The Nigerian Civil War was fought from 1967 to 1970 between Nigeria’s federal government and the secessionist state of Biafra. Ethnic conflict, economic inequality, and educational disparities were among the factors that contributed to the start of the war, which killed an estimated 500,000 to 3,000,000 people. Nigeria became an independent country on October 1, 1960. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was its first federal prime minister—he had held that position since 1957—and Nnamdi Azikiwe became its president of the Senate, which was a largely ceremonial role. Following a UN-supervised referendum in 1961, the northern part of the Trust Territory of the Cameroons joined Nigeria’s Northern region, while in October the Southern Cameroons united with Cameroun to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon. On October 1, 1963, Nigeria became a republic, with Azikiwe as its president, although, as prime minister, Balewa remained more politically powerful. 

In Nigeria and its surrounding region, long-standing regional stresses—ethnic competitiveness, educational inequality, and economic imbalance being the most prominent—again came to the fore in a controversial census during 1962–63. In an attempt to stave off ethnic conflict, Nigeria’s Mid-West region was created in 1963 by dividing the Western region. Despite this division, the country still was segmented into three large geographic regions, each of which was essentially controlled by an ethnic group: the west by the Yoruba people, the east by the Igbo people, and the north by the Hausa–Fulani people. Conflicts were endemic, as regional leaders protected their privileges; the South complained of Northern domination, and the North feared that the Southern elite was bent on capturing power. In the west, the government had fallen apart in 1962, and a boycott of the federal election of December 1964 brought Nigeria to the brink of breakdown. 

The point of no return was reached in January 1966, when, after the collapse of order in the west following the fraudulent election of October 1965, a group of army officers attempted to overthrow the federal government, and Balewa and two of the regional premiers were murdered. A military administration was set up under Maj. Gen. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, but his plan to abolish the regions and impose a unitary government met with anti-Igbo riots in the north. The military intervention worsened the political situation, as the army itself split along ethnic lines, its officers clashed over power, and the instigators and leaders of the January coup were accused of favouring Igbo domination. In July 1966 northern officers staged a countercoup, Aguiyi-Ironsi was assassinated, and Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Yakubu Gowon came to power. The crisis was compounded by intercommunal clashes in the north and threats of secession in the south. 

Outbreak of war – Odumegwu Ojukwu

Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Odumegwu Ojukwu led the secessionist state of Biafra from its declaration of independence in 1967 through its surrender in 1970, which ended the Nigerian Civil War. Gowon’s attempt to hold a conference to settle the constitutional future of Nigeria was abandoned after a series of ethnic massacres in October 1966. A last-ditch effort to save the country was made in January 1967, when the Eastern delegation, led by Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Odumegwu Ojukwu agreed to meet the others on neutral ground at Aburi, Ghana. The situation deteriorated, however, after differences developed over the interpretation of the accord. In May the Eastern region’s consultative assembly authorized Ojukwu to establish a sovereign republic, while, at the same time, the federal military government promulgated a decree dividing the four regions into 12 states, including 6 in the north and 3 in the east, in an attempt to break the power of the regions. 

On May 30, 1967, Ojukwu declared the secession of the three states of the Eastern region under the name of the Republic of Biafra, which Nigeria’s federal government interpreted as an act of rebellion. Fighting broke out in early July. Within weeks the conflict had escalated into a full-scale civil war. In August 1967 Biafran troops crossed the Niger, seized Benin City, and were well on their way to Lagos before they were checked at Ore, a small town in the Western state (now Ondo state). Shortly thereafter, federal troops entered Enugu, the provisional capital of Biafra, and penetrated the Igbo heartland. The next two years were marked by stiff resistance in the shrinking Biafran enclave and by heavy casualties among civilians as well as in both armies, all set within what threatened to be a military stalemate. 

Peacemaking attempts by the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union), the pope, and others were ineffective, and Biafra began gaining recognition from African states (Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Tanzania, and Zambia). France provided weapons to Biafra, while the U.K. and the Soviet Union sent arms to the federal government. Biafra also received aid from international organizations for its population, which was suffering from starvation. The final Biafran collapse began on December 24, 1969, when federal troops launched a significant offensive. Biafra was short on ammunition, its people were desperate for food, and its leaders controlled only one-sixth of the territory that had formed the Biafran Republic in 1967. Ojukwu fled to Côte d’Ivoire on January 11, 1970, and a Biafran deputation formally surrendered in Lagos four days later. The Republic of Biafra had come to an end. Estimates of the number of people who died during the Nigerian Civil War vary significantly, from 500,000 to 3,000,000. Causes included battlefield deaths, ethnic cleansing, and starvation. 

Aftermath – Yakubu Gowon – Nigerian Head of State Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Yakubu Gowon, May 27, 1968.

Gowon was able, through his own personal magnetism, to reconcile the two sides so that the former Biafran states were integrated into Nigeria once again and were not blamed for the Nigerian Civil War. The oil boom that followed the war allowed the federal government to finance development programs and consolidate its power. In 1974 Gowon postponed until 1976 the target date for a return to civilian rule, but he was overthrown in July 1975 and fled to Great Britain. Nigeria’s new head of state, Brig. Gen. Murtala Ramat Mohammed initiated many changes during his brief time in office: he began the process of moving the federal capital to Abuja, addressed the issue of government inefficiency, and initiated the process for a return to civilian control. He was assassinated in February 1976 during an unsuccessful coup attempt, and his top aide, Lieut. Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo became head of the government. He did not run for the presidency in 1979, and Nigeria shifted to civilian rule, thus closing the era of military control during and around the Nigerian Civil War. 

Biafra Secessionist State, Nigeria 

Biafra, a secessionist Western African state that unilaterally declared its independence from Nigeria in May 1967. It constituted the former Eastern Region of Nigeria and was inhabited principally by Igbo (Ibo) people. Biafra ceased to exist as an independent state in January 1970. In the mid-1960s economic and political instability and ethnic friction characterized Nigerian public life. In the mostly Hausa north, resentment against the more prosperous, educated Igbo minority erupted into violence. In September 1966, some 10,000 to 30,000 Igbo people were massacred in the Northern Region, and perhaps 1,000,000 fled as refugees to the Igbo-dominated East. Non-Igbos were then expelled from the Eastern Region. 

Attempts by representatives of all regions to come to an agreement were unsuccessful. On May 30, 1967, the head of the Eastern Region, Lieutenant Colonel (later General) Odumegwu Ojukwu, with the authorization of a consultative assembly, declared the region a sovereign and independent republic under the name of Biafra. General Yakubu Gowon, the leader of the federal government, refused to recognize Biafra’s secession. Fighting began in July. Biafran troops were at first successful, but, as the Nigerian Civil War proceeded, the numerically superior federal forces began to press Biafra’s boundaries inward from the south, west, and north. Biafra shrank to one-tenth of its original area in the course of the war. By 1968 it had lost its seaports and become landlocked; supplies could be brought in only by air. Starvation and disease followed; estimates of mortality during the war generally range from 500,000 to 3,000,000. 

