THE PEACE PROJECT

MY HOPE OF GLORY

2020-08-23T09:13:00.001-07:00

2016-08-26T20:27:00.004-07:00

Boko Haram foot soldiers were my boys – Barr Aisha Kalil Wakkil

Barrister Aisha Kalil Wakkil

Barrister Aisha Kalil Wakkil is a lawyer and human rights activist with the National Human Rights Commission. The senior legal officer has, for over five years, been into peacemaking between the Jama’atu Ahlil Sunnah (Boko Haram) and the federal government. In this exclusive interview with the Daily Trust on Sunday, Barr Wakkil, who claims to be a very close confidant of Boko Haram foot soldiers, spoke on several issues.

How did your mediation initiative between the federal government and Boko Haram start?

Nobody asked me to do it. Such a quality is in my nature because I love peace so much. Where I come from in the Southeast, we live in a very peaceful atmosphere, especially in my family. We mediate a lot where there is any problem. Now that I am a Muslim and Islam is a very peaceful religion, with all its teachings, this Boko Haram development doesn’t really make sense to me. Why should such a wonderful religion experience this kind of a thing? But I also know that anywhere there is smoke, there must be fire. Something must have happened for these children to start behaving like this.

Do you really know them well?

Yes, they were children I knew a long time ago. The first time I visited Maiduguri around 1989 was when some of them were circumcised. I witnessed the circumcision. That is to tell you how young some of them were - and still are. I witnessed the growth of most of them. They were very wonderful children. As time went on, most of them began living in my house because my house is always open to all the children in that area. That was how I got to know most of them. Then they were not Boko Haram and Jama’atu ah-lil Sunnah members.

So at what stage did they become extremists?

It is surprising how these children turned out to be what they are now. I keep on saying there is certainly no smoke without fire. Something must have triggered those innocent-looking children to grow up behaving the way they are behaving now. You needed to see them growing up. These were children that would come to my house, play around and help in watering my ugwu plant. We would cook together and they would help clean my kitchen, my room and the entire house. Sometimes when I start talking about them, I shed tears. Those children prayed, and still pray a lot. I have a mosque in the house and they would always go in and pray. Anytime I went to Shehuri north, whatever was in my handbag would not follow me back because they would finish it there. They all called me Mama.

At what stage did you start noticing changes in their character?

It all started with a rumour. I began observing they would go out in the morning and return in the evening. During the fasting period, they would not return until around 11 or 12 midnight. I also remember they would go to Muhammad Yusuf’s lectures to listen to his preaching. Sometimes, they would come back to tell me, “Mama, see what we read today”, and I would say, “thank God, this Muhammad Yusuf is really trying o.” I didn’t observe anything strange about the teaching.

Soon, the children began to be conscious of themselves. They always wanted to do one thing or the other to remain busy. It was then that the rumour started that they were planning a war. When I heard of it, I went straight to Muhammad Yusuf because I had been very close to him. His father-in-law, Alhaji Baba Fugu was my Islamic spiritual father and the entire family knew me very well. When I realized that Muhammad Yusuf was frequently being arrested, detained and released, I went to Baba Fugu and asked him why his son-in-law was always being detained? But I learnt he was always preaching things government didn’t like and insulting them.

One day when he (Muhammad Yusuf) returned, I went to his house to see him. I tried to enter the house but was not allowed in because I had a policeman in the front seat of my car. It was Shekau who saw the policeman and refused to allow me to go in to see Yusuf. I was angry and asked Shekau whether he didn’t recognize me and didn’t realise how close I was to Yusuf. I sent a message to Yusuf that I was angry and would never come to his house again. When he got my message, through his father-in-law, he rushed to my husband’s office and told him that he heard I was in his place but his boys refused to allow me in. He explained I wasn’t allowed in because of the policeman they saw with me. When my husband told me, I asked Yusuf to come over. He did and bowed down saying, “Mama, please forgive me.” He was a very humble boy. I advised him that whenever he was preaching he should avoid insulting government. After about a year or two, I started hearing the rumour again that they were planning to fight. We used to speak on phone most of the time.

How did you learn of the rumour?

Those boys in my house suddenly disappeared for about a month; I did not set my eyes on them. I was tensed up and started asking people where they were, but nobody could tell me. Eventually when they returned, one of them told me he had something to tell me. He said, “Mama we went for training.” When I enquired from him what kind of training that was, he simply confided they would be fighting a war. But then, I just laughed it off because I did not take him serious. Jokingly, I asked him what he knew about war. But looking so serious, he replied that, “Mama, I swear, our guns have already arrived in Maiduguri and that included AK47s. When I asked him again what he knew about any AK47, he just told me it was the gun they would be using to fight the war. I then asked him where they trained and he respectfully replied, “Mama, I will not tell you this one.”

I, thereafter, called Muhammad Yusuf and told him what I had heard about a war imminent. He asked who told me but I replied I wouldn’t tell him and he should just answer me yes or no whether they were, indeed, planning to start a war. One good quality about these boys is that they don’t lie. Yusuf said, “yes, ma.” When I asked him why, he said it was because of acts of maltreatment over the crash helmet against his followers. He said, “They killed our people and nobody is doing anything”, and that government had betrayed them and so on. I asked him what that betrayal could be and whether we could address and stop it. It was getting close to the fasting period. He folded his hands, bent his neck and kept mute. That was his nature. He then said, “Mama, my hands are tight. I am not alone in this thing. A decision has been taken. They must fight this war unless you can go and meet the governor.”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see the governor until the war started. When I heard about the fight in Bauchi on a Saturday, I called Yusuf (which was the last time I spoke with him) and told him I heard something was happening in Bauchi. He admitted it, saying, “yes, we are the one.” He added the war would engulf everybody beyond Bauchi. I thought he was joking. I spoke with his father-in-law on phone that Saturday night. The following day, our own started (in Borno state). I tried to reach him on phone but his line was not going.

On Monday, someone came to tell me that he saw Muhammad Yusuf at the West-End area. I rushed there but could not see him. Two days later, I saw him on television talking and the next thing I saw him on the ground. Instantly, I knew there was going to be a problem. That is where we are now.

Were you still seeing those boys living in your house after that?

One week to that incident, they disappeared again. When things cooled down, one of them rushed in to tell me that “Mama, we fought a war, we killed this and we killed that.” I shouted at him that small as he was, he could go to war? But he replied that was how Allah wanted it and they did the work of Allah. He said he had come to tell me he was going back to the battlefield and he wouldn’t know if we would be meeting again. He told me to keep calling his line and promised to always answer my calls so long he remained alive.

The boys left and, in a short while, became commanders in the Boko Haram group. The whole thing was very funny to me. Suddenly, they started changing fast; they no longer looked like those kids I called my children. The other day one of them came to see me in my house. When I told him to sit down for a talk, he curtly responded, “No, ma. As you are seeing me here, they have given me an assignment and I have to go and do it.” When I enquired the manner of the assignment, he calmly replied it was to kill someone. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t stop them. That situation remains till today.

Were you at a point scared of any association with them and thought of cutting off all ties with them?

I have always held that even if those boys should turn to snakes, I would remain with them because I believe they will never harm me. Anytime any of them comes around, what he tells me is the story that this one has died and that one has become this and that.

When they relocated to the bush, did you ever go there to see them?

I have been there several times at different locations to see them. Sometimes, I will cook for them and take the food there. Sometimes they will be the ones to phone me and say, “when next you are coming buy suya and drugs for us”, and things like that. At a time majority of them were dying before they started recruiting more and more people.

When you go to the bush to see them, where do you stay?

.Whenever I meet them in the bush, we sit down and talk freely like mother and children. They will show me different bombs and ammunition. I will ask them what they are doing with those things and will joke with them it’s themselves they will bomb with them, not me. They will burst out laughing, saying “Mama has come again.” Sometimes I will even stay there overnight. Their major requirements are food and drugs. There had been occasions I stayed three days with them in the bush

How do you always find your way to wherever they are?

In most cases, they will be the ones to call to ask me to bring them food, drugs and/or money. When I inform them I am on my way there, they will start directing me, saying things like, “go out of your house, cross the road and you will see a car like this, like that. Open the rear door and sit on the back seat and bend your head down while in the car till the journey lasts.”

Do you still know the whereabouts of some of those boys living in your house then?

Some are dead, some are still in the bush, while some are in jail.

Have you ever sold them the idea of dropping their guns and accepting amnesty?

Yes, I have been doing that right from day one. In the beginning, they were telling me that, “Mama, we don’t like this thing that is happening to us. We are sure something is wrong somewhere. If government can call us and ask us, we shall tell them everything. Let government dialogue with us and tell us how to stop all these things and we will stop.” But as time went on, they started talking negative of government. They were saying government was no more doing this and that. One of them told me, “Mama, the ocean we are swimming in is very deep. This thing has graduated from the Jama’atul Ahlil Sunnah into something else.” He said “the big men in Nigeria know what I am saying,” adding, “such people will not allow peace to emerge because they have their interests.”

Weren’t they ever afraid you could betray them to the authorities?

They know I will never do that. In any case, whenever we come together to Abuja for peace talks, we always move so closely until we return. You need to see us at the airport as if we are fused together. In case there is any danger, all of us will go. Anywhere I take them, we sleep in the same hotel and eat the same food. They will all converge on my room to watch television. I will tell them to look at the good things of life that they are missing and they will confidently reply, “Yes, but one day in Allah’s kingdom is better than all these.”

Have they ever told you if the group is factionalized, as it seems they are no more doing things the same way they started?

Yes, the way some of them are doing things has not been the same way the original group was doing it. But the original group is still there. They are still very much around. Even among them, the original Jama’atu Ahlil Sunnah is calling the other ones Boko Haram. They will say they are not Boko Haram, the other ones are the Boko Haram. I once asked them the difference between the two groups. They said the other group has deviated from the norms. They said government and politicians are buying them and using them to kill perceived opponents. They said there are people doing rituals in the name of Boko Haram. But they are all together in the bush. The whole thing is mixed up now. But once the original group stops, every other one must stop because none can stand on its own again. I once asked them about the frequent spate of bombings when it was becoming too much. They said, “Mama, anywhere we bombed, we issue a statement claiming responsibility. The ones we did not do, we keep quiet.”

Were the Chibok girls kidnapped by the original group?

All I know is that the Boko Haram group kidnapped the Chibok girls.

From your close interaction with these boys, do you think they will agree to drop their arms, release every person in their custody and return to the larger society if government decides to grant them amnesty?

Let me ask you this question; are they not human beings? If they are human beings like you and I, why won’t they accept the offer of amnesty? This administration is willing to dialogue with them. I am sure the president would like to ask them what happened and I am sure the children will be willing to say it. I was with them recently and they were asking me if the society will be willing to forgive them. I said why not if they will drop their arms and become good boys. If Nigeria and Nigerians can accommodate the OPC in the West, MASSOB in the East and the Niger Delta militants, why won’t they accommodate them?

