By Capt Bishop C. Johnson rtd, United States Army.
General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida hate him or love him, remains one of the most brilliant and most celebrated military officers in Nigeria’s history. Any historical account of Nigeria without the mention and documentary records of Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida in very significant details can best be described as a travesty of history – a false, absurd, or distorted representation of facts about Nigeria.
It was Babangida who cemented Nigeria’s relation with the traditional English-speaking world of the United States and the United Kingdom; and initiated and implemented Nigeria’s economic liberalization and the national mass mobilization of Nigerian people to tackle national problems.
Babangida’s rule projected Nigeria as a regional power with diplomatic successes including Abuja Treaty and Nigeria’s military engagement and troops deployment in Liberia and Sierra Leone to end the carnage and human sufferings in those countries and helped to halt the free fall of those two West African countries into abyss and yet another example of Africa and black man’s monumental life failures.
Gen IBB’s account of Nigeria’s civil War and the events that led up to that useless and avoidable bloodshed is therefore hardly an account of a young military officer who looked from a distance, instead it was and remains a vivid and clear-eye account of a very brilliant and young officer who was very close to the center of power, the people who ultimately took decisions.
“Lieutenant Babangida was posted with the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron in Kaduna, and witnessed the events of the bloody coup d’etat of 1966, which resulted in assassination of Sir Ahmadu Bello. He, Babangida took part in the July counter coup of 1966 led by Murtala Mohammed which ousted from power, Gen Umunnakwe Aguiyi Ironsi, replacing him with General Yakubu Gowon”
During the civil itself, IBB was front and center. Historical accounts had it that following the outbreak of the civil war, “Babangida was recalled and posted to the 1st Division under the command of General Mohammed Shuwa. And In 1968, he, IBB became commander of the 44 Infantry Battalion which was involved in heavy fighting within Biafran territory. In 1969, during a reconnaissance operation from Enugu to Umuahia, Babangida’s battalion came under heavy enemy fire and Babangida was shot on the right side of his chest and he was then hospitalized in Lagos, and was given the option of removing the bullet shrapnel, which he refused and still carries with him. Babangida would later return to the war front in December 1969, commanding a battalion, and in January 1970, Babangida was informed by his sectional commander General Theophilus Danjuma of the capitulation of the Biafran Army to the federal military government in Lagos, signaling the end of the war”
Now the question is, why devote this whole energy and time on Babangida and his activities in and around the time of the coup and the subsequent civil war? Well, it’s important that Babangida’s activities in and around the time of the coups and the subsequent war that followed afterwards are established. And from the discussion so far, the man, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida was front and center in the war and had first hand information and account of the events leading up to the war. Therefore, it must be foolhardy to dismiss an account of such a brilliant officer, whom according to the Igbo adage, “when a child washed his hands clean and he became entitled to dine on same table with his elders, seniors and superiors. This man, IBB at very young age earned his place to be seated with those who exercised power then.” It is that man who now wrote this highly acclaimed memoir, “The Journey in Service” from a very close distance and vintage position. Therefore, dismissing such an accurate account of the civil War and the events leading up to the war is tantamount to ignoring mistakes of the past and waiting to be doomed by those same mistakes.
While the former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida rtd made several very important revelations in his book, The Journey in Service, the one that should be of utmost importance to most Nigerians, if not all Nigerians is that there was no such thing as an “Igbo Coup”, and not June 12, 1993, not to diminish the election and its unjustified annulment. Rather, while June 12 is important, there’s nothing the former head of state wrote about June 12 that we didn’t already know.
There’s nothing there that Prof. Omoruyi who worked for IBB himself didn’t already write in his books about June 12.