The Organization of African Unity, the papacy, and others tried to reconcile the combatants. Most countries continued to recognize Gowon’s regime as the government of all Nigeria, and the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union supplied it with arms. On the other hand, international sympathy for the plight of starving Biafran children brought airlifts of food and medicine from many countries. Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Tanzania, and Zambia recognized Biafra as an independent state, and France sent Biafra weapons. Biafran forces were finally routed in a series of engagements in late December 1969 and early January 1970. Ojukwu fled to Côte d’Ivoire, and the remaining Biafran officers surrendered to the federal government on January 15, 1970. Biafra, on the point of total collapse, thereupon ceased to exist. 

Odumegwu Ojukwu, Nigerian military leader and politician, Also known as Ikemba Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. 

Odumegwu Ojukwu (born November 4, 1933, in Zungeru, Nigeria—died November 26, 2011, in London, England) was a Nigerian military leader and politician, who was head of the secessionist state of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War. Ojukwu was the son of a successful Igbo businessman. After graduating from the University of Oxford in 1955, he returned to Nigeria to serve as an administrative officer. After two years, however, he joined the army and was rapidly promoted thereafter. In January 1966 a group of largely Igbo junior army officers overthrew Nigeria’s civilian government but then were forced to hand power to the highest-ranking military officer, Maj. Gen. T.U. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi (also an Igbo); appointed Lieut. 

Col. Ojukwu as the military governor of the mostly Igbo Eastern region. However, Hausa and Yoruba army officers from the Northern and Western regions feared a government dominated by the Igbo, and in July 1966 Northern officers staged a successful countercoup in which Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Yakubu Gowon was installed as the new head of state. Under Gowon’s rule, Ojukwu retained his command of the Eastern region. Meanwhile, the rising tide of feelings against the Igbo in the Northern region led to large-scale massacres of Igbos by Northerners in May–September 1966. 

The Eastern region felt increasingly alienated from the federal military government under Gowon. Ojukwu’s main proposal to end the ethnic strife was a significant devolution of power to the regions. The federal government initially agreed to this solution at a conference in January 1967 but then rejected it soon afterwards. Ojukwu responded in March–April 1967 by separating the Eastern regional government’s administration and revenues from those of the federal government. Mounting secessionist pressures from his fellow Igbo finally compelled Ojukwu on May 30, 1967, to declare the Eastern region an independent sovereign state as the Republic of Biafra. Federal troops soon afterwards invaded Biafra, and civil war broke out in July 1967. Ojukwu led Biafra’s unsuccessful struggle to survive as an independent state throughout the civil war, and, on the eve of Biafra’s surrender in 1970, he fled to Côte d’Ivoire, where he was granted asylum. 

Ojukwu remained in exile until 1982 when he was pardoned and returned to Nigeria. He joined the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in January 1983 and subsequently attempted to reenter politics; his bid for the senate representing the state of Anambra was unsuccessful. He was detained for 10 months following a coup that brought Muhammadu Buhari to power at the end of 1983. In 1993 he once again joined a political party, this time the Social Democratic Party, but he was disqualified from running for president. A member of constitutional conferences in 1993 and again from 1994 to 1995, he, along with other former Nigerian leaders, was consulted in 1998 by Abdusalam Abubakar, the military head of state, as Nigeria once again began the process of converting from military to civilian rule. In 2003 Ojukwu, representing a new political party that he helped form, the All Progressive Grand Alliance, unsuccessfully ran for president. He ran again in 2007 but was defeated by the ruling party’s candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua, in an election that was strongly criticized by international observers as being marred by voting irregularities. Ojukwu had several honours and titles bestowed upon him during his life, including the honorary chieftaincy title Ikemba of Nnewi.

Disclaimer

The opinions and views expressed in this write-up are entirely those of the Writer(s). They do not reflect the opinions and views of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or any of its employees. The designations employed in this publication and the presentation of materials herein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or its employees concerning the legal status of any country, its authority, area or territory or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers. Equally, the sketches, images, pictures and videos are gotten from the public domain.

One of the key actors of the attempted coup, Captain Tolofari, who escaped into exile after the coup failed, later put his thoughts together in a book titled “Exploitation and instability in Nigeria: The Orkar coup in perspective”, which was published in 2004, detailing the ideological pinning of the putsch and how it was executed. Here is a brief excerpt:

“…We had all the money we needed to buy our needs. This was by the courtesy of Great Ovedje Ogboru. Great Ogboru, a schoolmate of Mukoro’s and his personal friend, did not take part in the military preparations, he merely gave us the money and most of the officers did not know him. Our plan was not to use any military material. While Mukoro was still my CO at Ojo, we had written a report for the reorganisation of the security of the cantonment, the biggest in the country and at that time having about 37,000 residents – officers, soldiers and their families as well as civilian squatters. We asked for and were issued with new signal sets, but none of them was working. We found a company that dealt in such equipment to repair them for us. Still they did not work. During our preparations, I found the address of the company so that we could buy our own sets and this we did eventually. Great Ogboru already had a number of J5 buses and Peugeot 504 station wagons, all brand new, which he put at our disposal. Even our assembly area was his office and warehouse premises. Since we had obviated the need for military material, it drastically reduced the chances of discovery while we were making our plans, as snooping around for such military material in the units would have raised questions and jeopardised our security and secrecy.

During this period, Captain Empere and I travelled to Port Harcourt, to generally feel the pulse of the people and especially to meet the signatories of a certain document, a petition to the federal government concerning the rights and expectations of the Rivers people in relation to the conditions under which they had joined the creation of Nigeria at independence. These conditions were part of the agreements reached at the Lancaster House Conference of 1957.1 had received nebulous information about this petition and the organisation that was pursuing the matter from some soldiers of Rivers State origin who had come from home. Empere and I left Lagos at 1730 hours on March 5, travelling by road in my car. Unfortunately, well after we had passed Ijebu-Ode, we had an engine knock and had to be towed back to Itako village for repairs. The engine of the car was brought down and disassembled. It was already 2300 hours by the time this was accomplished and we had to spend the night in the mechanic’s workshop. The next morning, I went with one of the mechanics to Ijebu-Ode for spare parts. The job was completed at 1630 hours and driving at between 60 and 80 kilometres per hour, we arrived at Port Harcourt by 2300 hours.