In all your visits to the forest to meet those boys, have you ever encountered any difficulty?

Of course, yes, I have encountered many difficulties. Once when I went out in search of the girls, there was one particular guy who nearly kidnapped the group I went with, but I just played along with him. Once you put a smile on their faces, your problem is over. God helped us and we came out of it successfully.

There was this other one that I do not like remembering. I was in the bush with them. They were asking me who to trust and who not to trust. They were eating the food I took to them and writing their names in Arabic inscription on the ground when, suddenly, one of them stood up and started insulting me. He was eating the N20,000 suya I bought for them when something came over him and he started pouring abuses on me. He said as a lawyer who went to an English school, I was not supposed to be where they were. He threatened to shoot me if I talk again. Others were just eating their suya when their boss shouted at him to keep quiet. After some minutes, one of them stood up and asked him, “Do you know the person you just insulted? What made you insult her?” He pulled his trigger and shot him thrice and his lifeless body fell down there. I was terrified. None of them cared about his corpse. They simply continued eating their suya. That was my worst moment.

There was another time I was with them in the bush. I didn’t know that they had some of their men on the top of the trees we were sitting under. I just heard someone shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ from the tree top. Suddenly, they started firing in that bush ceaselessly for about an hour. No one was willing to tell me what was going on.

After the death of Muhammad Yusuf, did you ever see or meet Shekau in the bush?

No, I never met him.

But you were seeing other commanders in the bush who you knew during the lifetime of Muhammad Yusuf…

Yes, I was meeting others and Shekau knew I was going to the bush to meet some of the boys.

We understand Shekau is dead…

I am sorry, I won’t answer that question. I do not want to discuss that issue.

How would you like to describe the new leadership of the group?

Well, it has been the same thing. They keep killing. How do you want me to describe them?

Some people say Muhammad Yusuf was milder than Shekau because there weren’t many killings then. Do you agree with that belief?

Of course, that is true. Muhammad Yusuf was cool-headed. But you should also know that they are not responsible for all the killings. Some of the killings are politically motivated while others may be for economic reasons. When finally there is peace and the boys come into the open, Nigerians will hear from them. They will tell the world who and who were sending them to do what.

2016-07-27T14:05:00.003-07:00

British secret files on Nigeria’s first bloody coup, path to Biafra

Jun 12 2016 - 3:01pm

Nzeogwu: Led soldiers to kill Ahmadu Bello in Kaduna

By Damola Awoyokun

Damola Awoyokun, an engineer and historian has perused hitherto hidden dispatches from British diplomats and intelligence officers on Nigeria’s first coup—a very bloody one—executed by Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and Emmanuel Arinze Ifeajuna on 15 January 1966. The coup in which political leaders and military officers of northern Nigeria extraction were majorly killed triggered a counter-coup and eventually declaration of Biafra and a civil war.
TheNEWS today shares the rare insight into the bloody event of 15 January 1966 and we believe it may serve as a good lesson as the drums of war are being sounded in some parts of our country

Kaduna

It was a soundless morning, dark, pulsating, starless. The harmattan spiked the 2am air with prickly cold and fog. With his finger to the trigger, the 28-year-old Major Patrick Chukwuma Nzeogwu addressed the soldiers from Charlie Company of the 3rd Infantry Battalion and some Nigerian Military Training College (NMTC) personnel. They were armed with fury, submachine guns, knives, grenades, torchlights, rocket launchers. Nzeogwu reeled about how the politicians had dragged the country to the cliff of fall and kicked it down into a worst-case scenario. He reeled about nepotism, large scale looting of public wealth, persistent poverty of the people, the yearnings of millions hollowed out by afflictions, the epidemic of insecurities, the Tiv riots, the Western Region’s daily bloodletting, the country’s tireless race to the bottom instead of high up to the plane of regard.

He pointed to Sardauna’s residence right behind him as the ultimate symbol of the filth Nigeria had become. His fellow soldiers were stunned. They did not know they had been turned into reluctant rebels. They thought this was supposed to be another night’s training exercise the brigade high command had approved for them which they started two weeks previously. Nzeogwu then asked the soldiers to concentrate on how to be necessary and to feel proud that they were the ones called upon to rescue the nation, to show the way, to be the new founding fathers of a better Nigeria. In other words, like Homer’s Illiad, he was asking them not to see the epic bloodbath that was about to start as an outbreak of evil, but their generous contribution to the redemption and welfare of the nation.

They Charged Forward

Four hours earlier around 10 o’clock, the last lights in the Sardauna’s household had gone out. They were expected to wake by 4am to eat suhur, the predawn meal to begin the fast. Ramadan started on 23rd December 1965. A week earlier, the Prime Minister Mallam Tafawa Balewa Abubakar met the Queen and the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He had invited all the Commonwealth Prime Ministers for a special meeting in Lagos from 11- 12 January to resolve Rhodesian crises. It was the first of its kind outside London. On 19 December, he went to the small village of Arondizuogu in Orlu for the commissioning of his trade minister, Dr Ozumba Mbadiwe’s Palace of the People. Built by Italian contractors, it was a three-storey affair resplendent with blue terrazzo walls, swimming pool and a fountain, grand conference halls and event rooms, red carpet and gilt chairs. All these in a village where most houses were still born of mud and thatched roofs.

Since the first tarred roads were constructed in 1890s in Lagos, and the first dual carriage way in Nigeria – Queen Elizabeth Road – appeared in 1956 in Ibadan, no road in Arondizuogu or in Orlu had ever been graced with bitumen before. Yet Mbadiwe situated the grand palace there as a source of pride for his people. At the commissioning ceremony, the Eastern Premier, Dr Okpara never saw the project as a white elephant planted by megalomania and watered by corruption, rather he hailed the project as “a great achievement for one of the priests of pragmatic socialism to have been so clever to accommodate this building within the context of pragmatic African socialism.” The press placed the value of the house at least half a million pounds. Mbadiwe said it was “at most £40,000.” After the commissioning, Abubakar then proceeded to his farm in Bauchi for his annual leave. On Tuesday 4th of January, he joined the retinue of well-wishers in Kaduna airport to bid farewell to his in-law and godfather, the Sardauna, who was going to Saudi Arabia to perform Umra, a lesser hajj, in the company of 184 other state-sponsored pilgrims. The cost of the one-week pilgrimage to the government was around £17,000.

Nigerian soldiers Drawn from Charlie company of the 3 rd Infantry Battalion believed they were going for another night military exercise!

That morning, The New Nigerian newspaper wrote an unprecedentedly scathing editorial laying the blame for the region’s financial woes and lack of development on Sardauna inefficiencies and ineptitude and asked him to “put his house in order.” When Nzeogwu read the editorial, he went straight to the paper’s newsroom and demanded to see the writer. He was in his uniform and his eyes were red. No one knew him nor had seen his face before. The staff did not know what to make of his demand. The expatriate managing editor Charles Sharp then stepped forward. Nzeogwu shook his hands and said the content and tone of the editorial reflected their thinking in the army and they had resolved to put that house in order. The newsroom did not understand what he meant until the morning of the January 15. The paper was the first to publish for the world the picture of Sardauna’s house still smouldering in the flames of Nzeogwu.

Meanwhile, the premier of the Western Region, Samuel Ladoke Akintola received a tip from his NNDP ministers in the federal cabinet that after the Commonwealth special meeting, the Prime Minister planned to impose a state of emergency on the Western Region, drop him as an ally and appoint a federal caretaker just as he did in 1962. Market women staging protests against skyrocketing costs of foodstuffs, burnout cars, shot and charred corpses, politicians and civil servants’ houses set on fire, intellectuals’ houses emptied onto the street were weekly occurrences in the West. Ever since the rift between Awolowo the Action Group leader and Akintola his deputy, the Western Region that was an Africans-can-do-it model of governance and jaw-dropping development was turned into a landscape of sorrow, blood and tears. With fund from the public treasury and under the command of Fani-Kayode the deputy premier, Akintola’s well-armed hooligans held the upper hand while AG’s bully-boys sponsored by Dr Michael Okpara and the NCNC leadership were on the defensive. After the elections of 11 October 1965, Akintola used the state broadcasting services to announce false counts while the Okpara-sent Eastern Nigeria Broadcasting Service team secretly camped in Awolowo’s house declared the correct results ward by ward. On the night of 15th October, when Akintola was to announce himself the winner, Wole Soyinka, with a generous assistance from his pistol, forced the Western Broadcasting Service to air his own subservice tape asking Akintola to resign and go. Akintola and his supporters went berserk. The police declared Soyinka wanted and he fled to Okpara in the East for temporary refuge until his arrest on 27th October 1965

On Thursday, 13th January when Sardauna arrived from Mecca, Akintola flew to Kaduna to meet him to dissuade Abubakar from imposing a state of emergency on the West or replace him with an Administrator. Akintola had recently buried his daughter and staunchest ally Mrs Modele Odunjo who on 26th October died allegedly of overdose of sleeping pills. She was married to Soji Odunjo, who was a staunch enemy of her father and he was also the son of the Alawiye’s Chief J.F. Odunjo whom Akintola also sacked as the Chairman of Western Region Development Corporation for being pro-Awolowo. Akintola had also sent his son, Tokunbo (who died in 1973) faraway to Eton College in England. He had imported the first ever bulletproof car into Nigeria: an £8000 Mercedes Benz. As the 13th Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, he felt unchained and fired up for a total fight. With more men and firepower, he told the Sardauna, he would crush all disturbances from AG’s supporters and their Eastern sponsors. The Sardauna promised to discuss his request with the Prime Minister. Major Timothy Onwuatuegwu, a 27-year-old instructor at the NMTC who was detailed to track Sardauna’s daily movements reported this surprise meeting with Akintola to the Revolution’s high command. From his No 13, Kanta Road residence, Nzeogwu promptly dashed to the Kaduna airport where Sardauna had already gone to see off Akintola. Nzeogwu went to the VIP lounge saluted the Sardauna and wished Akintola safe journey back home convinced that in 48 hours at most, both VIPs would be counted among the dead.

Ahmadu Bello: killed by Nzeogwu during Ramadan

That evening, Nzeogwu went back to the airport to pick up his best friend Major Olusegun Obasanjo the Officer Commanding the Field Engineers who had just finished his course in India and flew in via London. Obasanjo’s deputy Captain Ben Gbuile was supposed to pick him up at the airport but he was busy mobilising for the Revolution. And so he telephoned Nzeogwu who promptly came to the airport. Though they slept together in the same room, Nzeogwu never told him of the death awaiting certain personalities.

