No sooner had the acrimonious federal elections taken place than regional elections were due in the West. Akintola, who was now an important minister in the newly formed Federal Government, was determined that his national party and Federal Government party, which was a coalition of the North and his Western breakaway party from the West’s Action Group, should win. Although Chief Awolowo, the former leader of the Action Group, was safely locked away, he remained extremely popular in the West, and many in that region felt that Akintola had sold out to the North, in order to pursue his own political ambitions. The election was violent, acrimonious and rigged, and resulted in a victory for Akintola and the NNDP. Within hours of Akintola being asked by the regional governor to form a government, violence erupted across the region by Action Group supporters who felt Akintola was a traitor to their party. It is also noteworthy that at this time Mr Eyo Esua, the Electoral Commission Chairman, admitted that there had been serious malpractice during the regional election.

  He said:

  It was a notorious fact that some electoral officers refused to accept nomination papers of certain candidates, or failed to report for duty. Some, in fact, after accepting nominations of the candidates of one particular party, thereafter deserted their posts before all other candidates in their constituency had a chance of filing their nomination papers. 48

  The people of Western Nigeria now realized that they had lost their only opportunity under the constitution of getting a government of their choice in the region. They also knew that the Federal Government was most unlikely to shift its stand on the issue. The ultimate result was a serious outbreak of rioting and violence throughout the region which spread gradually towards Lagos. 49

  Mayhem ensued in the West. Between August 1965 and January 1966 it was estimated that two thousand people had been killed. 50 Many people felt embittered towards the federal alliance of Balewa and Akintola. Although asked to declare a state of emergency in the Western Region, the Federal Government did not react and indeed towards the end of 1966 ordered the withdrawal of troops from the streets of the West. Maybe it felt that the election irregularities had affected the troops’ loyalty; many indeed had UPGA sympathies, with others supporting the NNA. However, the Federal Government appears to have been deeply concerned about the situation because it appears that, in a meeting, the Federal Prime Minister and his party leader the Sardauna of Sokoto proposed a military takeover of the Western region. First they sought the removal of the military commander General Ironsi by sending him on leave, and then they proposed the appointment of an NNA-supporting commander, Brigadier Sam Ademulegun, to lead the offensive. The ominous title of ‘Operation no mercy’ was to be used. 51 There were also indications that the Federal Government and the North were tiring of Akintola’s inability to bring peace to his region.

  According to the publication The African Concord of 9 October 1989, ‘Records say that the Sardauna was embarrassed at Akintola’s presence in Kaduna a day before he died but would not ward him off. Even the greater part of the authorities in Kaduna felt the Western Regional crisis and the Sardauna’s romance with Akintola was in a mess.’ 52

  The operation was due to take place on Monday 17 January 1966. Apparently being aware of it, the ‘five majors’ struck on 15 January 1966.

  Instabilities in the post-colonial period and the two coups

  There had been rumours of a coup in early 1966, with the Western Region in open revolt and the Eastern Regional government disaffected, but there had been little to warn the administration of a revolt by the army. Indeed in the constitutional crisis of December 1964 several, mainly Igbo, lieutenant-colonels, including Ojukwu, had talked of military intervention, but the plans were still-born. 53 The army of 8,000 members was small compared to the population size of Nigeria, and was generally regarded as loyal. 54 In 1965, in spite of there being senior officers with greater skill and potential, Johnson Aguyi-Ironsi, who was an Igbo, had been chosen as the first Nigerian officer to take over from the outgoing British commander. The Prime Minister could have chosen a Northern colleague to assume the role, but his trust in the loyalty of the army was such that the commander’s job went to Ironsi. Undoubtedly the government was extremely unpopular with many in the country at the time especially Southerners. It had also gained an unenviable reputation for corruption and slavish loyalty to Britain.

  This was reflected in an issue of The Daily Times ; Peter Pan’s section, entitled ‘letter to a grandchild’ said, ‘Any school boy of ten would tell why our first experiment failed. The boy would invariably give two reasons. He would for the first reason say there was bribery and corruption and for the second, he would mention rigging of elections.’ 55

  Other immediate reasons were the 1962 Action Group and parliamentary crisis, the 1962–3 census crisis, the 1964 Federal election crisis, and the 1965–66 Western region election crisis, all previously described: added to these were the Tiv minority riots in 1960–61 and 1964–65, both being ruthlessly suppressed, and the quota system in the army, favouring the recruitment of Northern Nigerians which allowed for political bias and patronage. These together with the underlying historic causes of ethnicity, religious diversity, British divisive rule and political instabilities after the colonial period, all added up to the potential for coups and revolution.