When we met on Good Friday, for our coordinating conference, Mukoro and I insisted that we should strike during the Easter, but led by Lieutenant-Colonel Nyiam for the conveyance of ammunitions and arms. I think that it might have made some difference if we had struck then, in terms of the displacement of people, many of the senior officers might have routinely travelled out of Lagos. As it turned out eventually, we did not have much, if any, use for the armour crew that we eventually got.

All this while, a very important aspect of our military operations was going on regularly, namely, the conduct of reconnaissance. Empere who lived in Ikeja Cantonment and was likely to operate there, conducted nightly recce. For hours each day he would go round the units and duty posts. He spent a lot of time speaking with the soldiers on duty on different days, studying their routine. Col Nyiam, Majors Obahor and Mukoro, as well as the other junior officers, also conducted their own recce. I reconnoitred the Ojo Cantonment. I studied the routine at the main gate and various other gates with new and particular attention. On occasions, I deliberately kept late nights or utilised my late return from our discussions to recce at night. I studied the HQ armoury and magazine of the 149 Mechanised Infantry Battalion (149 Mech Inf. Bn), the only teeth-arm in that cantonment, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to go and walk around and observe reactions.

Lt Henry Ogboru who had worked with me in the same unit until he left for the university to read Law, was one of the young officers tasked to arrest senior officers. I agreed to lend him my car to go to Lagos mainland and Victoria Island to conduct recce. On Tuesday, April 17, he went on his own to conduct daytime recce. The next day, I went with him to conduct night recce between 2130 hours and midnight.

It will cause some wonder that we planned a revolution on such a gigantic scale that would involve cutting away about one-third of the country of over one hundred million people, under a sadistic military regime, that we had gone so far in our plans, yet we had no arms and ammunition – not until the day we struck. We did not import any arms and ammunition as the government lied in its campaign after the putsch. Great Ogboru did not use his fishing trawlers to import arms into the country for us, “packed as fish”. We decided to take our weapons and ammunitions from a military base, the Signals Barracks at Mile II. Consequently, on Thursday April 5, Obahor, Mukoro and I reconnoitred the barracks at about 2000 hours. We studied the location of the combined armoury and magazine, the layout of the entire barrack, the location of the security posts and the habits of the soldiers on guard duty. On Saturday April 7, Obahor, Mukoro, Empere and I drove to the barracks after our discussions, for confirmatory recce at exactly the period we would eventually raid the armoury.

We stated and stressed over and over, that nobody should be shot, except where that person gave us effective resistance. Effective resistance would mean that degree of resistance that would cause death, grievous injury, or terminally incapacitate our personnel, or which would be capable of stopping us from achieving our objective in any given operational area. We knew that the soldiers who would be offering the resistance were not the people we had in mind to reach, we did not have any need to engage in battle with and waste the lives of men who were merely working for their pay.

My assigned mission was to take the Ojo Military Cantonment. That meant that I was to capture and dominate the cantonment.

During the week between the Easter and when we finally struck, we recruited one officer, Lieutenant S. O. S. Echendu. He and Lieutenant P. O. Obasi, were the only Igbo officers we used. His recruitment became necessary because we wanted to take Dodan Barracks, the seat of the government and residence of the President, and in doing so we wanted to breach the security and operate from the inside. It had been suggested in the earlier stages of the planning to siege it and ask the President to surrender to us. The suggestion was to use armoured vehicles that would have been taken from the Bonny Camp and the site of the Giwa Project in this siege until all other parts of Lagos had fallen to us. I strongly objected to this suggestion. Lt-Col Nyiam and Captain Empere also supported this objection.  

As Captain Empere remarked, we were not fighting Roman wars. The idea was quickly discarded and there was general agreement that we should go in shooting. But since we did not have enough men to commit to this kind of frontal attack, the best thing to do was to find a way to operate from the inside, using sabotage. We studied the guard detail for the Dodan Barracks critically and recruited the officer in charge of the armour detail inside the place for the week we were to operate.

Lt Echendu was tasked to simply put his turret down and blow the place apart. Once he did that at H-Hour, more troops were going to move in to give him support and extricate him. It was a high-risk mission that would in any case put the officer under cross fire. The officer was very courageous. It was the same kind of plan that we had for the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria. Lt Emmanuel Okekumatalo was the officer on duty at the FRCN for the week ending on Easter Sunday. The officer was to take good control of the soldiers who would be working under his command and allow entry to the troops that would later come to take the place, led by Major Gideon Gwarzo Orkar. As well, we recruited the officer who was in charge of the security detail of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-General Sani Abacha. He was 2’Lt Umukoro. We knew very well the routine of the COAS. He met with the President at Dodan Barracks between 2000 hours and midnight, then he went from there to his guest house/harem, where he slept with a number of women, including, as we found out during our preparations, a former beauty queen. The harem was off Alexander Road. He left for his marital home, the Flagstaff House, daily by 0500 hours. Again, the task of the officer was to give access to our troops and if there was any movement on the part of the COAS, to radio such movement and new location to us, since he would follow wherever the COAS went.

When D-Day was shifted from the night of Holy Saturday/Easter Sunday, it appeared as if we were going to lose those chances of operating from the inside. We took some quick action. It was arranged for the three officers, Lt SOS Echendu of the 201 CHC at Dodan Barracks, Lt Emman Okekumatalo at the FRCN and 2’Lt Umukoro with the Chief of Army Staff, to still maintain the same duties on the night of 21/22 April, 1990.

Major Mukoro, Capt. Dakolo, Capt. Empere, Lt Ahere and Lt Obasi were to take the 123 Guards Bn, 242 Recce Sqn, 201 CHC and the 9 Mech Inf Bde HQ, all based at the Ikeja Cantonment. It was a Herculean task for the number and standard of fitness and training of the men available to them, but it was not easier for any other group. They were to overpower all guards, seize all serviceable armoured vehicles and convert them to our use, or immobilise any that we could not use. It was Empere and I that contrived to invite Captain Dakolo to come and join us. He was stationed in Zaria, so Empere sent his batman with the transport fare, with the message that Dakolo should take home his wife and come to Lagos to join us. He came two weeks before the operation.

Capt. Idele was tasked to take the men to Dodan Barrack to support Echendu in overpowering the Presidential guards and give him cover to be able to extricate himself when he was through with his task. But he was first to take Bonny Camp.

Lt-Col Nyiam was to take the Giwa Project, move the armoured cars that were serviceable there along with the troops he would mobilise, to go and support both the FRCN and the Dodan Barracks.

Major Gideon Gwarzo Orkar was tasked to lead men to take over the FRCN and ensure that the mission statement was broadcast to the nation promptly at 0600 hours on April 22, 1990. The message had been recorded the previous Friday. Even though Orkar, a very intelligent and fearless officer, played this major role, he was not the kingpin in the planning of the putsch. In fact, we were not to invite officers of Benue State origin, for good reasons. Orkar, as it turned out, was the only one from the Middle Belt to join us. Major Orkar of the Armoured Corps was the commander of a tank battalion. Had he been with us for a longer period, he could have helped us get a proper armoured crew.