The following day, 14th January, Bernard Floud a British MP and director of Granada TV (now ITV) which partly owned the Northern Region Television Station was staying at the plush Hamdala Hotel in Kaduna. He had met with the Sardauna briefly to discuss funding and expansion of the television reach. They were supposed to meet the following day Saturday 15th January to continue the business talk. But there would be no tomorrow.

Emmanuel Ifeajuna: the sports hero turned revolutionary. This University of Ibadan Zoology graduate was the brain behind the revolution. He recruited Nzeogwu (who said he could gun down corrupt politicians) into the revolution

For Nzeogwu and his soldiers had cut through the Premier’s Lodge fence by the side and at the entrance rounded up three policemen (Police Constables Yohanna Garkawa, Akpan Anduka, Hagai Lai) and a soldier (Lance Corporal Musa Nimzo) rubbing their hands together between their knees to resist the harsh harmattan. Nzeogwu asked them to face the wall and coldly pulled the trigger on them. He was trying to man up his fellow soldiers who were still acting like reluctant rebels and give them a taste of where the night was heading. He then posted two new sentries by the entrance while he and other soldiers conducted a room-to-room search in the main house for the Sardauna. Routine police patrol that sighted the mutineers converging menacingly in front of the Premier’s Lodge radioed the British Police officer on duty in the Kaduna Police Operations room. He in turn phoned Mallam Ahmed T. Ben-Musa Sardauna’s Senior Assistant Secretary (Security). He immediately sprang up and went to the Lodge. He was shot on arrival by the sentries who were motivated by Nzeogwu’s earlier example. They had accepted the transformation from reluctant rebels to motivated mutineers.

The general alarm had woken Sardauna. He was not in the main house but upstairs in the rear annex with his senior wife Habsatu, the daughter of Mallam Abbas, the Waziri of Sokoto, his second wife Goggon Kano, the third, Jabbo Birnin Kebbi and Sallama, a house retainer. They listened and rattled prayer beads in fear for an hour as Nzeogwu and his motivated mutineers booted down doors, pumped bullets into guards mounting resistance and shouted to others, “Ina Sardauna? Take us to the Sardauna.” It was dark, Sardauna and his wives went downstairs and into the courtyard connecting the annex and the main house. They were trying to escape. On finding them, Nzeogwu shot the Sardauna and his senior wife who was trying to protect him. He then blew a whistle which was the agreed signal for all soldiers to converge at the rallying point at the front gate for the final onslaught on their symbol of national decay. The rocket-launching party then began shelling the house. Boom! Boom! The ground shuddered like the cannon fire which the great Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky laced into his 1812 overture. Nzeogwu was a lover of jazz and classical music.

Their beauty heightened his sensitivity to the decay which Nigeria was. He even mentored Captain Theophilus Danjuma to become a classical connoisseur. With the huge flame before him overpowering the harmattan and the night with abundance of light and heat, Nzeogwu was satisfied his own unit’s assignment was a success. He felt like a single note from an oboe, hanging high up there unwavering, avid for glory, above pulses from bassoons and basset horns till a drag from a clarinet took over and sweetened the note into a phrase of such delight, such unfulfillable longing making the coup’s failure unlikely with every passing bar. Nzeogwu then left for the brigade headquarters to await news from other units confident as ever like that high oboe note from Mozart’s Serenade for the Winds in B Flat that the news would be good news.

The mutineers had divided themselves into three groups. Nzeogwu headed the group that looked after the Sardauna, Captain Gbuile was to seize the 1st Brigade Headquarters, the TV and radio stations and Major Timothy Onwuatuegwu headed the group to delete the existence of Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun and his Deputy, Col Raphael Shodeinde. Ademulegun was startled when Onwuatuegwu entered his bedroom just after 2am. He was reported to have asked, how did you get in here? As the commander of the 1st Brigade of the Nigerian Army, he was the most protected personality in the whole of the Northern Region. While police personnel guarded the Premier and the Governor, Sir Kashim Ibrahim, his own guards were drawn from the 3rd infantry battalion. They guarded not only inside and outside his compound but around his main house too. But the guards had been compromised and they led Onwuatuegwu straight into the Brigadier’s bedroom. Had Ademulegun survived the assassination, he would have ordered all the guards, the guard commander and their officer commanding to face firing squad because as guards, they were supposed to die first before anything happened to him.

Victor Banjo

But he was not scheduled to survive. Onwuatuegwu asked the Brigadier, “Get dressed and come with us sir. Those are my instructions; to bring you to the headquarters.” It sounded like nonsense to him. As the head of that headquarters since 17 February 1964, he was the only person that could give such an order. His wife Latifah, 8 months pregnant, planted herself fearlessly between her husband and the pointed guns knowing full well that if she remained glued to the comfort of their bed those weapons would not be diverted away from her husband. The Sardauna’s senior wife did exactly that at that moment somewhere else. (Any other Nigerian woman would have done the same. Contrary to what the New Feminists led themselves to believe, Nigerian women were never born to be weak. In the top bedside drawer was a service pistol. As a Brigadier, Ademulegun knew a pistol was no match for 6 soldiers armed with SMGs. But he would rather fight and die gallantly than degrade the honour of his office by surrendering to subordinates.

As he made a dash for a quick draw, Onwuatuegwu opened fire on the Brigadier, his wife and the unborn. Cruelty resulted when anything stood in the way of the indefinite expansion of the will to power. Without Ademulegun dead, Nzeogwu could not preside over the biggest Brigade of the Nigerian Army. Ademulegun’s children Solape and Kole were in the next room. They heard all the clash and they were the first to see their lifeless parents surrounded by a pond of blood. Onwuatuegwu and his mutineers then strolled out across the street unchallenged by the guards to the home of Colonel Shodeinde, Deputy Commandant of Nigerian Defence Academy whom Ademulegun usually handed over the Brigade too when he was not around. They killed him too in cold blood with an angry grenade. They then left for the Brigade Headquarters satisfied their mission was a success. That was what Nzeogwu meant when he asked his fellow mutineers not to see the epic bloodbath that was about to start as an outbreak of evil but their unique and generous contribution to the development and welfare of the nation. Anything that benefitted their Revolution cannot be injurious to morals. That was their driving belief. And it freed them to be terrible.

Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun: Muredered also

Lagos

Down in Lagos, at 11 Thompson Avenue Ikoyi, home of Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, the commander of the 2nd Brigade, there was an elaborate gathering of all the senior officers and some junior officers for a cocktail party. It started at seven in the evening. The compound was a green sprawl patterned with stout palm trees and garden benches. Ramadan was ongoing but Maimalari did not concern himself with such rituals. Instead, military stewards in white gloves moved gracefully around with trays on which were delicately perched wine bottles with bow ribbons tied to their necks. All senior officers including their ADCs were in mufti except the Joe Nez-led regimental orchestra who amongst other songs played popular hits from the British comic play, Pinafore. Zak Maimalari was under his jacaranda tree with the GOC, Major General ‘John’ Aguiyi-Ironsi, Lt Col Yakubu ‘Jack’ Gowon and Patrick Keatley, a British journalist for the London Guardian. (Note: all Nigerian officers had English nicknames so that their erstwhile colonial officers could easily remember them) As the guests swayed to the orchestra, Jack Gowon said, “There was song of revelry by night.” It was the famous opening line of Lord Byron’s poem The Eve of Waterloo in which Byron narrates how the night before their defeat at Waterloo, French soldiers kept on drinking and dancing and womanising at a party thereby ignoring the advancement of death and destruction from the animated enemy forces. In his later account of that night, Keatley said he replied Jack Gowon:
“But surely we need not conclude that Nigeria is facing her Waterloo?”

Jack replied deferring to his superior, the guest of honour for the night: “The politicians may not know it but John sees danger but you can take it from me John will never allow this country to be torn apart. The Federal Army is his pride and joy and its final barrier that will save us from tribal warfare.” It was a tactical cleverness on the part of Major Ifeajuna, Maimalari’s Chief of Staff who organised the party to make “General John” the special guest of honour. That made it impossible for the pre-selected senior officers in Lagos to find an excuse not to attend and miss their appointment with death.

Tiv drummers and dancers from 2nd battalion in Ikeja who had performed at the send-off party for outgoing commander of the battalion Lt Col Hillary Njoku on 12th January filled up the serene Ikoyi air with a native flavour after the regimental orchestra paused for drinks. Maimalari used the occasion to show-off his new wife from Kano. His previous wife, Doinmansey Mariamu was killed on Major Fajuyi’s balcony. They were officially married on 4th January 1961 and they had two children: Abubakar, born December 1961; Amina, 1962. Fajuyi was returning from a hunting expedition when he noticed Mrs Maimalari and Mrs Fajuyi sitting at the balcony. He greeted them cordially, went into the sitting room and propped his Beretta 12 gauge shotgun against the wall. He had forgotten he still kept the shotgun loaded and primed when he left for the bedroom. Then came his little son who began to play with it. The powerful explosion razed down the sitting room window and ended the previous Mrs Maimalari outside.

Gowon: Sang a line of Lord Bryon’s poem, The Eve of Waterloo, to a London Guardian journalist at the night party, the song, a probable foreboding of what might happen. However, he decided to lead a quick reaction force to Balewa’s residence, but too late

On December 1965, Maimalari took another wife in Kano. The reception was held with great pomp and pageantry at 5th battalion officer’s mess with the guard of honour raising swords to form a colonnade for the newly wed to pass under. The wife was 15 years old, the brigadier, 34 years old. And so he used the cocktail as an opportunity to introduce the young girl to the South. The Queen’s cousin, Prince William of Gloucester and two other British diplomats were there at the party. There also was Colonel Tom Hunt, the former GSO1 at the Army HQ who had turned into the British High Commission’s military adviser. Colonel Berger of the US Defence Intelligence Agency was also there under an embassy defence attaché cover. While he was primarily an overt collector of open source information, he also engaged in covert collection operations. The CIA station chief’s house was nearby too. Yet no one suspected that in a few hours’ time, some junior officers who were drinking and joking with their senior officers would soon end the lives of one colonel, three lieutenant colonels and turn Maimalari’s new bride into a teenage widow. It was the eve of Waterloo and the drinks and dance continued.

Around ten o’clock, the junior officers left the party only after all the senior officers had left as it was customary. To avoid suspicion, they left one by one to dress up in full combat dress. Ifeajuna was the last to leave being the busiest person that night. He coordinated the bar, the dancers, drummers, the food and drinks servers, the orchestra, the cleaners. Once he ensured everyone was done and left, he went to salute his boss who thanked him for a job well done.