  The coup, when it came, was seemingly well planned by a group of idealistic mainly Igbo army officers. In Kaduna and Ibadan it secured complete success, but in Lagos the coup was defeated. In Enugu, in the East, the plan failed, as it did in the Mid-West, where in fact no soldiers were stationed. It seems that the aim had been to take over the Mid-West once the East had been subdued. However the coup had succeeded in removing many of the leaders of government, including the Prime Minister, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Chief Akintola.

  The leader of the coup declared:

  Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high places that seek bribes and demand ten percent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they remain in office as ministers and VIPs, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country big for nothing before the international circle, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian calendar backward. 56

  Major Nzeogwu, one of the coup’s leaders, then went on to say:

  Like good soldiers, we are not promising you anything miraculous or spectacular. But what we do promise every law-abiding citizen is freedom from fear and all forms of oppression, freedom from general inefficiency and freedom to live and strive in every field of human endeavour, both nationally and internationally. We promise that you will no longer be ashamed to say that you are Nigerian. 57

  The coup, ‘Operation Damissa’, failed, but at its outset it was welcomed by most Nigerians, and if the words of its leader are to be believed it was laudable in its objectives. It was after all only expressing what most educated Nigerians had felt for very long time. It is interesting to note that the coup brought an almost immediate halt to civil disturbances. There were conflicting rumours that had the coup succeeded, the leaders were to release the Western Yoruba leader, Chief Awolowo, who had been imprisoned in 1962, and hand the reins of government to him. But the coup had failed, and although it had been declared in the name of the Nigerian army, it had left its forces extremely divided. In the event, however, it was the army which took power.

  Ironsi, the officer commanding the army, had escaped the coup, and was able to assume control. There were in fact conflicting reports that he had been due to be eliminated, but he subsequently came to be associated with the members of the coup, and became implicated in it. His position, however, was extremely precarious, and although the rebels had failed in their attempt, Ironsi was careful to take account of the rebels’ demands. He interned them when captured, but made very slow moves to prosecute them. The fact was that the coup’s popularity made it very difficult for Ironsi to know which policy to pursue to secure the country’s future. His policies proved to be not dissimilar from the aims and objectives of the coup leaders, but his big weakness was his maladroitness in exercising them. Nzeogwu stated just after the coup, ‘after all we have now got to get experts to do the job rather than profiteers’; 58 Ironsi followed a similar policy of keeping politicians out of government and of creating an administrative rather than a political government. Both men were part of a small and rapidly depleted group, because of the coup, who were less well-educated and certainly less experienced at running large organisations than their civilian peers, and were therefore wary of power-sharing with other groups. Ironsi was a very ordinary and loyal soldier of average ability and he was certainly no politician. He had had a limited education, and during the Second World War he had been an ordnance clerk. His experiences had not instilled in him much political tact, a weakness which was probably to be his undoing over enacting decree number 34, at the end of his tenure. 59 He had a reputation for hard drinking and intrigue, but being an ex-ranker he was able to identify with the common soldier. These attributes probably saved his life when the coup leaders struck, and enabled him to secure the loyalty of troops in most parts of the army. Interestingly Major Hassan Katsina, who was to become governor of the Northern region during Ironsi’s regime, initially sided with the rebels. When Major Nzeogwu, the coup leader arrived at his house, armed, he was asked, ‘Which side are you on? Are you with me or are you with them?’ Hassan Katsina replied, ‘Don’t bother I’m on your side.’ 60

  Lt.-Colonel Ojukwu who was to lead the secessionist government, and was stationed in the North, sided with Ironsi at the time of the first coup. With Nzeogwu failing to gain the vital support of Ojukwu, his position became more isolated and precarious. Ironsi, having secured the loyalty of much of the army especially in the South, in Lagos, was able to gain Nzeogwu’s surrender, but only after guaranteeing the safety of all coup participants, as well as guarantees of immunity from legal proceedings against them, and most importantly an affirmation that those people removed from power would not be reinstated. Although the coup leaders were not prosecuted, the dilemma for the Ironsi regime was what to do with them. This was to become an increasingly important issue during Ironsi’s rule. The coup leaders were very popular in the South, but in the North feelings about the coup were varied and potentially volatile. It was widely felt in the North, as time went on, that this had been an Igbo-inspired coup; six of the seven coup leaders were Igbo or of Igbo origin, only one was Yoruba, 61 and the Ironsi regime’s lack of political will to bring the plotters to trial was to be one of the causes of the North’s counter-coup. Ironsi’s next move was to call a meeting of the remaining members of the government in order to validate his army orders. The challenge for Ironsi was that he could not ensure the ongoing loyalty of his officers unless he took control of the country.