Major Obahor was to incapacitate the 2 Mech Inf. Div., with headquarters at Ibadan, by disrupting their radio communication with Lagos and other divisions. He was then to move to the Lagos/Ibadan tollgate and hold position there.

Four arrest squads were set up. As already stated, one of the principles we were working on was the elimination of command. The expression was not to imply killing the commanders. It meant separating the commanders from their troops, through arresting them and keeping them out of reach, incommunicado. The effect would have been to put the troops in disarray and make them inactive. Soldiers, especially Nigerian soldiers and in the circumstance of a coup, who know that their commander has been taken were not likely to put up much fight. This would have made it easier for us to take command of those troops and use them for our purposes. Subalterns led all these four groups: Lt H.A Ogboru (not related to Great Ogboru), Lt Gohe, Lt Odey and Lt Akogun.

At the final coordinating conference, at 2200 hours on Friday April 20, there were seventeen of us, including three civilians (Great Ogboru was not there) and two Senior Non-commissioned Officers (SNCOs) – a Staff Sergeant and a Sergeant. The eighteenth man only came down from upstairs to pray for us and went back to his room. That was all the role that he played. The SNCOs also were there only to be told their specific roles. They were soldiers who worked under Mukoro and I. In all, there were only twelve of us officers. Our troops were ex-service men mainly, numbering just over two hundred, in addition to a few serving troops that various officers brought along with them as they came to the assembly area on the final day.

Lt-Col Nyiam and Major Mukoro directed the conference. I sat to Nyiam’s immediate right. Empere sat to my right. Major Orkar sat two seats away from Empere and Capt. Idele sat at a desk in front of the bookshelves. We reviewed all the arrangements. We confirmed the H-Hr for 220200A apr 90, that is: 2.00a.m local time (one hour ahead of GMT) on April 22, 1990. The move to the assembly area (assy area or AA) was fixed for 2130 hours on April 21, 1990. Arrangement had already been made to move the troops from their various hotels all over Lagos where they had stayed for two weeks, to the assy area. Officers coming to the assy area and the soldiers they were taking with them were to come in mufti, taking their uniforms in bags. They were to move in small teams, using their cars and giving lifts to those who had no cars.

On Thursday April 20, Empere and I went to the Balogun market to buy canned food, tinned fish and biscuits. We aimed to feed the soldiers at their duty posts for the four to five days it would take for absolute calm to return, during which period it would be difficult for them to go home for meals. Variously, we had also shopped iron cutters, ladders, crowbars, torches, ropes, batteries and about every other thing we thought would be needed. We earmarked petrol stations from which we could get fuel and later pay their owners. We tested the communication sets we had bought. Then we read the mission statement and made some corrections.

The coordinating conference ended at about 0200 hours on Saturday. At the close of it, those officers who did not know the assy area (Great Ogboru’s business premises) were taken there and shown the place.

After all this, they had loaded their magazines and I made them stoop in a circle while I gave them a brief outline of my assault plan. I had sketches of the layout of the 149 Mech Inf. Bn area….”

On how he executed his own plan at Ojo cantonment, Tolofari narrated: ”… With the capture of the Duty Officer and the desertion of Capt. Oziegbe, my option for the arrest of the Cantonment Commander and CO of 149 Mech Inf. Bn changed. Taking four soldiers from among the ones I had mobilised, I marched the 2’Lt to the Colonel’s house. With this time lapse, it is attributable to the swiftness and stealth of the operation and a small sprinkling of luck that the CO had not been awakened from his slumber, because his wife who had arrived Lagos from their last posting only that week, happened to be in his bed chamber that night. Had he been roused and apprised of what was happening, he could have been able to reach his officers and also mustered at least forty soldiers from the various guard posts around the cantonment. Our situation would have then replicated with what happened at the Ikeja Cantonment.

The 2’Lt told the soldiers at the CO’s gate to open the gate and wake the Colonel so that he could lodge an urgent report. They obeyed. But when my soldiers tried to disarm them, one of them resisted. I raised my pistol to his head and one of his colleagues asked him, “Wetin you dey struggle, you be fool!” I left two soldiers with the disarmed and proceeded with the lieutenant and two other soldiers to the building. The lieutenant rang the bell, but it was a long time before the house girl spoke through the window that the Colonel was asleep and that she could not go to wake him because his wife was with him. As the officer insisted that he must see the Commandant, the wife overhead and came out. She was asked to go and wake her husband up. She asked what the matter was and was merely told again to wake her husband up. Eventually he came out. I knew he had a pistol at home. I expected him to come out armed with it, so I took the precaution of tactically placing the two soldiers and myself. In anticipation of his appearance, I had also dug the muzzle of my pistol into the back of the second lieutenant.

The Colonel asked the young officer what the disturbance was about and was informed that the battalion headquarters had been captured in an operation and that he, the Duty Officer himself, was a captive. The CO asked in an aggressive voice, “What are you telling me? You are my Duty Officer and you’re telling me that my battalion headquarters has been taken?” I cut him short and told him I was arresting him. He looked at me challengingly for a moment, and then opened his mouth to speak as I continued to hold his eyes. I nodded to the soldier behind me and he stepped forward with handcuffs. It dawned on the senior officer, I believe, that there was nothing he could do. He stretched his hands and was manacled. As an afterthought, he asked me if he could go and brush his mouth and change the rubber slippers he was wearing. In my mind I laughed. The oldest trick in the game!

As we passed by the Officers Mess, I asked two soldiers to take the CO and the three captive-soldiers to the Duty room. I added, “escort them to the Duty room, if anyone of them tries to escape, shoot him, don’t think about it.” I further instructed that the CO should be detained in the MP interrogation Room, but that the soldiers should be put in the guardroom. Even in the circumstance I had to respect his rank.

It was 0400 hrs then. Radio silence had been broken some thirty minutes earlier. Lt-Col Nyiam had opened the net and conducted radio-check and asked for situation reports. Major Gideon Orkar reported from the FRCN that he was in control; Lt Echendu at the Dodan Barracks also reported that the area had been taken; Captain Empere at the Ikeja Cantonment reported that they had encountered opposition; I reported that I had taken all the key points in the Ojo Cantonment and that I would soon go for the arrest of the Cantonment Commandant. As I made my movement towards the residence of the Cantonment Commandant, I heard on our radio that the ADC to the President, Lt-Col Bello, had died while he was escaping, probably shot by his own men. Indeed, the Radio House and Dodan Barracks, the seat of the presidency, were both taken within the first thirty minutes of the putsch. But for the fact that I still did not have the Commanding Officer in my kitty, I would have been in this league.