At 1 o’clock, Ifeajuna having changed into combat dress, stood up to address the 13 officers including four Majors that had been converging in his sitting room in Apapa since 11 o’clock. Major Mobolaji Johnson, a staff officer at the Army HQ and neighbour to Ifeajuna saw nothing unusual in their convergence at such an hour. Unlike Nzeogwu who at the same time was giving his pre-battle rousing speech to his fellow soldiers up North to pump up their morale, Ifeajuna did not have his finger to the trigger. Operation Damisa was organised in the North to draw and nightly train unsuspecting NCOs (Non Commissioned Officers) from various military installations under the 1st Brigade for their Revolution while their officers lied to them that it was part of a course designed to teach new nocturnal attack procedures. When in December Ifeajuna asked Maimalari for permission to do the same for the Federal Guards, the Brigadier refused. Not only because Ikoyi was the national capital with international presences, but because there was constant uneasiness that the violence in the Western Region would soon overrun Lagos as well. Conducting nightly manoeuvres even with dummy bullets and flares instead of grenades would only heighten public panic and hence was unacceptable.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo: Leader of Opposition

However, Ifeajuna had a Plan B. Unlike in the North where the military units did not have call outs for IS (internal security operations), troops and transport from various units in 2nd Brigade down South and were frequently requested by the Police high command for IS operations to reinforce police activities in stamping down riots at a new flash point in the Western Region. This was the South’s Operation Damisa cover that Ifeajuna used to draw the pre-selected but unsuspecting NCOs for the Revolution and he had forged the necessary documents to justify the troops mobilisation. Why was it necessary to lie to the NCOs? Because no matter their feelings about the government, none would willingly take up arms against it.

After Ifeajuna finished addressing the officers and reminding them their assignments and their duty to the nation, he went to the brigade HQ to the waiting head of the NCOs – Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) – James Ogbu who went to turn out the NCOs of Camp, Signal Squadron barracks and Lagos Garrison Organisation for the so-called emergency IS operation. They were issued arms and ammunition and divided into units to be commanded by the 4 majors. Only Major Okafor left without an allocation of troops because he needed special troops for his own assignment. Away at Ikoyi, Lt. Ezedigbo and 2/Lt. Igweze had roused and primed these special troops and they were at the Federal Guards guardroom awaiting further instructions. At exactly 2am, convinced they were the five points of a bright new star for a new Nigeria and not the five fingers of a leprous hand, the five Majors led their various units to enact the Revolution. They never called it a coup nor a mutiny; they convinced themselves it was a Revolution comparable to Fidel Castro’s.

One of the Majors, Chris Anuforo was a General Staff Officer II (training) at the Army Headquarters. Assisted by second lieutenant (2/Lt.) C. Ngwuluka, he led 6 NCOs in private cars to his boss Lt Colonel Kur Mohammed on 1st Park Lane, Apapa. Mohammed had been acting chief of staff at the Army HQ since November 1965 when Adeyinka Adebayo went for a course at Imperial Defence College in London. It was Mohammed that Maimalari always requested to act when he was not in the country. When Major Anuforo’s unit arrived at his front gate on foot having left the cars some distance from the house, they tricked the guards, put them at gunpoint and conducted a room-to-room search for the Colonel. Mohammed recognised Chris being his immediate superior at the HQ but Chris had become a rebel and no longer recognised Mohammed as his superior but an enemy. Anuforo ordered the NCOs to tie his hands with rifle sling.

They all left for the home of Lt. Col. Unegbe on Point Road which was only two streets away. Unegbe like Brigadier Maimalari and Lt Col Njoku, the head of 2nd Battalion were alumni of Command and Staff College in Quetta, Pakistan. Returning from Quetta, on 1st March 1964, he took over as commander of 5th Battalion in Kano. He dispatched a company headed by Captain Tim Onwuatuegwu to quell another of the Tiv riots in Gboko. Later as the Quartermaster General at the army HQ, Unegbe was responsible for the provision of every article, clothing, equipment, weapon, ammunition, food, vehicles for the Army in general. He held the keys to the armoury and the control of armoury was vital to the success of the second phase of the Revolution. When Anuforo asked Unegbe for the keys, he refused and was shot immediately in the presence of his wife Enuma Unegbe. Even if he had handed over the keys, he would still be terminated with extreme prejudice because he was guilty. His offence was that in a Revolution packaged together by junior officers, he was a senior officer. If the Revolution succeeded, what could prevent the senior officers from using other soldiers to overcome them? Without the senior officers dead, their Revolution stood no chance. Anuforo then ordered his NCOs subordinates to carry the corpse to the waiting cars downstairs.

Anuforo then asked Col Mohammed in the car to say his own final prayers too. The Colonel did not plead for mercy nor remonstrate in any manner; he was silent and gentle as a breeze even as Anuforo’s bullets reached him from the back, took his heartbeat and fell him down. Less than an hour after they started, Anuforo’s unit had completed their mission objective. They drove to the Officers Mess of the Federal Guards in Ikoyi which was the agreed rendezvous for the units that have completed their tasks.

Unlike in the North where the Revolutionaries used the Brigade HQ as their rendezvous, why did the South opt for the Federal Guards? First, it was the only military unit at the seat of government. All government officials were easily accessible from there and they could easily be brought there as a corpse or as a living object to be paraded in front of the TV later in the day. Two, the Federal Guards was the only military unit whose head was part of the mutiny. Hence, the resources and manpower of the unit could easily be put in the service of the Revolution without seeking authorisation from anyone or forging cover-up signals like was done with other military units. It was the Federal Guards’ net and radio systems that was cryptically used to coordinate operations with Nzeogwu’s group up North.
Major Humphrey Chukwuka’s unit assisted by 2/Lt Onyefuru and five other NCOs had already finished their own assignment too and they were waiting for others at the Federal Guards Mess. Chukwuka was DAG 1 (Deputy Adjutant General) at the Army HQ. His assignment was to arrest his boss, Lt Col James Pam. Being the Adjutant General, Pam was responsible for enlistment of new soldiers, payment of all soldiers, and promotion of some soldiers. He looked after the discipline and welfare of all soldiers and supervised their medical care. He was ultimately responsible for their discharge or burial in the case of death.

Brigadier Zakari Maimalari: Commander of 2nd Brigade hosted Major General Aguiyi Ironsi, Lt Col Yakubu Gowon, to a cocktail in Ikoyi, Lagos while the coup was afoot.

When Anuforo’s unit arrived at the Mess at around 10 minutes past three, they delivered their own two dead bodies and saw that Pam the objective of Chukwuka’s unit was still alive, unbounded and under guard in one of Chukwuka’s unit Land Rover. Anuforo called Chukwuka to the side and reprimanded him for not delivering a finished job. To Anuforo, nothing, not even the force of conscience or the fear of blood must stop an idea whose time had come. According to the account which 2/Lt Godwin Onyefuru who assisted Chukwuka later gave, he said Chukwuka told Anuforo that Pam offered no resistance during his arrest and followed him voluntarily thereafter, why should he then kill him? But to Anuforo, Kur Mohammed offered no resistance and followed him voluntarily too yet he still terminated him with extreme prejudice because the Revolution demanded it. As Nzeogwu instructed: all senior officers must no longer be viewed with ordinary eyes but must be “seen through the sights of your rifles.” Anuforo then ordered Chukwuka to go back with the Pam and obey the Revolution. Chukwuka refused. Anuforo then angrily entered their Land Rover with Pam and ordered them to drive. Just drive. He was sick of abstinence.

During the recruitment for the so-called Revolution, there were moderates who shared the ideals of a Revolution but they did not favour bloodshed. Ifeajuna was interested in the firebrands who could stand in solidarity with his resentment of the political system, embrace the need for a radical solution and boldly sacrifice as many people as was needed including all their superiors in the army. One of the reported ways of recruiting was by asking, how do you feel about the situation in the country? Nzeogwu was reported to have answered: “If I have my way I will gun down all the politicians.” That was in 1965 after Ifeajuna succeeded the British Officer Major Gilliver as the DA and QMG at 1st Brigade in Kaduna. Ifeajuna was pleased with Nzeogwu’s intoxicated temper and he marked him down as a future asset. Ifeajuna knew the heart was the seat of fire and the same fire that could give birth to ashes could also refine gold. And so Ifeajuna preferred firebrands who had cruelty in place of a heart. He had no use for moderates. He only co-opted them in the plot because they commanded positions that were strategically useful to the Revolution and promised them there would be no bloodshed only to arrest and retire the senior officers. Chukwuka was one of those moderates and he was co-opted because one of the ways of getting the senior officers was to tell them they were needed in the office for an emergency. The phones of course would have been disabled so they would not be able to confirm with other senior officers. Up to the time he abducted Pam from his bedroom, moderate Chukwuka was still promising Pam’s wife, Elizabeth, that he would be okay, that he would ensure he was okay. But the plot’s drivers had other designs.

Anuforo led them to the furthest edge of the Ikoyi Golf Course in the dark. He asked Pam to come down and say his last prayers. Pam was reported to have softly pleaded with him: ‘Oh Chris, don’t do this, please.’ Please? Chris? To listen to pleas and cries was to pay homage to error and testify against the Revolution. Anuforo squeezed the trigger and watched as the dry grass welcomed Pam. He then ordered the NCOs to come down and load the dead body unto the Landover. The men were frightened and they refused to leave the vehicle. Pam, the Adjutant General of the Army who was responsible for the welfare of every soldier would just be so summarily executed? They were there when Pam asked his children to stop crying and told his wife to look after them that he would soon come back. Was this the IS operation they were woken up for? Anuforo, a devoted believer in the ability of gun to set the agenda then pointed his still smoking SMG at the reluctant NCOs. They immediately obeyed without complaint. They all drove back to the Mess where the body was off-loaded and placed alongside the bodies of Col. Mohammed and Lt. Col. Arthur Unegbe. Excepting the GOC, that was a clean sweep of the top command of the Nigerian Army HQ accomplished.

Why was it necessary to drive away from the Mess in order to shoot Pam in the first place? Because the loud noise of fired guns would wake the Federal Guards barracks before the time. The Federal Guards was a company strong combat unit with 5 officers and 179 NCOS. Though they were often used as ceremonial guards of honour at the airport and at Azikiwe’s State House, they still received infantry training like weapons training, field craft, minor tactics and signal communications like any other combat unit. Most of the rebels in the South were drawn from administrative, signals, army workshop, logistics, supply and transport units. They were service troops not combat troops. The rest that were drawn from the Federal Guards which was a combat unit were given the most difficult assignment of the night.

