On the night of January 15th 1966 a coup d’etat took place in Nigeria which resulted in the murder of a number of leading political figures and senior army officers. This was the first coup in the history of our country and 98 percent of the officers who planned and led it were Igbo. From the political class those who were killed included the following: Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the Prime Minister, who was abducted from his home and whose body was dumped somewhere along the Lagos-Abeokuta road.
Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Premier of the old Northern Region, who was killed in the sanctity of his home together with his wife, his driver and his security assistant. Chief S.L. Akintola, the Premier of the old Western Region, who was gunned down in the presence of his family and Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, the Minister of Finance, who was brutalised, abducted from his home and whose body was later dumped in a bush.
From the ranks of the military, those who were murdered included Brigadier Zakari Maimalari, who had held a cocktail party in his home a few hours earlier that evening, which was attended by most of the young officers that participated in the coup. Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun who was shot to death on his matrimonial bed along with his eight-month pregnant wife. Others included Col. Ralph Shodeinde, Col. Kur Muhammed, Lt. Col. James Pam, PC Yohanna Garkawa, PC Haga Lai, Lance Corporal Musa Nimzo, Sgt. Daramola Oyegoke, PC Akpan Anduka and Ahmed Ben Musa.
Sadly the mutineers came to our home that night as well and they brutalised and abducted my father, Chief Remilekun Fani-Kayode, the Deputy Premier of the old Western Region. What I witnessed that night was traumatic and devastating for me and my family and, of course, what the nation witnessed that night was horrific. It was a night of carnage, barbarity and terror. The events of that night set in motion a series of events which changed our history. The consequences of the events of that night are still with us till this day. It was a sad and terrible night: one of blood and slaughter.
What I witnessed was as follows. In the middle of the night, my mother came into the room which I shared with my older brother, Rotimi and my younger sister, Toyin. I was six years old at the time. The lights had been cut so we were in darkness and all we could see were lights from three large vehicles. The official residence had a very long drive so it took the vehicles a while to reach us.
We saw three sets of headlights and heard the engines of three lorries drive up the drive-way. The occupants of the lorries, who were uniformed men and who carried torches, positioned themselves and prepared to storm our home whilst calling my father’s name and ordering him to come out. My father went out to meet them after he had called us, prayed for us and explained to us that since it was him they wanted, he must go out there. He explained that he would rather go out to meet them than let them come into the house to shoot or harm us.
The minute he stepped out, they brutalised him. I witnessed this. Interestingly, the first thing they said to him was “where are your thugs now?” My father’s response was “I don’t have thugs, only gentlemen.” I think this made them brutalise him even more. They tied him up, threw him in the back of one of the lorries and then stormed the house.
When they got in, they ransacked every nook and cranny, shooting into the ceiling and wardrobes. They were very brutal and frightful and we were terrified. My mother, Chief Mrs. Adia Adunni Fani-Kayode, was screaming and crying from the balcony because all she could do was focus on her husband, who was downstairs.
“Don’t kill him, don’t kill him!!” she kept screaming at them. I can still visualise this and hear her voice pleading, screaming and crying. I didn’t know where my brother or sister were at this point because the house was in total chaos. I was just six years old and was standing there in the middle of the house, surrounded by uniformed men who were ransacking the whole place and terrorising my family.
Then out of the blue something extraordinary happened. All of a sudden one of the soldiers came up to me, put his hand on my head and said: “don’t worry, we won’t kill your father, stop crying.” He said this thrice. After he said it the third time I looked in his eyes and stopped crying. This was because he gave me hope and he spoke with compassion. With new-found confidence I went rushing to my mother who was still screaming on the balcony and told her to stop crying because the soldier had promised that they would not kill my father and that everything would be okay.
I held on to the words of that soldier and that night, despite all that was going on around me, I never cried again. They took my father away and as the lorry drove off my mother kept on wailing and crying and so was everyone else in the house except for me.