When I gave the order to the soldiers to escort the CO to the Duty room, I went with the 2’Lt to change into his own uniform. He had been wearing the uniform of a soldier, which I had commandeered for him, since his had been taken off him when he was arrested. I also went and arrested the adjutant of the battalion, who was my course-mate at the Defence Academy. While I was effecting the arrest, Lt-Col Nyiam called me again and asked for the SITREP (situation report). I replied, ‘Objective taken. One four nine HQ under command. Charlie-Oscar taken PW. Mobilisation in progress.’

I was indeed making a lot of progress with the mobilisation, more and more soldiers were coming out and being armed from the stock of weapons at the MP Duty room. I had not taken arms out of the AHQ Pro Bn armoury because I did not want to break it. At about 0500 hrs I took a car and went to the Officers Village to arrest the second-in-command of the 149 Bn, who lived only three houses away from me on the same street. In his own case, his daughter first peeped from the window, then his wife came out to ask what the matter was about, before he eventually came out. He too asked to be allowed to go back inside and change his clothes. I told his wife to go in and bring trousers and a shirt for him, as he was not dressed.

Not long after that, I was called again and asked when I thought it would be possible for me to send reinforcements to the FRCN. I said I did not have enough to send at the time, I was sure most of the soldiers were waiting to hear the announcement of the revolution on the radio before they would commit themselves. Indeed, some of them actually did say so. Captain Empere at the Ikeja Cantonment reported once more that they were still not in control; there was quite a skirmish there. Later in the morning, I saw a soldier, with a bullet wound, who came from there. He confirmed that a real fight was going on there. He said that he needed to go to the clinic for treatment and needed some money, which I gave him.

Our mission statement was read promptly at 0600 hrs, April 22, on the network of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN).”

Disclaimer

The opinions and views expressed in this write-up are entirely those of the Writer(s). They do not reflect the opinions and views of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or any of its employees. The designations employed in this publication and the presentation of materials herein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or its employees concerning the legal status of any country, its authority, area or territory or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers. Equally, the sketches, images, pictures and videos are gotten from the public domain.

Four years ago on October 20, 2020, my ongoing journey began with the Lekki Massacre, just a few kilometres from my apartment. Within the next 17 days, I was forced to smuggle myself out of Nigeria and I haven’t been able to go back since. In the intervening period, I have spent time in a Ghanaian safe house, I have been declared wanted for “national security violations” in Nigeria, and I have survived a kidnap/assassination attempt in Accra organised by the (now former) Director of the National Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Rufai Abubakar. 

In all this time and across all these experiences, one piece of wisdom I heard from my good friend @YarKafanchan has never left my head and remains my true north. She said it in passing one evening in 2021 when we were hanging out at Breakfast 2 Breakfast, Osu, and she probably didn’t realise that what she said was so profound that it would remain stuck in my head forever. She said: “Nigeria’s biggest trick is convincing you that nothing is happening. Meanwhile, everything is happening.” She said that in the context of us figuring out whether the Buhari regime had forgotten about teaching us #EndSARS people a lesson, and if we should risk returning home, I took that pearl of wisdom, expanded its application, and made it my True North for analysing Nigeria.

Nigeria was not always this way, but after decades of deliberate actions by internal and external actors, it has become the country where “nothing happens.” When it comes to anything consequential, meaningful and positive like favourable trade policy, economy-boosting infrastructure projects, or diplomatic and geopolitical positioning to enhance regional integration, nothing happens in Nigeria. It is frozen in time and covered with dust and cobwebs. To all intents and purposes, nothing is happening. But behind the scenes, when it comes to listening to the counsel of American economic hitmen and piling on ruinous dollar-denominated debt that the country categorically does not need, or when it comes to spending billions of dollars on developing military, intelligence and law enforcement capacity, only to use it to monitor the young girlfriends and political opponents of middle-aged big men with potbellies, everything is happening. Nigeria may not be able to generate more than 5,000 MW of electricity for 200 million people. Still, when it comes to using NIA field agents – actual intelligence operatives trained expensively in Israel and North Korea – to go after outspoken Nigerian citizens in foreign countries, everything is happening. 

This is why I cannot bother myself with who Peter Obi chooses or does not choose to wish Happy Birthday to. It’s not that I don’t think Yakubu Gowon is a genocidal a-hole. It’s that his involvement in what happened between 1966 and 1970 is not even the worst or most disastrous thing he has done. The worst things Yakubu Gowon did came AFTER the war, and they are why we are where we are today. Nigeria as it existed then, was one of the most powerful countries in the entire Global South, and a very consequential country on the world stage. Nigeria was a country that funded liberation movements in other countries, used its economy and military to massive geopolitical effect in Africa, gave out foreign aid, and came within one Ajaokuta Steel Complex of becoming Africa’s first proper industrial economy. Most of this period, when Nigeria was one of the world’s real movers and shakers in the decade between 1970 and 1979, fell under Yakubu Gowon’s tenure. The Nigeria he had was a country where everything was happening, and everybody could see that everything was happening. Nigeria was one of the players moving pieces on the global chessboard, and not merely one of the pieces being moved.

Yakubu Gowon had the unique opportunity with a postwar Nigeria that found itself economically, militarily and geopolitically in the proverbial Garden of Eden, to lead the country into World Power status. There was a perfect storm of geopolitical circumstances, and Nigeria was right in the sweet pot. The country had real money to spend on infrastructure and industrialisation, and very little foreign debt. It had de-facto geopolitical leadership of Sub-Saharan Africa and infinite possibilities for continental alignment and integration. He didn’t even have to worry about winning an election every 4 years. All he had to do was deliver leadership. If he had delivered Sub-Saharan Africa’s first industrialised nuclear power, Africa and the African diaspora would have finally had an untouchable base to build from, and the world would never again have been able to treat Black people with the levity it continues to do in 2024. I am 34 this year. Gowon became Head of State at 33. He found himself leading this budding postwar superpower with everything falling into place for it at 37. And what did he do with this once-in-a-century opportunity?

He did Cement Armada. Udoji Awards. Offshore bank accounts. Contract and invoice inflation. Free Nigeria Airways flights for anyone who could get a “note” from a military officer, which eventually ran the airline into the ground. Cars, houses and holidays in London for girlfriends of big men in government. The beginning of the Rolls Royce culture in Ikoyi. During his 5 postwar years in power, Nigeria for the first time began piling on dollar-denominated foreign debt that it did not need, which was the fuel for the explosion that came 15 years later called IMF Structural Adjustment.