Major Donatus Okafor, the officer commanding the Federal Guards was tasked with the assassination of the Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari. Above every other person in southern operation, it was important Maimalari was cold dead if their Revolution was to succeed. As the commander of the Southern brigade, Maimalari had under him all the fighting forces of the battalions, the field artillery corps, the armoured and mechanised squads. He could effectively mobilise the entire brigade even if the country was suddenly attacked by a neighbouring army. He knew how. Without his name, the Revolution would not have taken off at all. It was forged orders given in his name that Ifeajuna had handed Captain Nwobosi head of the Ibadan operation and Lt Nwabuchi the liaison officer of the Enugu operation in case any senior officer challenged their troop mobilisation. It was forged instructions issued in his name that Ifeajuna had handed Nwobosi to bring the 105 mm Howitzer from the battery gun park in Abeokuta to Lagos. It was in his name that Ifeajuna had sent signals over the army signal network to give the all clear H-message and commence operations two hours earlier. The 3 day Brigade Training Conference which Ifeajuna used to bring all the battalion commanders together in Lagos for easy assassination was organised in his name. To ensure that these commanders did not travel back to their stations when the conference finished by 2pm on 14 January, Ifeajuna persuaded Maimalari to hold a small cocktail in his house to be attended by the brigade hierarchy. It was financed with brigade funds withdrawn in the name of Maimalari as Njoku the next brigade commander later revealed. Maimalari mattered too much. That was why he had to die.

Babatunde Jose: Editor of Daily Times that was after the neck of Mbadiwe for diverting government land at Ijora Causeway to personal use

Unlike Brigadier Ademulegun’s guards that were compromised up North around the same time, Maimalari’s guards challenged the intruders. Okafor ordered the sentry to call out the guard commander and tell him to take off his men and return to the barracks, there was some emergency. Okafor was his officer commanding but he doubted the emergency. According to the standard operating procedure, the guards were on duty to a superior officer, any change of instruction had to come from him not Okafor. The guard commander refused and Okafor’s men barged in.

Meanwhile the phone was ringing and Maimalari had woken up. It was Pam calling to report some shootings in his compound and that some soldiers had gained forceful entry into his bedroom to arrest him. Maimalari had hardly spoken to Pam that he heard the shootings at his front gate too. Pam also heard the gunshots before the line went dead. Pam immediately called the GOC stating that there was evidence of an ongoing munity. Just then Chukwuka re-entered Pam’s bedroom to inform him that the time they had given him to dress up was over. The gunshot Maimalari heard was that of Captain Oji the 2ice (second in command) to Okafor. He had killed Maimalari’s guard commander who adamantly denied the mutineers entrance. In the process a bullet ricocheted and hit L/Cpl Paul Nwekwe of 2 Brigade Signal Troop in the neck. They were roused for an internal security operation. They had prepared themselves to travel as far as Ibadan to engage Fani-Kayode’s thugs and Adegbenro’s hooligans. But they found themselves in front of their Brigadier’s residence wondering whether they had not been turned into demolition ants dedicated to bringing down the roof of their own house.

Christopher Okigbo: Ifeajuna informed him of the plan

Immediately Maimalari heard the splash of submachine gunfire, he dropped the phone, ran upstairs to pick up his wife whom he did not want to disturb by picking up the phone downstairs. He fled across the large garden where cocktail party ended five hours earlier. He kept his wife at the boys’ quarters, scaled the tall fence and disappeared into the darkness. All senior officers that night were in their pyjamas when they escaped. They did not have time to dress up in combat fatigues. Except the GOC who left up fully geared up and even took his walking stick with crocodile carved into it.

When Okafor realised Maimalari had fled the house, he became very angry. He ordered his men to comb the compound and shoot the Brigadier on sight; he must not be given any chance to even surrender. He then jumped into the Land Rover driven by Lance Corporal Noji and searched around Brown Street, Thompson Avenue all the way to Glover Road and Bourdillon Road. Without Maimalari dead, they were doomed. As Ifeajuna later wrote in his manuscript, “We fully realised that to be caught planning, let alone acting, on our lines, was high treason. And the penalty for high treason is death.” Therefore, they had to be successful or die trying.

Okafor like other officers joined the Revolution because he wanted to free Nigeria from the corruption and indiscipline of politicians. But four weeks earlier, the Army Legal Officer, Chief Arthur Worrey found Okafor guilty of stealing his subordinates’ funds. The Federal Guards held a monthly raffle draw and social nights (Wassa). The proceeds from ticket sales and lucky dips were recorded in Army Book 64 and saved in the PRI (President of Regimental Institute) account. For months, false figures were recorded as Okafor was stealing this money and giving a fraction as hush money to the treasurer Corporal Magaji Birnin Kebbi, a NCO in his fifties. Unknown to Okafor, Magaji was recording actual figures in his private file. Later Magaji interceded on behalf of a friend and colleague Private Mamman Sokoto at the Motor Transport Section of the Federal Guards who had been overlooked for promotion for four years. Okafor did not honour his pledge to promote the man when the list of the promoted was published. When Magaji went back to Okafor in his office in November 1965, Okafor ordered him to be locked up as he a Major and the OC of the elite Federal Guards did not feel he was answerable to a mere corporal in matters of promotion. Magaji then spilled the secrets. Eventually Okafor was found guilty of stealing his soldiers’ funds. Lieutenant Tarfa who was one of Okafor’s junior officers at the Federal Guards served as Magaji’s interpreter before the panel of inquiry. For Magaji was an old illiterate soldier. Tarfa later wrote in his account that, Okafor was afraid of being severely punished that he appealed to Brigadier Maimalari to help. But then they never knew then that the main reason he was scared of punishment was that he would have been suspended and relieved of his command of the Federal Guards. That would have deprived him of both participating and making the resources of the Federal Guards available to their Revolution.

Maimalari, a Northerner intervened and cut tapes that let Okafor, an Easterner, off the hook. But Okafor had lost the total respect of most soldiers in the barracks for his action towards the elderly illiterate Northern corporal and for stealing their money. Had Maimalari allowed army procedures to properly take its due course, had he not allowed “kindness” to get in the way, that night of nights, he would not had been in a position where he had to be scaling his own high fence, hiding in shrubs, fleeing from the man whom he thought he had saved from punishment. Well, 90 minutes later, it was his own world famous brigade chief of staff, Ifeajuna, who had organised a befitting cocktail at his residence that eventually pulled the trigger, took his heartbeat and finally put him to rest.

Samuel Ladoke Akintola: Personally engaged soldiers in gun duel

The 31-year-old Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna was the brain behind the Revolution. He studied zoology for 4 years at Ibadan University and graduated with a B.Sc before being commissioned into the army in 1961. At the age of 20, he brought glory to the nation when at the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, he won Nigeria’s first ever gold medal at any international games and set a new record in high jump. He refused to wear the athletes’ spiked boots or any shoe at all for the run-up competitions. At Vancouver, in front of the international cameras, he was persuaded to wear the boots. As a compromise, he wore a boot only on one leg and jumped the highest setting a new world record in high jump and in bizarre outfitting. Ifeajuna knew he was not born to be ordinary and so was addicted to breaking rules and setting new records. As a charismatic orator and Director of Information at University College Ibadan Students Union, he led the protest against the Queen’s visit to the University in 1956.

Ibadan City was born by dissident soldiers headed by Lagelu among seven hills as a refuge for immigrants fleeing wars in 1829. By 1960, Ibadan had become the most cosmopolitan city in Nigeria. Being an embodiment of the lure of consistent non-conformism, Ibadan like New York of that time, held an extraordinary collection of flame-headed intellectuals avid for novelty and whose creativity and distinguished activisms enriched the city and the country. There was nowhere in Africa that matched Ibadan’s assemblage of fire then. There was SG Ikoku who challenged and defeated his own famous father Alvan Ikoku at the Eastern Region Assembly elections of 1956 and then radicalised his new adopted father Chief Obafemi Awolowo into socialism. There was Anthony Enahoro, Chris Okigbo, John Pepper Clark, Chinua Achebe, Tayo Akpata, Benedict Obumselu, Chike Obi, Wole Soyinka, Sam Agbam, Akin Mabogunje, Bola Ige, Emeka Anyaoku, Elechi Amadi. Ifeajuna was a friend to most of them. He wrote in his manuscript:

“It was at Ibadan also I learnt my third lesson. One morning, workmen arrived in the campus with what looked like burglar grills. In a matter of days, they had sealed off each hall or residence from the outside and turned all into cages. Altogether, they gave the place the look of a zoo, so that students saw themselves as animals on show…Then the students took a decision – the cages would have to come down faster than they had been put up. But how to do it? Everybody knew what was wanted but they had not or did not know the means and the manner of effecting the change desired and demanded by all. Each waited for the other to act or simply waited in the hope that something would happen by way of providential intervention.

“At the appointed hour, I and two others met in a hidden rendezvous. We worked out the detailed plans and assembled hammers for the job. The events which took place a week or so later went according to plan. We called a Union meeting. There were speeches, moving speeches. Then one of my friends shouted: ‘Down with the cages.’ He led the way to the hammer dump. Before long the cages were down. At the end of it all a student friend reflecting on the incident made interesting comment that a collection of professors would still be a crowd: a group must have a leader or remain in chaos. The University College was closed for a term but we made our point. And the lesson that emerged for me from this incident was the need for careful planning before [undergoing] any operation; the chance of success can be said to be proportion to the work put into the planning.”

Ifeajuna informed Okigbo the discussed Revolution was in the works. According to Wole Soyinka, Okigbo informed Achebe and informed him also without going into details. Soyinka was then on trial for allegedly using a gun to persuade the state broadcaster that instead of Akintola’s tape announcing himself as the election winner, his own tape asking Akintola to pack and go was of better value to the people. He was later freed by Justice Kayode Eso on 12 December 1965.

Ifeajuna was pleased to hear about Okigbo’s friend subversive broadcast. He regarded it as theatre; they were plotting the real stunt. On the day of this stunt, more than anywhere else in the country, there was great euphoria of vindication in Ibadan as the people leapt around on the streets like compressed chests freed at last from the tyranny of pushdown bras. Ibadan claimed Ifeajuna as one of its very own and Okigbo distilled the joys of that day into his poem Hurray for the Path of Thunder. When Nzeogwu’s voice fountained out like a genie of the lamp amongst some Ibadan intellectuals clustered around their radio at Risikatu’s restaurant, Okigbo was reported to have called for patience, patience, patience. He confidently proclaimed that there was still another voice that would soon follow suit. He was referring to his friend and chief engineer of the Revolution, Major Emmanuel Arinze Ifeajuna born on 3rd March 1934, married to Rose on 16th June 1959 at Lagos Registry in Ikoyi and commissioned into the army on 6th December 1960.