From there they went to the home of Chief S.L. Akintola, the Premier of the Western Region, a great statesman and nationalist and a very dear uncle of mine. My mother had phoned Akintola to inform him of what had happened in our home. She was sceaming down the phone asking where her husband had been taken and by this time she was quite hysterical. Chief Akintola tried to calm her down assuring her that all would be well.
When they got to Akintola’s house, he already knew that they were coming and was prepared for them. Instead of coming out to meet them, he had stationed some of his policemen and they started shooting. A gun battle ensued and consequently the mutineers were delayed by at least one hour. According to the Special Branch reports and the official statements of the mutineers that survived that night and those that were involved in the operation, their plan had been to pick up my father and Chief Akintola from their homes, take them to Lagos, gather them together with the other political leaders that had been abducted and then execute them all together.
The difficulty they had was that Akintola resisted them and he and his policemen ended up wounding two of the soldiers that came to his home. One of the soldiers, whose name was apparently James, had his fingers blown off and the other had his ear blown off. After some time Chief Akintola’s policemen’s ammunition ran out and the shooting stopped. His policemen stood down and surrendered. He came out waving a white handkerchief and the minute he stepped out they just slaughtered him.
My father witnessed Akintola’s cold-blooded murder in utter shock and horror because he was tied up in the back of the lorry from where he could see everything that transpired. The soldiers were apparently enraged by the fact that two of their men had been wounded and that Akintola resisted and delayed them. After they killed him, they moved on to Lagos with my father. When they got there, they went to the Officer’s Mess at Dodan Barracks.
When they took my dad away, everyone in our home thought he had been killed. The next morning, a handful of policemen came and took us to the house of my mother’s first cousin, Justice Atanda Fatai Williams, who was a judge of the Western Region at the time. He later became the Chief Justice of Nigeria. From there we were taken to the home of Justice Adenekan Ademola, another High Court judge at the time, who was a very close friend of my father and who later became a Judge of the Court of Appeal.
At this point the whole country had been thrown into confusion and no one knew what was going on. We heard lots of stories and did not know what to make of what anymore. There was chaos and confusion and the entire nation was gripped by fear.
Two days later my father finally called us on the telephone and he told us that he was okay. When we heard his voice, I kept telling my mother “I told you, I told you.” Justice Ademola and his dear wife, Auntie Frances, were weeping; my mother was weeping, my brother and sister were weeping and I was just rejoicing because I knew that he would not be killed and I had told them all.
I never got to know who that soldier was (that promised me that my father would not be killed), but I believe that God spoke through him that night. I also believe that he may well have been an officer because he spoke with confidence and authority.
These individuals who carried out this coup were not alone: they got some backing from elements in the political class who identified with them. Some have said that it was an Igbo coup whilst others have said that it was an UPGA (referring to the political alliance between the Action Group and the NCNC) coup, but that is a story for another day.
Whatever anyone calls it or believes, two things are clear: the consequences of the action that those young officers took that night were far-reaching, and the way and manner in which they killed their victims was deplorable and barbaric. Such savagery had never been witnessed in our shores. There has never been another night like that and the results of that night have been devastating and profound.
In my view, not enough Nigerians appreciate this fact. Some in our country cannot forgive those who participated in the mutiny and, though I do not share that sentiment or disposition, this is understandable. Others believe that those young men (they were all in their 20s) did the right thing and they say that those killings were necessary and heroic. This is a sentiment which I not only despise but which I also find unacceptable and appalling. There is nothing heroic about rebellion and the murder and carnage of innocent and defenceless men and women.
The coup affected the country in an equally profound manner because the events of that night led to a counter-coup six months later. It was a devastating and disproportionate response. Sadly after that came the horrendous pogroms and slaughter of the Igbo in the North, which eventually led to the civil war in which millions of people died, including innocent children. This was also horrendous and deplorable.
Yet the bitter truth is that if the new Head of State, General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, had done the right thing and actually prosecuted the ringleaders of the coup, who were Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, Major Anufuro, Major Ademoyega, Major Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Captain Emmanuel Nwobosi, Captain Okafor and all the other young officers that planned and executed the coup of January 15th after it was crushed, there would have been no Northern revenge coup six months later.