He met a country that was powerful and competent enough to hatch its own foreign influence and subversion operations around the world. Nigeria used to be so consequential that every single liberation war it directly or indirectly intervened in swung the way it wanted. From Lagos, the outcomes of liberation wars in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia were decided. By the time he and his mad dog successor Murtala Mohammed left the scene, Nigeria had gone from this to a victim – a country that couldn’t pay its debts, started suffering electricity blackouts, and ended up having American intelligence penetrate its core, to the point where the outcome of elections or post-coup succession was decided by people like Susan Rice. It was once a country where everything happened in plain sight, but by the time Yakubu Gowon and the Class of 1966 were done, it became Nigeria we know today – a benighted country where you have to be highly connected or extremely intelligent to even suspect when anything is happening because, to all intents and purposes, nothing ever happens.

The challenge for my generation and the coming ones is to hijack and regain control of our collective destiny, which Yakubu Gowon and his contemporaries lost for us. They inherited the Black world’s most powerful country and potent nation-state. They bequeathed a parody of a country that has been fully captured by economic hitmen, where the CIA has been able to openly install a drug peddler with urinary incontinence to become puppet president of the largest Black country in the world – a level of blatant disrespect that illustrates just how much has been taken from us. 

Instead of getting mad at Peter Obi for wishing such people Happy Birthday (which doesn’t actually change the figurative price of garri in the market), our generational challenge as Millenials and Zoomers is to wrest back control of our country and its governance, intelligence, law enforcement and military institutions from the foreign interests that took them from our 90-year-old “senior statesmen” who sold their children for the proverbial mirrors, gin and red cloth. Getting angry at Yakubu Gowon is pointless and is not going to save us. Getting mad at people wishing him Happy Birthday is borderline asinine. He has already got what he wants out of life. At 90, he has amassed a lifetime’s worth of oyibo’s mirrors, gin and red cloth, and the Black superpower he once led is now dragging status with Eswantini and Sao Tome & Principe. We should be happy for him. He is a fulfilled man who led a life that clearly fills him with fulfilment. We have our own mission now, and it is to start undoing his damage. In our lifetime, Nigeria should once again become a country where everything is happening. It has to happen soon. Otherwise, 200 million people go kpai.

Let’s be guided.” Brain damage: “David, I have just one question. Do you in any way miss this hellhole Nigeria?”

David Hundeyin: “Home is home. And if it happens to be a hellhole, it’s not because that is its default state of being. Someone or something made it that way, and someone or something can also undo it.

All of us in the diaspora are Externally Displaced People. We may talk as if we’re living our best lives, but deep down, we all know that we’re lying. The only thing really keeping most diasporans where they are is the ability to send £250 home and watch it turn into 500k…”

Disclaimer: 

The opinions and views expressed in this write-up are entirely those of the Writer(s). They do not reflect the opinions and views of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or any of its employees. The designations employed in this publication and the presentation of materials herein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or its employees concerning the legal status of any country, its authority, area or territory or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers. Equally, the sketches, images, pictures and videos are gotten from the public domain.

INEC has just updated its website and now officially updated the Name of Chief Edozie Njoku as the Authentic National Chairman of APGA. You can verify the above on INEC website using the following link; https://www.inecnigeria.org/…

And Now, the Counterpunch, please read on: 

PRESS STATEMENT BY APGA! 

Our attention has been drawn to a Statement released earlier today by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) where the commission purported to accord recognition to one Edozie Njoku as the National Chairman of APGA. In the said Statement, the Commission purported to have based its incongruous decision on the judgment delivered by the Court of Appeal which affirmed the earlier judgment of an FCT High Court. 

We wish to state categorically that the Commission’s purported interpretation of the Court of Appeal judgment was patently wrong and defies logic. Firstly, the judgment of the FCT High Court, Bwari Judicial Division never pronounced Edozie Njoku as the National Chairman of APGA. The Judgment of the Court of Appeal equally did not. There is no judgment of court that mandated INEC to recognize Edozie Njoku as National Chairman of APGA. There is no evidence anywhere that INEC ever monitored any convention by Edozie Njoku and his co-travelers, and no court ever declared him Chairman of APGA. The INEC in arriving at the bizarre decision claimed to be complying with the judgment of the High Court which was upheld by the Court of Appeal and which sought to enforce the earlier judgment of the Supreme Court as corrected on the 24th of March, 2023. Whereas nowhere in the entire judgment of the Supreme Court did the Court make any pronouncement to the effect that Edozie Njoku was the National Chairman of APGA just like the Just like the High Court and Court of Appeal never did. 

This fact is further strengthened by the concurring judgment of one of the Justices of the Court of Appeal that sat on the panel who stated clearly that the Supreme Court never pronounced Edozie Njoku as National Chairman. One therefore wonders which judgment INEC was purportedly complying it when they arrived at such reasoning. 

Secondly, Edozie Njoku had sworn to an affidavit that he purportedly won the National Chairmanship position in a non-existent Owerri convention in 2019 which is a 4 year tenure. Assuming without conceding that there was any such thing, the tenure of the National Leadership of APGA, the subject matter of the suit at the lower court has since elapsed in 2023. For the sake of clarity, the suit at the trial Court bothered on the authentic Leadership of APGA between 31st of May, 2019 to 31st of May, 2023. It is common knowledge that APGA has since conducted its National Convention that ushered in the current set of National Officers under the leadership of Barrister Sly Ezeokenwa. 

Again, there is no subsisting judgment of court which pronounced Edozie Njoku as National Chairman of APGA. The only place that the name Edozie Njoku ever showed up was when one Jude Okeke went to a high court in Birnin Kudu, Jigawa State alleging to be the National Chairman of APGA after a non-extistent NWC had removed Edozie Njoku. The entire allegation being a concoction and figment of his mischievous imagination were rejected by the Court of Appeal Kano which upheld Victor Oye as the National Chairman of APGA and which judgment was expressly affirmed by the Supreme Court in its judgment. 

Thirdly, the correct interpretation of the Supreme Court corrected judgment has since been laid to rest by the judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja Division coram Hon Justice James Omotosho wherein he held that the Supreme Court never pronounced Edozie Njoku as National Chairman of APGA and that Chief Victor Ike Oye was at all material times, the duly elected National Chairman of APGA at that time. The above pronouncement has since been affirmed by the Court of Appeal. One therefore wonders how the Commission chose to ignore the earlier Court of Appeal judgment on APGA leadership which was upheld by the Supreme Court. This stand of the Commission as expressed in its Statement stands both law and facts on the head and same is hereby rejected by our great party. 

Even more worrisome is the fact that neither the National Chairman, Barrister Sly Ezeokenwa, nor the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) was a party to the suit which led to the Judgment being purportedly enforced. Not even Edozie Njoku himself was a party to this suit under review. How then has the INEC constituted itself a “Father Christmas” by deciding ignorantly by fiat to choose who becomes APGA National Chairman? 