Ben Gbulie: Obasanjo’s deputy who ought to pick him at the airport

On the night of the coup, after Ifeajuna concluded his address to his fellow mutineers in his sitting room, he led the largest unit comprising 22 soldiers. Reaching Onikan roundabout, he divided them into three groups. One officer, 2/Lt. G. Ezedigbo and 8 NCOs would go to arrest the finance minister, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh who was then the most corrupt politician in the history of Nigeria. Just like the Downing Street model in London, the Prime Minister and Finance Minister lived side-by-side. But they had become respectively like church and state that did not mix. Another unit comprising 5 NCOs commanded by second warrant officer Onyeacha was left behind to watch over their vehicles and ensure that no other vehicle entered or exited the Onikan roundabout during the course of the operation. Ifeajuna himself commanded the remaining soldiers whose task was to arrest the Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa Abubakar, the novelist and teacher turned Prime Minister.

Abubakar was widely known to hardly surround himself with guards at home or even when commuting. He always cautioned his household against striving for the inessential and ostentatious materialism which expressed itself in need for elaborate security measures. Only Abubakar could have a disabled cripple called Inspector Kaftan Topolomiyo from Nangasu in Chad as his head of security. It was only in 1964 that he consented to a supplement ADC, Sgt Maxwell Orukpabo fondly called “the Igbo” in the household. In February 1963 during a police council meeting with the four regional premiers, the newly restored Western Premier, Akintola proposed a budget for armoured cars for themselves given the security situation in the country. Abubakar softly reprimanded him: “Mr Premier, if I ever thought I would need an armoured car to go anywhere in Nigeria, I would resign.” In the pornography of corruption called the Nigerian government, Abubakar was a monk. And so Ifeajuna knew his task would be very easy. The soldiers he took to abduct him were service soldiers drawn from Signal Squadron, Lagos Garrison Organisation and Camp. None were combat soldiers.

Around thirty minutes later, without a single shot fired, the cool and soft-spoken Prime Minister emerged from the front gate of his residence untied, gently rattling his prayer beads and was dressed in a white flowing jalabiya and a pair of sandals. A lifetime of emotional discipline had rendered his signature face docile and unconquerable by fear. The dead silence of the night lent a hallowed majesty to his steps as he advanced towards his Golgotha. Behind him was Ifeajuna and eight other non-combat soldiers with guns drawn. By the time the entourage reached the parked vehicles, Okotie-Eboh his NCNC Finance Minister had been arrested with his hands tied. Abubakar was assisted into the backseat of Ifeajuna’s luxurious red Mercedes Benz while Okotie Eboh was tossed like a sack of potatoes into the back of the 3 tonner. The convoy drove to report to Federal Guard’s Officer’s Mess.

Balewa: Killed too

Why was Sir Tafawa Balewa (meaning Black Rock) so powerless an agent of change in the face of his colleagues’ corruption extremisms? Why wasn’t there enough of him to go around? In February 1964 for instance, the NCNC parliamentary leader and Minister of Trade Dr Ozumba Madiwe was caught using his office to divert a government land at Ijora Causeway to his private company Afro Properties and Investment Company since 1961. He then assigned the land lease to Nigerpool in return for a hefty annual profit. The discovery generated another media-exposed corruption scandal. Abubakar met privately with Babatunde Jose, the editor of the powerful Daily Times spearheading the intense campaign to remove the corruption extremist if he declined to resign. Mbadiwe never bothered. There were those who were attracted by the durability of rock. They wished to be massive and unmoveable. They wished not to change. Abubakar told the editor: “You want me to remove this man? What he did fell below what is proper. Under British standards, he would go, but the NCNC who put him in my original coalition are solidly for him. Its central working committee had just passed a unanimous vote of confidence in him. If they withdraw, since Awolowo can’t join, the [coalition] government will collapse.’ Hence, Abubakar made peace with being a little rock thrown to the bottom of a polluted river; the polluted waters washed over him all the time but never penetrated him. On 19 December 1965, he even attended the commissioning of the Mbadiwe’s Palace of People constructed with the proceeds of corrupt practices in the village of Arondizuogu. But on the night of the Revolution, it was Abubakar that Ifeajuna arrested and marched on to his eventual death while Mbadiwe kept on sleeping at home undisturbed by bedbugs. He lived happily ever after.

Obasanjo: He and Nzeogwu slept in the same room, yet he did not know about impending coup

When Ifeajuna and Ezedigbo’s unit reached the Federal Guards Mess, Anuforo was nowhere to be found. He had gone with Chukwuka to end Pam on the Ikoyi Golf Course. And so Ifeajuna decided to take up his assignment of terminating all the 2nd Brigade battalion commanders residing at Ikoyi Hotel. But he did not know the rooms where they were lodged; Anuforo and the Brigade adjutant were in charge of the reservation. The assassinations supposed to have happened on the night of 13th of January. All the principals slated for death were already within reach except Brigadier Ademulegun who went to attend an OAU Defence Commission meeting in Ghana from 6th – 10th January. When he was told of an imminence of a mutiny in Nigeria, he argued against its possibility. He said none of the top commanders was interested in taking over government. And if some renegade unit in the South –they had to be from the South because that was where the seat of government was – he would mobilise troops from his brigade in the North to crush them. The maths of an armed takeover in Nigeria unlike Egypt (1952) or Togo (1963) could not add up.

When he arrived Lagos on the 12th January, Major Anuforo the staff officer in charge of accommodation offered the Brigadier reservation at the plush Ikoyi Hotel before his flight to Kaduna the next morning. The Brigadier refused. He then asked Major Madiebo, lodged at the Apapa Officer’s Mess chalet and who had just finished eating a recruitment lunch with Ifeajuna, to vacate the place for the Brigadier. Ademulegun was not interested. Had he accepted to stay at Ikoyi Hotel, his assassination would have been blessed for that very night: His door would have been knocked several times in the middle of the night by the night receptionist just as he did to Largema’s Room 115 door. He would have been told there was an urgent phone call for him. And because the phone was situated at the end of the corridor, he would have been told to come out and pick the call. He would have come out and like Largema, bullets would have been pumped into his heart and lungs as he picked up the phone. Ademulegun refused Anuforo’s hotel offer. Instead, he went to stay with a friend somewhere in Lagos and was off the radar. On the morning of Friday 14 January, he showed up at his office at the 1st Brigade. Captain Ben Gbulie confirmed his presence to his fellow mutineers. Like a clock’s hands at twelve o clock, both the Northern and Southern rebels joined hands to set the H-hour.

Azikiwe: President

Ifeajuna then went to fetch 2 NCOs to load Largema’s corpse into the boot of Mercedes Benz in the car park. The Prime Minister heard the gunshots, saw the corpse and lost his cool. There was another senior officer, David Ejoor the commander of 1st Battalion in Enugu who had come for the Ifeajuna-organised Brigade Training Conference and was in Room 17. He was at the cocktail hours earlier. They knocked and burst into many rooms but they could not find him. As it will be seen later, a modesty incident caused Ejoor to change rooms earlier hence missing his allocation of death.

When Ifeajuna left, the night manager of the hotel picked up the phone to report the incident to the police but the phones were dead. He drove down to the Force HQ. Two incidents had been reported: the kidnap of the Prime Minister and the assassination of a senior officer of the army. There was a coup going on. The scrambling of police chiefs and senior politicians began in earnest. It was around half three.

As Ifeajuna’s unit tore through the dark to the Mess (a mere three minutes’ drive), the headlamps sprayed out light as if from a water hose until they picked out an impossibility. They did not notice it until they passed by and they had to stop when they were hailed down. It was Brigadier Maimalari in pyjamas hailing them to stop, stop. When he escaped from his home, he hid in shrubs and watched as Okafor’s Land Rover sped up and down searching for him. He had been hiding and running trying to make his way to the Federal Guards barracks. When he heard or saw the light of an oncoming vehicle he dived into the road side shrubs again. An average walk from his house to the barracks was 22 minutes. Running was around 10 minutes. One hour after scaling his fence, he was already on the last lap of his journey to the Federal Guards.

Major General Aguiyi Ironsi: The most senior military officer then

When he saw some headlights turning in from Kingsway Road, he ducked into the shrubs again thinking it might be Okafor and his men. Instead, he recognised the red Mercedes Benz and his famous brigade major. It was not immediately clear to Maimalari that Ifeajuna was no longer in mufti but in combat uniform. Instead, Maimalari saw Ifeajuna as his hope and dashed for him. Ifeajuna slammed the brakes, stepped out with his SMG and sprayed his boss. In 1965, according to the outgoing British GOC, Major General Welby-Everard, Maimalari was brilliant but too young that was why he was excluded from the list of his possible replacement. When Maimalari’s killers lifted his body into the Land Rover, its spring sank. Maimalari was born in a little town called Maimalari in Borno Province on 2nd of January 1932. He attended Officer Cadet School, Eaton Hall in England from January – May 1951; attended Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst from August 1951 – February 1953; attended Staff College, Quetta, Pakistan from January –December 1961. He spoke five languages (English, Fulfulde, Hausa, Arabic, and Kanuri). He enlisted in the army on 10th of July 1950 and on 5th February 1953, he became the 6th Nigerian commissioned into the army after Ugboma, Bassey, Ironsi, Ademulegun and Ogundipe in that order. Maimalari was survived by his parents, a teenage wife and three children.

When Ifeajuna arrived at the Mess which also doubled as the senior officer’s mortuary, Anuforo and Chukwuka had returned with Pam’s corpse. Major Adewale Ademoyega too had finished his assignment of placing rebel troops at NET building, Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), and disabling the telephone infrastructure. The fifth Major unaccounted for was Donatus Okafor who was still searching for Maimalari. Ademoyega and Captain Adeleke then jumped into the Land Rover driven by Lance corporal Omeru and off they sped to Maimalari’s residence to inform Okafor that the Brigadier had become a stiff corpse at the Mess. The night was eventually going on as planned. It was around four o’clock. The rebels were already feeling the triumph of flying to the highest skies where stories transformed into glories. This was the time Ahmed Kurfi Secretary of State in Ministry of Defence went to inform Shehu Shagari the Minister of Works that some soldiers had vanished with the Prime Minister.

Then a comedy of errors took off that grounded the rebels and enhanced the failure of the Revolution. The general alarm in the Federal Guards barracks next door had been sounded. They had been disturbed by vehicle and troops movements up and down the barracks. Two batches of NCOs had been turned out for alleged IS operations and some gunshots were heard in the proximity of the barracks. All soldiers were ordered by the head of NCOs, RSM Samuel Tayo to gear up and proceed to their various platoons. But according to military standard operating procedure, being NCOs, they needed an officer to give them commands. So the RSM led a platoon to their Officer Commanding’s(OC) residence at No 5 George Street, Ikoyi. But Okafor was not in. He was five streets away at Thompson Avenue searching for the Maimalari. Then they headed to knock on Lt Ezedigbo – the second in command’s door at the block of flats at No 4 Lugard Avenue. He was not in too. He was part of the Revolution. So was the next in line Lt Igweze. Of all the five Federal Guard’s officers, only a very junior officer Lt Paul Tarfa was at home. Lt Joseph Osuma was not in too. He was not part of the assassins though; he had only gone out to sleep with a friend following Friday night’s festivities. If Tarfa later turned out to be somebody in his military career, it was because on that night of nights, he was present at home when the RSM arrived flustered looking for leadership. There had never been mutiny in the barracks before and so no one knew the standard procedural response.

