gowon’s failure to protect them in the North, that triggered the pogrom, the secession and the war. Those are the great insights from Babangida’s memoir!