Nigerians have long known that MKO Abiola won the June 12 election, and in fact it has officially been acknowledged and recognized by the Nigerian state and its government, which is why our Democracy Day celebration and national holiday was moved from May 29th of every year to June 12 each year. He, MKO Abiola was posthumously awarded the third highest national honor in the country, the Commander of the Federal Republic, in 1998, and was also in 2018 awarded by the former president, Mohammadu Buhari, the highest national honor in the country, the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic or GCFR, an award that’s reserved specially for presidents. The date of the annulled election, 12 June, was also made Nigeria’s Democracy Day. So, in essence, the truth about June 12 had already been established and Nigeria taken responsibility for its failures in that respect.
On the other hand, the issue of the concuted Igbo Coup of 1966 and the bloody genocide perpetrated against the Igbos by their own government for the offense they had no hands remain unresolved and the Igbos continue to this day, to pay the price of the concuted Igbo coup both in treasure and in blood, as the government has to this day refused to admit that a great blunder had been committed and unimaginable damage and injustice done to an innocent and very important population of our country, the Igbos.
For Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, a foremost northerner and one of the most brilliant military officers to have ever won the uniform of this nation to have come out at this critical time in our nation’s stride and to say what he knows as someone front and center, and close to power at that time and afterwards, and as someone who had access and still does, to Nigeria’s most classified and national secrets, he should be highly commended, and I do so as an individual. I commend the former Head of State for coming out now and not die with this national burden.
No truth can be more stack than the vivid and clear-eye account of the former Head of State, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, even as the former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon was seated in the same room and alive, in this memoir, IBB chronicled the events of 1966 to 1970 and stated, “that the inability of the Gowon-led government to curb the massacre of Igbos in the North following the 1966 coup left the then-Military Governor of then Eastern Region, Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, with no choice but to declare Biafra’s independence in May 1967”
And he went on, “the head of the plotters, Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, was only Igbo in name. Born and raised in Kaduna, his immigrant parents were from Okpanam in today’s Delta State, which, in 1966, was in the old mid-western region, Nzeogwu spoke fluent Hausa and was as ‘Hausa’ as any! He and his original team probably thought, even if naively, that they could turn things around for the better in the country”
“That said, it was heinously callous for Nzeogwu to have murdered Sir Ahmadu Bello and his wife, Hafsatu, because not only were they eminently adored by many but also because they were said not to have put up a fight”
“From that moment, the putsch was infiltrated by ‘outsiders’ to its supposed original intention, and it took on an unmistakably ethnic colouration, compounded by the fact that there were no related coup activities in the Eastern region”
“It should, however, be borne in mind that some senior officers of Igbo extraction were also victims of the January coup. For instance, my erstwhile Commander at the Reconnaissance Squadron in Kaduna, Lt-Col. Arthur Chinyelu Unegbe, was brutally gunned down by his own ‘brother’, Major Chris Anuforo, in the presence of his pregnant wife, at his 7 Point Road residence in Apapa, for merely being a threat to the revolution. As a disciplined and strict officer who, as the Quartermaster-General of the Army, was also in charge of ammunition, weapons, equipment, vehicles, and other vital items for the Army, the coup plotters feared that he might not cooperate with them”
“It should also be remembered that some non-Igbo officers, like Major Adewale Ademoyega, Captain Ganiyu Adeleke, Lts Pola Oyewole and Olafimihan, took part in the failed coup. Another officer of Igbo extraction, Major John Obienu, crushed the coup.
“Those who argue that the original intention of the coup plotters was anything but ethnic refer to the fact that the initial purpose of the plotters was to release Chief Obafemi Awolowo from prison immediately after the coup and make him the executive provisional president of Nigeria”
Babangida’s memoir mark a significant historical acknowledgment from a senior northern military officer, as they highlight the role of the 1966 pogroms in deepening ethnic tensions and fueling Ojukwu’s decision to break away.
These are very revealing facts that ought to be brought to the front burner of our national discourse, so this country can eventually seek a national healing. Relegating these facts as established in this wonderful masterpiece because they came from Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, and he annulled June 12, therefore may not be liked that very much by so many will be tantamount to ignoring mistakes of the past and waiting to be doomed by same mistakes.