According to his later account, Tarfa said he geared up in battle dress and was driven to the Federal Guards by the RSM’s convoy to take command. He was briefed on the situation and was told that most of the Igbo soldiers in the barracks could not be accounted for including the OC. Tarfa put the Federal Guards on a defensive alert like a cobra coiled to spring. He ordered sentries and machine guns emplaced on sandbag to be posted round the barracks walls. They made up and circulated a call out with its password “Black/Boy” so that dissent soldiers who were still coming in and out of the barracks could be identified and rounded up. Corporal Sarwuan, a Tiv rifleman became the victim of this coiled cobra. Seeing a soldier coming in from the dark, RSM Tayo challenged,
‘Halt. Who goes there?’
‘Friend.’ Sarwuan was said to have replied.
‘Advance to be recognised.’ Tayo ordered and called out “Black.”

But Sarwuan did not respond and continued to advance. Tayo called out again, “Black.” No response. The RSM’s finger twitched in the trigger guard and his heart beat faster and faster. Tayo for the third and last time called out “Black.” But Sarwuan kept advancing without replying. He had forgotten the password and Tayo concluded he was an enemy. He squeezed the trigger plunging Sarwuan’s wife and children into sadness of incomprehensive depths. Major Adegoke, who took over from Ifeajuna as the DA and QMG at 1st Brigade in Kaduna was similarly killed in 4th battalion in Ibadan having been mistaken for a mutineer/enemy. He was holidaying in his native home when he heard about the coup; he hastened to the barracks for more information only to be handed his death. Black/Boy. His Boy did not follow Black and Adegoke met his death.

That night, Tarfa who had assumed the command of the Federal Guards went to the OC’s office adjacent to his. In a file in the cabinet, he saw planning documents, operations orders and a recent signal note from Nzeogwu which read: “Ensure the Tiger is in the net. Even if recruiting more captains.” The tiger he later understood was Maimalari; the net was his death. The extra captain they managed to recruit was Adeleke who only knew of the plot hours earlier at the Apapa residence of Ifeajuna after being brought by Major Ademoyega before some departed for the cocktail. Adeleke at first refused and was told that if the Revolution to free Nigeria started and he was not with it, he would regret it maybe not that day, maybe not the following day, but soon, and for the rest of his life. He fell in enthusiastically. At around quarter past four, Adeleke was with Ademoyega at the Officers Mess when Okafor came to report that he had just lost his command; that the Federal Guards were no longer responding to his orders, that in fact they almost shot him when he went back to the barracks to mobilise more troops. The only infantry force on which much had hinged and much of the second stage would hinge was no longer with the Revolution. What had happened?

When Okafor’s lieutenants roused the NCOs for the assignment, they were told they were needed for an IS operation. They were expecting to be taken outside Lagos to crush one of the hotspot of the Western Region’s crisis or to Mushin to quell a riot as they had done three weeks before. Instead they were taken to Brigadier Maimalari’s residence and they saw his guard commander and another soldier shot dead. The guard commander was known to them. They lived in the same quarters at the barracks. They had started to doubt whether they were truly on IS operation. Again, they were ordered not give the Brigadier a chance to surrender; they were ordered to shoot him dead on sight by Okafor, a disgraced thief and a liar pardoned by the same Maimalari they were asked to kill. They concluded that this was not an IS operation; this was an assassination squad they were forced to join. The final straw came when Ademoyega arrived to tell them that Maimalari had been found and shot by Ifeajuna. His corpse laid at the Mess. It was a terrible blow to the NCOs. Okafor was relieved to hear the news and ordered his second in command Captain Oji with four NCOs to proceed to check the situation at Airport Junction in Ikeja. The remaining men were ordered to proceed to Mess for further instruction. Instead, they rebelled, passed the Mess to the barracks and threatened to shoot Okafor if he tried to give them orders anymore. It was righteous mutiny within an unholy mutiny.

Okoti-Eboh: Finance Minister

According to the testimony Ifeajuna later gave after his arrest a month later, he saw the GOC’s official car and his guards driving past the entrance of the barracks. This made them conclude that it was the GOC that had roused the soldiers and placed the barracks on a defensive alert. As envisaged, the Revolution was not meant to be a one-night stand. They had anticipated that at one point, soldiers still loyal to the Nigerian Army would wake up and fight them. That was why in the first place they decided to kill off all the senior officers that will command the loyal troops. In addition, that was also why immediately Nzeogwu finished off Sarduana up North, he went to take over Brigadier Ademulegun’s office at the Brigade. Knowing that the Brigadier or his deputy would not come back, the revolutionaries had expected that the shock of seeing all the senior officers dead was enough to sag the morale of the loyal soldiers to fight back. Furthermore, Ifeajuna had planned for a further arms advantage: The firepower of the Southern brigade was in Abeokuta with the 2nd Recce Squadron and the field artillery battery. Their officer commanding, Major Obienu was a central plank of the Revolution. He was supposed to mobilise his armoured, mechanised and artillery support: all the ferrets, the scot cars, 105mm Howitzers and assemble at the airport junction in Ikeja. A unit from the Revolution high command set up at the Federal Guards Mess was supposed to go to Ikeja bring this armoured squadron into Lagos and position them menacingly in front of the barracks and other military installations to neutralise any threat to the Revolution.

But with the presence of the GOC and his perceived rousing of troops against them, Federal Guards Mess was no longer the place to set up the Revolution High command. They had to hasten up connect with Obienu’s unit and quickly establish their firepower supremacy. All the 9 corpses were quickly loaded into the 3 tonner including the Minister of Finance who was still alive and scared to death. They left in a convoy of 6 vehicles: two army Land Rovers, Okafor’s private Peugeot 403, Ifeajuna’s Red Mercedes Benz, Anuforo’s private car and the 3 Tonner.

Unfortunately for their Revolution, Obienu overdrank at Maimalari’s cocktail party. Instead of attending the briefing at Ifeajuna’s house or proceeding straight to Abeokuta as expected, Major John Obienu branched at Shomolu to taste his mistress and became glued to a cleavage of extraordinary amplitude. He lacked the strength to get up as his name was melodiously chanted with Gregorian devotion. The Revolution to save Nigeria and do better than the politicians began to fall apart piece by piece.

Ibadan
The 4th battalion in Ibadan was the oldest and the second biggest batallion in Nigeria. It had 26 officers and 829 NCOs. During the centenary celebrations at Mapo Hall in Ibadan in June 1963, the Olubadan of Ibadan, Sir Isaac Akinyele conferred on the battalion Freedom of Ibadan City and handed it the Key of Ibadan City. More than anywhere in Nigeria, Ibadan was historically a war-crazy city. At midnight just before his pre-battle rousing plan, to the other four Majors, Ifeajuna telephoned Captain Nwobosi, the officer commanding the Field Artillery Battery in Abeokuta. He issued the all-clear message and ordered Nwobosi and his unit to proceed to Ibadan 90km away and achieve the Revolution’s objectives there. Had the Revolution succeeded, Captain Nwobosi would have been the most rewarded.

Solving the bloodbath of the Western Region was one of the reasons they had plotted the Revolution in the first place. But up till two days before the planned date, they had no officer to actualise the operations in Ibadan, the Western Region’s capital. Nwobosi was recruited on January 12 when he came to Apapa for the Ifeajuna-organised Brigade Training Conference. Ifeajuna tried to recruit Madiebo over lunch on the same day, but Madiebo started preaching about failure being an option and tribal loyalties being stronger than national ambition among the revolutionaries. Ifeajuna had to cut him out and relied on Nwobosi who did not even know places in Ibadan very well. The 4th battalion in Eleyele which they had initially planned to use was just 10 minutes’ drive away from the Premier’s Lodge. Their commander Lt Col Abogo Largema like other battalion commanders was already earmarked for the end at Ikoyi Hotel. That would give his second in command Major Mac Nzefili a safe space to take over the command. Like all the seconds in command of all battalions in the Nigerian Army, Nzefili was Igbo. Up to the last minute, Ifeajuna harboured no doubt that he would come on board for the Revolution. He spent all of December travelling to his residence in Ibadan to discuss operational and tactical requirements but he only met his wife at home; he was always away on assignment. Also Nzefili as the British records disclosed was awaiting court-martial for getting drunk, wondering into the female quarters of the police barracks, resisting arrest and biting the ear of the arresting police officer. Nzefili declined Ifeajuna co-option.

Soyinka: Arrested for allegedly forcing Western Broadcasting Service to air his own subversive tape, asking Akintola to resign

On the night of the assassinations, Nzefili was at the officers’ mess in Ibadan when Justice Kayode Eso, Akin Johnson, the administrator of Abeokuta Local Government Council and his wife Mosun met with him. The Johnsons came to seek asylum at Eso’s residence in Ibadan having escaped Action Group’s hoodlums who accused him of gravitating towards Akintola. Eso told them he did not consider his own home safe since 12th of December 1965 after inadvertently humiliating Akintola by freeing Wole Soyinka, the un-mysterious gunman. Eso and Akintola were neighbours. Since the Johnsons knew Largema, Justice Esho took them to the barracks for refuge. According to Esho, Nzefili told them Largema was in Lagos but once he finished drinking with his mates at 11pm, he took the Johnsons to their safe rooms without knowing them personally. Largema his boss was widely respected both outside and inside the Army and Nzefili too when not drunk was a kind man.

To Ifeajuna, Nzefili was a disappointment. It was a huge relief when Nwobosi accepted to head the Ibadan task. Ifeajuna then gave Nwobosi a forged order issued in the name of Brigadier Z Maimalari authorising him to take a detachment to Ibadan for an IS operations there. This signal (instruction) was necessary in case a senior officer challenged him or the quartermaster needed proof before issuing ammo.

When they reached Ibadan shortly after 2am, they headed straight to Agodi Telephone exchange and ordered all workers to go home. Unlike Lagos, where the telephone exchange was partly automatic, Ibadan’s exchange was fully automatic. Asking the workers to go home did not silence the phones. Nwobosi and his men then proceeded to ECN (Electricity Corporation of Nigeria) Eleyele, ordered the workers to halt all power generation and go home. Ibadan was plunged into darkness. Ibadan people were already used to transcending the dark. This was the time the British head of ECN was woken up and was told soldiers had shut down the generators. Nwobosi even offered some of the workers lift to town. He was a gentleman. As they set out for the operations in Abeokuta, he saw a lonely pregnant woman in labour who couldn’t make it to the hospital. He halted his convoy and took the woman to the hospital in the army Land Rover. But it was not only because he wanted to be kind that why he gave the workers lift; they did not know the house address of their first target, Chief Fani-Kayode, the deputy premier. The lifted ECN workers showed him the address.