The information reaching our Party was that the Commission was put under immense pressure to take the hasty decision based on the blackmail and threat that a high court was going to sentence the INEC Chairman to prison for a purported contempt of Court. Hence, the Commission chose to ignore a pending Appeal and Motion for Stay of Execution filed by Chief Victor Oye which is yet to be determined by the Court of Appeal and purported to enforce a Judgment which clearly did not pronounce Edozie Njoku Chairman. This is against the admonition of the Supreme Court in a plethora of Judicial authorities that pending Court processes, especially a motion for stay of execution, must be respected so as not foist a situation of helplessness on the Court. 

We wish to state emphatically that Edozie Njoku is NOT the National Chairman of APGA as no Court of law anywhere in the country has pronounced him as such. While we recognise the Constitutional mandate of INEC to regulate the activities of political parties, we however state that such mandate must be exercised within the ambit of the law and not arbitrarily. Certainly, the latest decision of the Commission is a clear illustration of arbitrariness taken too far.  

As a law abiding Party and believers in the sanctity of our judicial system, we have instructed our team of lawyers to challenge this impunity in the law court. I restate that whatever is the issue has no bearing with the extant leadership of APGA. APGA as a Political Party has since moved on from the intractable tussle between Chief Victor Ike Oye and Edozie Njoku and INEC ought not constitute itself as a clog in the wheel of progress that APGA has made under its current leadership. 

For the sake of clarity, Barrister Sly Ezeokenwa remains the duly elected National Chairman of APGA as no Court of law has nullified his chairmanship. The tussle between Oye and Edozie Njoku is in the past and the tenure in issue has expired since over a year ago. It is a big joke that INEC after more than a year of expiration of that 2019-2023 tenure decided to recognise Edozie Njoku as National Chairman of APGA.

We wish to assure our great party faithfuls and indeed the general public to remain calm as we will surely soar through this latest obstacle. We call on the Independent National Electoral Commission to reverse this obnoxious decision in the interest of justice. APGA should not be made to suffer the greed of selfish and desperate politicians. With God on our side, we will surely overcome. Thanks immensely and God bless you. 

By Mazi Ejimofor Opara KSM, National Publicity Secretary, APGA. 

Disclaimer: 

The opinions and views expressed in this write-up are entirely those of the Writer(s). They do not reflect the opinions and views of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or any of its employees. The designations employed in this publication and the presentation of materials herein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or its employees concerning the legal status of any country, its authority, area or territory or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers. Equally, the sketches, images, pictures and videos are gotten from the public domain.

The University of Ibadan is 75 years old. Chief Bisi Akande celebrated his 85th birthday on January 16 this year. He was made Secretary to Oyo State Government 45 years ago at the age of 40. He was Deputy Governor of Oyo State 42 years ago. He was elected Osun State Governor in 1999 – 25 years ago. He left the office of governor 21 years ago. Last Friday, the 85-year-old man was appointed by President Bola Tinubu to serve the University of Ibadan as its pro-chancellor and chairman of the council. When you heard Chief Akande’s name as the appointee, you were almost as sure as I was that the old warrior would reject it in a jiffy. I told myself that he would tell his friend, the president, that his choice for UI’s top job must be an error; that only today’s hound can successfully chase today’s hare. But today is Monday – four days after, Chief Bisi Akande has not rejected the ‘juicy’ job. We have no business rejecting it for him.

An elephant chooses how he wants the forest to address him. If you schooled at the same time as I did, you must have read the poem ‘Salute to the Elephant’. It is there that you meet Elephant – “possessor of a savings-basket full of money” who is “huge as a hill, even in a crouching posture.” The Elephant is that mighty one “who carries mortar and yet walks with a swaggering gait…, animal treading ponderously.” The Elephant, more importantly, is that “mountainous animal, (the) huge beast who tears a man like a garment and hangs him up on a tree.” The sight of the Elephant, the chanter-hunter says, “causes people to stampede towards a hill of safety.” Now, imagine that elephant coming down from the height of his high reputation to mingle with deers in a scavenge rush for forbs. An elephant would do that if it does not see itself as an elephant. It is his choice. I am not qualified to tell this chief’s elephant not to eat what common goats eat. But if I were his son, I would beg him to say “No, thank you.”

Chief Akande is not alone on that geriatric podium of self-diminution. With him is General Ike Omar Sanda Nwachukwu (Rtd) who was made chairman of the University of Nigeria governing council. The University of Nigeria is 69 years old. It was founded in 1955 but formally opened on October 7, 1960. General Nwachukwu will be 84 years old on September 1, this year. He has been everything anyone would ever want to be in Nigeria. As a soldier, he rose to be Major-General and General Officer Commanding. He was governor of Imo State 40 years ago. He was Minister of Labour 39 years ago. He was Foreign Affairs Minister 34 years ago. He was elected senator 25 years ago. He is back from the bench in this season of renewed past.

Must it be them? Don’t they have around them, in their political party, sleek-headed younger people with knowledge and ideas who can handle these assignments? They have them, but those ones are useful only as aides and as bag carriers.

Writing in May last year for the US’ satire newspaper, The Onion, grand old Dianne Feinstein satirized America as “an out-of-touch gerontocracy” where “the average age of a senator is 65” – and the president eighty-something years old. She said she was “glad” not to live and get stuck in that country of “dementia-addled” leaders “who keep a stranglehold on power” and “who prioritise their own careers and bank accounts over the common good.” Then she wondered, angrily “How selfish you’d have to be to cling to power when you’ve long since ceased to understand the needs of ordinary people.” I will be shocked if I am the only one who thinks strongly that Feinstein wrote about the Nigeria of today.

I read a sonnet of William Shakespeare where he deplores “age” staying “too long.” In his ‘The Passionate Pilgrim’, Shakespeare explains why “crabbed age and youth cannot live together.” Shakespeare sings, “Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.” He says “Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame…” Yet, our country’s vote is for the old and cold; the lame, the tame.

We have more of them. Our universities are now a rest home for the ancient. There is also 72-year-old Alhaji Yayale Ahmed who was announced as the chairman of 62-year-old Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He was appointed Head of Service of the Federation in the year 2000 – 24 years ago. He occupied that post for seven years, retiring in 2007 to be appointed Minister of Defence. He left the office of minister in September 2008 to be appointed as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. He held sway there till May 2011. He left thirteen years ago. He is back from retirement to preside over ABU’s highest governing body.

These king-size men and others on that long list will be interfacing with a 70-year-old minister. Professor Tahir Mamman is our minister of education. If he had remained in the university system, he would be due for retirement in three weeks. The minister reports to a president who is officially 72 years old. Essentially, these 20th-century men are the drivers of the 21st-century vision of Nigeria’s knowledge industry. That is the way we roll. The National Universities Commission (NUC) regulates Nigeria’s university system. Who is NUC’s substantive executive secretary? Check if it has. And, who presides over its board? As I write this today, Sunday, 16 June 2024, the commission in charge of our universities has on its website, Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo as the chairman of its board. Baba Professor Banjo died last month – he was 90 years old. NUC has not remembered to update its website to reflect that fact – or it is reluctant to let go of the late Professor Banjo. 

