News Introduction:
It is 47 years since Nigeria witnessed its first
coup d’etat Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu , the leader of the group that
toppled the First Republic under the leadership of Tafawa Balewa,
remains a controversial figure, even in death as attested to by his
family members and associates. - By Victor Osehobo
Nzeogwu himself explained the motive later in an interview. According to him, in an interview with Dennis Ejindu, on why the coup did not succeed in some parts of the country: “In the north, no, in the south, yes. We were five in number, and initially we knew quite clearly what we wanted to do. We had a short list of people who were either undesirable for the future progress of the country or who by their positions at the time had to be sacrificed for peace and stability. Tribal considerations were completely out of our minds at this stage. But we had a set-back in the execution. Both of us in the north did our best. But the other three who were stationed in the south failed because of incompetence and misguided considerations at the eleventh hour. The most senior among them was in charge of a whole brigade and had all the opportunity in the world to mobilise his troops anywhere, anyhow and any time. He did it badly.
In Lagos, even allowing for one or two genuine mistakes, the job was badly done. The Midwest was never a big problem. But in the east, our major target, nothing practically was done. He and the others let us down.” He said their mission was to change” our country and make it a place we could be proud to call our home, not to wage war.”
Nzeogwu, now deceased, a native of Okpanam, in Oshimili North local government area of Delta State, was a Nigerian Army infantry and intelligence officer, Sandhurst-trained. A Catholic and teetotaller, who was vilified for leading, the first Nigerian coup d’état, which some say turned out to be the bloodiest in the nation’s history, his action in the perceived selective killings led to the suspicion among westerners and northerners that Nzeogwu’s coup was not in the nation’s interest but targeted at selected ethnic groups, hence the counter-coup of July 1966 which culminated in the Nigerian Civil War.
Nzeogwu has remained controversial, even an enigma many years after his death. He was killed by soldiers of the federal troop while fighting on the side of Biafra at Obolo Afor in the present day Enugu State on July 29, 1967. Our reporter visited his town near Asaba to dig more into the life of the man whose admirers believe was misunderstood, years after his demise.
Our investigations revealed that Nzeogwu almost did not become a soldier. The story is told by Pa Idi Mark Nzeogwu who said he is Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu’s elder brother, and now lives in the Nzeogwu family house at Okpanam near Asaba, Delta State. He spoke on how Kaduna Nzeogwu ,at a tender age was expelled from Rimi College, Kaduna, where he led a student protest against some of the school’s policies .The young Nzeogwu was forced to write his school certificate examinations from home under his father’s eagle eyes. His father, who was very angry at his son’s misbehaviour made spirited efforts to have him readmitted to no avail. Pa Idi said, “My father did not know initially about Chukwuma Nzeogwu’s entry into the army. He had gone to join and my father came to know of it only when they asked for his son’s papers. Chukwuma Nzeogwu’s entry was held up for a year or so until the army asked for and got those papers which were with our father. Our dad was angry at first about his son joining the army but later he began to pray for him to succeed in his new venture. Our mother also prayed for him to succeed. ” He said that their father, a very busy man, who was always travelling as a staff of the then Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, ECN, always cautioned Nzeogwu to stay out of trouble even while at home.
Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was at his home town when he learnt of the advertisement for enlistment into the Nigerian Army and being a young boy with an independent mind, he enrolled without his father’s knowledge. His passion to join the army was quite evident. He was afraid that his father who was in possession of his credentials would object to his joining the military but he went ahead to do so.
When the coup took place and he was arrested, Pa Idi said that Nzeogwu’s parents were always praying for his safety. “Before the coup, he (Kaduna Nzeogwu) was talking about my father retiring from his work and going to Asaba to reside. He talked about his plan to get him a house there.
“But I was in Lagos and after that we heard about the coup; there was a lot of confusion and soldiers came to where I was living then, and I was arrested and taken away. I was beaten mercilessly and my interrogators kept asking me where my brother, Chukwuma Nzeogwu was and I told them I did not know where he was and that was the truth; but they did not believe me. They kept beating me, thinking I was hiding information,” says Pa Idi.