  Unquestionably the coup had wiped away the old order. The Sardauna of Sokoto, the feudalistic and autocratic leader of the North, was dead, as was his subordinate, the Federal Prime Minister, Tawafa Balewa. Chief Akintola was also killed; he had been accused of vote rigging, not only in federal elections but also in the Western regional elections, and had been seen by many Yoruba as a traitor to his people. Chief Okotie-Eboh, who had been seen as portraying the worst side of political power, with excessive shows of luxury, greed and corruption, had also been eliminated, as well as many others who had displayed the excesses of the first republic.

  On 27 January 1966, the Nigerian Morning Post ran the caption ‘Bribe? E Done Die. Chop-Chop-E No Dey’ (‘Bribery is dead. Corruption is not there’). 62

  There are conflicting accounts as to whether Ironsi was invited to take over the government or whether he simply demanded that he take control. He allocated political responsibility to only six of his senior officers, having formed a Supreme Military Council, together with a Federal Executive Council. Both councils consisted of military personnel together with the Inspector General of Police and the Attorney General. Advice from civil servants was sought on an ad hoc basis at the federal level, but in the regions civil servants sat on the executive councils and took part in the decision-making process, and the former civilian governors were appointed to advise the new military rulers. The two appointments which were later to have dramatic consequences were Lt-Colonels Gowon and Ojukwu. Ojukwu was appointed military governor of the Eastern Region, based in Enugu in Igboland, and Gowon was appointed Chief of Staff to the army based in Lagos.

  Initially Ironsi’s regime started on a high note. The old corrupt order had gone, he had promised to consult with the people on the country’s future style of government and he resolved to dismantle his military regime as soon as possible. He also allowed the effective civil service to carry on its work unhindered by corrupt politicians. The police force, although fully stretched during the first coup, was allowed to carry on policing the country without military interference. All political appointees were removed from public office and investigations into politicians’ probity were instituted. So what went wrong? Within seven months Ironsi was dead and his regime had been superseded by another military regime.

  There appear to have been two strands of political pressure during Ironsi’s rule.

  There were those radically inspired people, mainly from the South, but also including some Northern intellectuals, who were keen to see a centralised and unitary form of government. Others, and these predominated in the North, wished for a looser federation with a high degree of regional autonomy. There was a further smaller group who represented the minority tribes, who felt that some local autonomy was necessary together with control from the centre, in order that their position be protected from the more powerful regions. These minority tribes were from the Middle Belt and from the Eastern Region, including the River States.

  Unfortunately, as soon as Ironsi took over, his administration began to move towards a unitary form of government. Arguably, this was only natural coming from a man who had spent his whole working life in a rigid and firmly hierarchical organisation. In fact he knew no other way to operate and probably felt that the only way to run the country was very much the way he ran the army. Indeed he treated the military regional governors as junior officers. 63 A naïve instinct, although a natural one, when one appreciates that they were very much his juniors not only within the army’s structure but also in age and experience.

  The catalyst that set in motion the series of events which led to the second coup can probably be attributed to two factors. First was Ironsi’s intent to establish a unitary government. He initiated this by appointing another Igbo, Francis Nwokedi, to a one-man commission of enquiry to look into ‘the establishment of administrative machinery for a united Nigeria, and the unification of the five public services and judicial services in Nigeria’ . 64 Although a second Igbo was appointed to the commission, which satisfied nobody, the enquiry posed serious issues which, if implemented, could undermine the autonomy of the regions. There was no suggestion that this was a consultative commission, and the inference was that its findings could be implemented without further consultation or approval. At the same time a Commission on Constitutional Reform was set up. In this case its findings and implementation were due to be approved by a referendum. Ironsi then introduced his financial budget at the end of March 1966 and in it he spoke of his conviction that most people wanted a unitary government. Secondly, Ironsi did nothing to placate the Northern soldiers over their loss of colleagues in the first coup. The perpetrators, although incarcerated, were not brought to justice and were not investigated over their actions in January 1966. On top of this they continued to receive their army pay. These actions hardly reassured the conservative Northerners, including the Northern soldiers who made up seventy percent of the army’s strength and those from the middle classes in the North who formed the regional civil service.

  Sulemanu Takuma, a Northerner, made some telling comments in a letter to the press in April 1966:

  with regards to the constitution, much has been written on the dangers and disasters brought on us by Federalism, and the few who have the privilege to write to the papers have even gone to the extent of forcing ‘Unitary’ Government on us without ascertaining the wishes of the people …. One sad fact which these journalists as well as some of the Military top advisers refuse to admit is that a Nigerian unitary government does not necessarily unite the people of Nigeria … I say bluntly that nothing short of ‘Federalism’ is good for Nigeria.