I have not added Major Emmanuel Ifejuana (who was actually the leader of the coup) to the list because he could not have been locked up or prosecuted by General Aguiy-Ironsi simply because he ran away to Ghana immediately after the mutiny in Lagos failed and after he and his co-mutineers were routed by Lt. Col. Jack (Yakubu) Gowon.
For some curious reason, after the coup was successfully crushed, General Aguiyi-Ironsi just locked these young mutineers up and refused to prosecute them. This bred suspicion in the ranks of the Northern officers, given the fact that Aguiyi-Ironsi himself was Igbo. The suspicion was that he had some level of sympathy for the mutineers, and the fact that they did not execute him or any other Igbo officer on the night of January 15th during the course of the mutiny only fueled that suspicion.
The Northern officers also felt deeply aggrieved about the wholesale slaughter of their key political figures that night. In my view that, together with Aguiyi-Ironsi’s insistence on promulgating the Unification Decree which abolished the federal system of government and sought to turn Nigeria into a unitary state, made the revenge coup of July 29th 1966 inevitable.
The revenge coup was planned and led by Major Murtala Mohammed (as he then was) and it was supported and executed by other young Northern officers like Major T.Y. Danjuma (as he then was), Major Martins Adamu and many others. This is the coup that was to put Lt. Col. Jack Gowon (as he then was) in power, and when they struck it was a very bloody and brutal affair.
The response of the Northern officers to the mutiny and terrible killings that took place on the night of January 15th 1966 and to General Aguiyi-Ironsi’s apparent procrastination and reluctance to ensure that justice was served to the mutineers was not only devastating but also frightful. Hundreds of army officers of mainly Igbo extraction, who were perceived to be sympathetic to the January 15th mutineers, were killed that night, including the Head of State General Aguiyi-Ironsi and the Military Governor of the old Western Region who was hosting him, the courageous Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi. This was very sad and unfortunate.
What happened on the night of January 15th 1966 was unacceptable and uncalled for. I completely disagree with those who think that there was anything good about that coup, the coup of July 29th 1966 or indeed any other coup which took place in the history of Nigeria. This is because blood calls for blood: when you shed blood, other people want to shed your blood, as well. The minute that the shedding of blood in the quest to get power becomes the norm, we are all diminished and dehumanised: and this applies to both the perpetrators and the victims.
The January 15th coup set off a cycle of events which had cataclysmic consequences for our country and which we are still feeling today. Coups may have happened in other countries in Africa, but it did not mean that it had to happen here. In any case, the amount of blood that was shed that night, the number of innocent people who were killed was unacceptable. It arrested our development as a people and our political evolution as a country. Had it not happened, our history would have been very different. May we never see such a thing again.
Yet regardless of the pain of the past, I believe that we should do all we can to put these matters behind us. We must not allow ourselves to become prisoners of history. Rather than being propelled by pain and bitterness and becoming victims of history, we must learn from it, be guided by it and move on. We must learn to forgive, even if we do not forget and, equally importantly, we must first establish the truth about those ugly events and understand what actually transpired.
What happened that night traumatised the nation. None of us has been the same since. I identify with that, because I was a part of it; I witnessed it and I was a victim of it. Yet by God’s grace and divine providence, my father’s life was spared: not because he was special but simply by the grace of God. Every day I think about those that were killed that night and I remember their families. We share a common bond and we are all partakers of an ugly and frightful history. I tell myself: “were it not for divine providence, my father would have also died and I would not have been what I am today, because he was the one who educated me and did everything for me.” If nothing else I know there was a purpose for that.
We must resolve among ourselves that never again will people be attacked in their homes, dragged out, abducted and shot like dogs in the middle of the night. Never again will women, wives and children be slaughtered in this way. Never again shall we witness such barbarity and wickedness in our quest for power. Never again must any Nigerian suffer such brutality and callousness. May the souls of all those that were murdered on January 16th 1966 continue to rest in peace.