He added that thereafter, “I was charged to court and not long after that the war broke out. I joined the Biafran Army and was trained to shoot at Aba. I never saw my brother again until I heard one day on Biafran Radio that he was killed at Oboloafor.”
On his part, a contemporary of Nzeogwu, Major Azuka Asoye, who was in the army’s brigade of guards said, “I was just two days old in Dodan Barracks when the first military coup took place.” He denied any involvement in the coup saying although he and Nzeogwu hail from Okpanam, “We in the brigade of guards, suppressed the coup. I met Paul Tarfa when I came to the brigade.... Only God knows why Tarfa and the others did not molest me when it was obvious that Nzeogwu and others were involved in the coup.”
He gave insight into the failure of the 1966 coup. Asoya said, “General Ironsi foiled the coup and we were deployed to check the movement of the coup plotters in Lagos.” He said when the coup failed, everyone was tried to stay away from the group as the northerners were bitter, especially with the killing of their kinsmen.
“I realised that if I stayed further I was going to die. I would have been killed, possibly, so I plotted my escape and left Lagos for my hometown.”
For Nzeogwu’s role in that coup, not many Nigerians will support his name being included on list of national heroes. This perhaps explains why there is little or nothing to show that Nzeogwu is a son of Okpanam soil! At the sleepy town of Okpanam there is no street named after him neither is there a monument immortalising him, except for a statue erected at a busy street junction in front of St Michael’s Catholic Church, it is a stone throw from the road that leads to the Nzeogwu family house at Umuameke quarters in the town, but which natives claim the statue does not resemble him.
The Nzeogwus, including Chukwuma Kaduna and his mother were said to have frequented this church for decades. Sources say that the statue was erected under controversial circumstances a few years ago by a politician, who wanted to gain some votes from the natives. This explains why the face on the statue does not resemble Kaduna Nzeogwu. Pa Idi Mark Nzeogwu said the politician who wanted to use the statue to score cheap publicity and win votes did not make any appreciable political gain for the country. The Nzeogwu family house itself is a four-bedroom apartment built of mud with two rooms in the front, let out as shops. On the side are two graves coated in white ceramic tiles. One is said to be that of Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu himself and the other of his mother who died a few years ago. Nzeogwu, who was at first buried in Kaduna during the Nigerian Civil War with full military honours, was later exhumed and reburied in his hometown, Okpanam according to some family sources.
Inside their house is a set of worn out leather settees, few plastic chairs and tables, which an occupant said, got there through the goodwill of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, described as a friend and contemporary of Nzeogwu in the military.
In the big living room, and on the floor lies a tattered linoleum carpet with several family portraits and assorted group photographs. Here poverty and neglect are conspicuous around and among the few relatives of the late Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu. Idi, his elder brother, uses a walking stick and lives alone. He says he lost his wife as a result of his arrest and detention after the coup. Today at the age of 81 he is incapacitated by partial stroke. Idi Nzeogwu still goes to the market and cooks his meals by himself.
One portrait in the room shows former President Obasanjo standing with two of Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu’s sisters. One of these sisters, Josephine, Newsworld gathered, though alive is dumb and living at the mercy of well-wishers in the compound. There is no other item of note in terms of personal effects relating to Kaduna Nzeogwu in this residence, but for a set of books on a shelf and an iron bed, on which a soul may not have slept on for months.
Observers say that as it is practiced in many parts of the world, the Nzeogwu family house, where his remains lie, would have been converted into a museum of sorts and made a tourist site by the Nigerian government.
If the Nigerian federation appears to have forgotten the great soldier, Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu is also unsung in the whole of Delta, his home state. The state capital has no memorial in his honour. Of the many academic institutions, state and national, located in many parts of the state, none bears the Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu identity. Some say that though Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu’s coup failed, but because he was released he deserves to be immortalised if not nationally, then at least by the local government.