Beyond the dead, shall we ask the new octogenarian appointees where they hope to start in this digital age? With their appointments, Nigeria is asking its Gen Z students to use the fatigued eyes of tired men to prepare for their journey into the future. May God help them.

A leader must know when to say enough to seek power. Someone (I can’t get their name) said knowing when to walk away is wisdom. He also said being able to walk away is courage. Yet, there is a third line: walking away with your head held high is dignity. Why would an eighty-something-year-old man want to be a baggage carrier – porter – to the youth of his land? Someone said it is the love of service. I replied that it is simply a case of an Egungun, because of perks, dancing itself into irrelevance.

Apart from them being his friends, are there patriotic reasons why the president posted these men to those schools? We may not know the real reason why our president made those geriatric choices – unless he tells us. Raul Magni Berton and Sophie Panel in 2017 did a paper on why non-democratic systems produce older leaders. They postulate that leaders’ “ruling styles” are “partly shaped by the rules that brought them to power.” They ask why anyone, even the old, would want to be ruled by aged people. They dissect the types and motives of gerontocratic rule. They say “the selection of ageing leaders based on premeditated considerations” is the definition of strategic gerontocracy. They contrast this with what they call ‘taste’ gerontocracy “which is based on genuine preference for old leaders”. They speak on ‘skills’ gerontocracy which assumes that the chosen had “specific skills acquired with age.” What special skills do our eighty-something-year-old ‘chairmen’ have that recommended them for our universities as pro-chancellors? Tinubu is not known to be a wine connoisseur who flaunts the old as the better. So, I wonder why the president loves old stuff – old, fossilized national anthem and aged administrators.

This government’s choice of yesterday’s men for today’s work has natural consequences. You know menopause, its complications and implications. That is what the University of Ibadan, UNN, ABU and some others in their geriatric shoes are now married to. Escaping the schools’ climacteric suitors and their creaky beds looks futile. When Humphrey Hawksley wrote his 2009 book, ‘Democracy Kills’, he probably had our case in mind. There is hardly anything which today’s democracy inherited that it has not fed to the dogs. While we fantasised about what the textbook says democracy is, the leaders have unitised the benefits in it; they’ve warehoused the gains in their family silos – for the comfort of their generations and for their friends.

I am wasting my time writing this. The same applies to you raising complaints about our planes being run aground. The government does not care about the public and its opinion. You can’t blame it. There is a problem with winning all bouts all the time. It intoxicates the winner, making them look down on the street and disdainful of even their fans. “At being humble, I’m the greatest”. A Minnesota, United States mother in about 1970, was horrified to hear her young wrestler-son say this as he recorded wins after wins. The woman described that statement of her son as “silly” – but that was hubris at work. We read such ‘humility’ in the insults the Nigerian leadership rolls out almost daily. Everything points at the end of sanity in the conduct of our affairs. Yet, long before this present darkness, there had been eras of rationality and hope. There had been an age when leaders insulted not the people’s sensitivities and the people bowed in respect of fair leadership. We had a past of values which even those who colonised us acknowledged in their own moments of sobriety.

Between the last days of 1927 and the early weeks of 1928, a group of United Kingdom’s Members of Parliament visited Nigeria. They moved from the coasts in Lagos through the hinterland forests to the grasslands of the North. They thoroughly toured the East of Nigeria and the creeks of the Niger Delta – then went back to London through Lagos. At a dinner of the African Society in London on 13 March 1928, the leader of the delegation, Major Walter Eliot, presented his team’s report. In that report, Major Eliot said while in Nigeria, his team saw an “honest attempt” by the black man to build “a house” for his soul; a house “where the black man could find a shelter” against the impact of a strange alien culture; a house “from which in years to come, he may take his own share as a partner in the progress of the world – not as an inferior and certainly not as a serf…” Eliot’s optimism – expressed in that report 96 years ago – was hasty and misplaced. If the Briton visits Nigeria of today, he will meet 200 million people shuffling and struggling (not) to be serfs of power.

That is not all from Eliot. Everywhere they went, his team said they saw people who had very high regard for their leaders and who had their leaders’ respect. He disclosed that his team members were surprised (and impressed) and believed that “the black man should look to the black ruler as the keystone in the arch of rule; that the white man should not be the keystone…that the rule should be of the black man by the black man and – as far as we can devise it – for the black man.”

They are long dead, those proud, upright people who were met in Nigeria by the British in 1927. About a hundred years after the Eliot team experience and the positive testimony from London, and 64 years after foreign rule, a virulent strain of disdain for the ruled – and disgust for the ruler – reigns. Our democracy is a despicable bazaar; the classic “every man for himself and God for us all.” What the 1927/28 visitors envisioned as the rule “of the black man by the black man” has turned out not “for the black man.” The rule serves the strongman and his clan whose ways are decidedly not necessarily the ways of their people.

They take the benefits; their children take. Their concubines and mistresses also pick theirs while your own portion is tucked away in their pouch. It is the reason they can’t reason with us when we say Nigeria cannot survive as a unitary presidentialism. They take our call for federalist sanity as a threat to the advantages they enjoy. They think a truly federal Nigeria would be too tight to structure into personal fiefdoms. They work that federalism won’t happen. Not now, not tomorrow. And they are winning. They spring on us federal surprises everywhere. They set up institutions and make appointments that are designed to unitarise our lives under Big Brother. Because they are smart, they easily know that they can’t compete and feed their greed in a Nigeria that is properly structured. The result of their knowing is that we can’t breathe without their permission.

A restructured Nigeria has the prospect of not surrendering to Comrade Napoleon’s unitary dictatorship in Animal Farm. Less than one week into this democracy, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, in the Friday, 4 June 1999 edition of the Nigerian Tribune, warned that Nigeria was on the way to a most destructive form of unitarism. “The road to the hell of unitarism is paved with good intentions. They should be careful…”, he warned the inheritors of the gains of the struggle for this democracy. They ignored him. We were too hopeful to hear him. But, the words of elders, if they don’t come true in the morning, they will in the evening. The evening of Nigeria is here. 

Disclaimer: 

The opinions and views expressed in this write-up are entirely those of the Writer(s). They do not reflect the opinions and views of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or any of its employees. The designations employed in this publication and the presentation of materials herein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or its employees concerning the legal status of any country, its authority, area or territory or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers. Equally, the sketches, images, pictures and videos are gotten from the public domain.