Nzeogwu was arrested in Lagos on January 18, 1966 in the company of Lt. Col. Conrad Nwawo and initially detained at the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison in Lagos, before he was transferred to the east. Following demonstrations by students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, at the end of the first quarter of 1967, Nzeogwu and others were subsequently released from jail. On May 30, 1967, the nation of Biafra declared its independence from Nigeria. Nzeogwu went into battle on the side of
Biafra but on July 29, 1967, he was trapped in an ambush near Nsukka while conducting a night reconnaissance operation against federal troops of the 21st battalion under Captain Mohammed Inua Wushishi. Ngeogwu was killed in action.
His body was identified and after the war, orders were given by the then head of state, General Yakubu Gowon, for Nzeogwu to be buried with full military honours at the military cemetery in Kaduna. Fighting on the side of Biafra during the civil war, where he was promoted Lt Colonel, by the Biafran authorities, observers feel Nzeogwu should have benefitted from the slogan ‘no victor no vanquished’. Again it was in this spirit that
General Gowon as head of state ordered that he be buried with full military honours, but the man deserves more.
Prior to the coup of January 15, 1966, there was the belief that army officers, most especially those of junior ranks would stage a coup against the government of the day. The coup did not come to some as a surprise.
So many reasons have been given for the coup. There was violence and a state of anarchy in western Nigeria due to intra-crisis within the ruling party Action Group of Nigeria, AG, as a result of disagreement between Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of AG and Chief S L Akintola, deputy leader of the party. Chief Awolowo left the premiership position in the west for Chief Akintola with the hope of becoming prime minister at the federal level. This hope was shattered by the combined forces of Northern People’s Congress, NPC, and the National Council for Nigeria and Cameroons, NCNC, which thereafter produced Tafawa Balewa as the prime minister.
According to our source, Chief Awolowo was willing to come back to the west as the premier while Akintola was not willing to relinquish his position as the premier. This therefore led to a lot of accusations and counter accusations. The crisis therefore led to the declaration of a state of emergency in Western Region and Dr Majekodunmi, physician to Tafawa Balewa, was appointed sole administrator of Western Region. It is an understatement to say that corruption was on the high side immediately after independent in Nigeria. Nigerians, most especially the politicians were highly corrupt and flaunted their ill-gotten wealth with impunity before the suffering and helpless masses.
Again before the January 15, 1966 coup, there were coups in other African countries and Latin America and many people felt it would only be a matter of time before the same thing happened in Nigeria.
Weakness of the Nigerian Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, made the coup even more possible in the sense that he failed to heed the notification or the advice of the GOC of the Nigerian Army, Major General Aguinyi Ironsi and other senior military officers that the junior officers in the army may stage a coup.
The aforementioned factors led to the coup, many Nigerians welcomed it, but what looked like a source of concern was that some prominent politicians from the eastern part of the country were not killed. It also did not help matters that most of the officers who planned and executed the coup were from eastern Nigeria. In a nutshell, the northern part of the country suffered more casualties than any other part of the country. This therefore gave room for the allegation of ethnic bias.
The coup plotters maintained that their intension was to have a new nation by wiping out all the politicians (irrespective of ethnic affiliations), as they were convinced that such a violent revolution was what the Nigeria needed at the time.
One of the legacies of the Nzeogwu coup is the Arewa House in Kaduna. This castle comprising of many houses and offices cannot be left unrecognised in the history of the first coup in Nigeria and most especially that of Kaduna.
Although, now taken over by the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU Zaria as a site of Research and Documentation, it was the place Sir Ahmadu Bello, Northern Nigeria premier stayed and worked during his life time. Arewa House depicts the life and times of Sir Ahmadu Bello in all ramifications because of various sites in the premises. Situated on Rabah Road which is also the birth place of Sir Ahmadu Bello, on the immediate left upon entering is a rectangular slab indicating where he was shot by Nzeogwu and his men. Not far from the area is his official residence followed by his office. On the adjacent side is a museum displaying artefacts of the 19 northern states and the personal belongings of the late premier.
Among the personal belongings are his office table, praying materials such as kettle, mat, prayer beads and Quran, his wrist watch, radio and clothing’s.
With additional reports by Femi Olarewanju (Kaduna), and Arowona Abdulazeez, (Ilorin)
NigerianNewsWorld
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