Of all the regions in the country and at the federal government, the Western Region was the only government with a deputy premier. When Nwobosi’s convoy arrived at the front of Fani-Kayode’s residence at Iyaganku GRA, they were shocked at the number of armed thugs that were present between the hundred metre road main gate and the main residential building. The thugs quickly ran way after being awoken by a slowly moving convoy of 16 gunners, 2 lance bombardiers, 2 sergeants, 1 battery quartermaster sergeant, 1 second lieutenant, 1 trooper and 1 captain in two 3 tonners and a Land Rover. If the violence, the rapes, house burning, lynchings, intimidation of opposition lecturers, election rigging and all other woes that had engulfed the Western Region had a face, it was that of the 44-year-old Remilekun Fani-Kayode, a Cambridge-educated lawyer who presided over the government thugs infrastructure. From 1959, he was a pro-Zik NCNC politician before Akintola poached him in 1962 and made him the Minister of Local Government and Deputy Premier of the most advanced Region in the country. According to Nwobosi, they were surprised that Fani-Kayode’s thugs quickly ran away because it contradicted the legendary stories of Fani Power they had heard. They were rather prepared for a confrontational showdown.

Remi Fani-Kayode: Akintola’s deputy

“Fani-Kayode! Come down you are under lawful arrest by the army” Nwobosi shouted. He said lawful because the forged signal issued in the name of Maimalari stated Fani Kayode’s arrest as one of their objectives. The compound like the city was in darkness. Visibility was provided by the headlamps of the convoy parked on the driveway.

“I am coming. I am coming; don’t shoot.” Fani-Kayode was reported to have responded from upstairs. He did not move. Nwobosi called out again. But Fani-Kayode did not move. Nwobosi then fired his gun into the ground as a warning. When their target did not bulge, they broke a glass panel in the door to gain entrance and started ransacking the house and intermittently shooting. The children were terrified and weeping. They found Fani-Kayode in his bedroom with his hands already upstretched like twin towers above his uncombed high hair.

“I surrender…I surrender…I surrender…” he chanted repeatedly already drenched in fear. Again Nwobosi and his gunners were surprised to see the feared embodiment of the legendary Fani Power shuddering.
Nwobosi, 23 addressed the 44-year-old deputy premier: “You have wasted a lot of time – we could have shot you.”

They tied him with rifle slings in front of his wife and 3 children and tossed him in the 3 tonner. His wife picked up the phone and called the Premier to report the arrest. Akintola tried to calm her down and assured her that he would get him released as soon as possible. It never occurred to him the soldiers could be coming for him too until he heard the convoy and saw the headlamps. He grabbed his gun and gathered ammunition. That night of nights, of all those fell by bullets all over the country, Akintola was the only one who died the death of a true warrior. He was not interested in the Akintola-you-are-under-arrest noises he was hearing from outside. No way! Oya, say hello to my little friend: he cocked his SMG and began to blaze furiously like Tony Montana as Nwobosi and his men tried to open his bedroom door.

New Nigerian newspaper: First to publish photos of Sardauna’s burnt house

Akintola was the 13th Aare Ona Kakanfo (Field Marshal General) of Yorubaland. After the previous Kakanfo, Aare Latosa who reigned from 1871 – 1885, no one had the courage to accept the title for 79 years because of the mysterious curse associated it. Since Alaafin Ajagbo inaugurated the first Aare Kokoro Gangan (Scorpion) of Iwoye in 1650, no Aare was expected to live long and enjoy a soft death. The title was like the warrior Achilles in Homer’s Iliad whose fate as explained to him by his mother, Thetis, was either to die young and gain glory, or to live a long boring life in obscurity. When Ojo Aburumaku (meaning: the wicked always live long) was installed as the 11th Aare Ona Kakanfo in 1860, Yorubaland was so peaceful that he had to foment a civil war in Ogbomosho which he then proceeded to supress with uncommon brutality just to justify his title. He was struck by lightning in 1871 and Aare Latosa, Akintola’s immediate predecessor took over. One of the reasons the Kafanfo Curse became self-fulfilling was that the overdose of courage which an Aare was supposed to possess actively insulated him from siding with peaceful resolutions, seeing reason and knowing when to stop. Several times from the 3 Tonner, Fani-Kayode called out to Akintola to cease firing; that the soldiers only came to take him to Lagos. Instead, Akintola continued to blaze his gun at Nwobosi’s men even though he never successfully hit anyone. They had fled the house and ducked behind the garden shrubs. Justice Kayode Eso who was a neighbour described the relentless shooting as sounding like the crackle of rapid bush bushing. Akintola then ran out of ammo but Nwobosi and his men did not know this, they thought he was reloading and waiting for them.

Ojukwu: First to conceive a coup in 1965, but Gowon and Ejoor who he wanted to use for national spread, refused. He contacted Ademoyega too

After a while, Aare Akintola held out a white handkerchief of surrender and proceeded to his balcony with his hands up. Nwobosi and his men proceeded to end him.

When Akintola’s wife saw his lifeless body surrounded by empty casings drenched in blood, she screamed. In less than three months, she had lost her husband and first child, Modele Odunjo to the Western crisis. That night, if one put one’s ear to the echo chamber of Nigeria to hear the deafening roar of woes on one side and joy on the other, one would surely break into pieces. Nwobosi and his men then made a mistake: they left for the Federal Guards Mess in Lagos without packing Akintola’s corpse with them. (He was buried the 23 January 1966 at his home in Ogbomoso)

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series. The hard copy is circulating nationawide. Damola Awoyokun, was, on 12 February 2016, inducted as a Chartered Engineer and Member of the British Institution of Civil Engineers(ICE). The first Nigerian honoured that way was Hebert Macaulay who was inducted on 5th December 1893. We celebrate his achievement with this cover story.

Readers can direct their questions to the writer (he is ready to respond) through: osoronga@yahoo.com

MR. & MRS. Comedy series

2016-06-17T12:31:00.001-07:00

A selection of choice movies for you entertainment delight. Enjoy...

2016-06-13T12:09:00.001-07:00

MR. & MRS. Comedy series

2016-06-12T05:26:00.001-07:00

Be careful we have your past records- Ibrahim Babangida to Pres. Buhari

2016-06-02T04:38:00.001-07:00

BE CAREFUL WE HAVE YOUR PAST RECORDS - Ibrahim Babangida to Pres. Buhari

“On General Buhari, it is not in IBB’s tradition to take up issues with his colleague former President. But for the purpose of record, we are conversant with General Buhari’s so-called holier-than-thou attitude. He is a one-time Minister of Petroleum and we have good records of his tenure as minister. Secondly, he presided over the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, which records we also have.

“We challenge him to come out with clean hands in those two portfolios he headed. Or we will help him to expose his records of performance during those periods. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. General Buhari should be properly guided.”

You Declared “Zero Tolerance” To Corruption, But Were You Sincere? American Lawyer; Bruce Fein to President Buhari

2016-06-02T03:49:00.001-07:00

You Declared “Zero Tolerance” To Corruption, But Were You Sincere?

American Lawyer To President Buhari

niyi December 1, 2015

An American lawyer who specializes in constitutional and international law, Bruce Fein has written President Muhammadu Buhari over the manner his anti-corruption crusade is playing out.

In the open letter published by Huffington Post, Fein told President Buhari that law must not be something that is given to punish enemies and withheld to favour friends.” He also highlighted instances where the Nigerian president has erred.

Read the letter below:

President Muhammadu Buhari
Aso Rock, Abuja
Nigeria

Dear President Buhari:

When you visited the United States Institute of Peace last July, you pledged that you would be “fair, just and scrupulously follow due process and the rule of law, as enshrined in [the Nigerian] constitution” in prosecuting corruption.

Such loftiness is laudable. As the Bible instructs in Amos 5:24: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

But to be just, the law must be evenhanded. It cannot, in the manner of Russian President Vladimir Putin, be something that is given to punish your enemies and withheld to favor your friends. If so, the law becomes an instrument of injustice bearing earmarks of the wicked rather than the good.

In the United States, you declared a policy of “zero tolerance” against corruption. You solicited weapons and other assistance from the United States government based on that avowal. But were you sincere?

During your election campaign, you promised widespread amnesty, not zero tolerance. You elaborated: “Whoever that is indicted of corruption between 1999 to the time of swearing-in would be pardoned. I am going to draw a line, anybody who involved himself in corruption after I assume office, will face the music.”

After you were inaugurated, however, you disowned your statement and declared you would prosecute past ministers or other officials for corruption or fraud. And then again you immediately hedged. You were reminded of your dubious past by former Major General and President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, who succeeded your military dictatorship. He released this statement:

“On General Buhari, it is not in IBB’s tradition to take up issues with his colleague former President. But for the purpose of record, we are conversant with General Buhari’s so-called holier-than-thou attitude. He is a one-time Minister of Petroleum and we have good records of his tenure as minister. Secondly, he presided over the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, which records we also have.

You then swiftly backed off your zero tolerance policy because you would have been its first casualty.

You opportunistically announced that zero tolerance would be narrowed to the predecessor administration of Goodluck Jonathan because to probe further would be “a waste of time.” That conclusion seems preposterous.

In 2012, the World Bank’s ex-vice president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili, estimated that a stupendous $400 billion in Nigerian oil revenues had been stolen or misspent since independence in 1960. The lion’s share of that corruption spans far beyond the Jonathan administration.

Your zero tolerance policy seems to come with a squint to avoid seeing culpability in your political friends.

A few examples are but the tip of the iceberg.

A Rivers State judicial commission of inquiry found that N53 billion disappeared from the Rivers State Reserve Fund under former governor Rotimi Amaechi.

Former Lagos governor and head of your campaign finance team Babatunde Fashola was accused of squandering N78 million of government money to upgrade his personal website.

The EFCC has ignored these corruption allegations, and you have given both promotions: the Ministry of Transport to Mr. Amaechi, and the Ministry of Power, Works, and Housing to Mr. Fashola.

In contrast, you have played judge, jury, and prosecutor in the newspapers to convict former PDP Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke of corruption.

Is this evenhanded justice?

United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson taught: “There is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally. Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected.”

To investigate or prosecute based on political affiliation or opinion also violates Articles 2 and 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is unworthy of a great nation like Nigeria.

Make the hallmark of your administration justice, not retribution, and you may live for the ages.

I am a United States citizen and lawyer. I have no political standing in Nigeria.

Some might argue that my speaking about the administration of justice in Nigeria bespeaks impertinence.

But you chose to visit the United States to solicit weapons and other assistance from my government–a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

The United States government represents me. What the United States government does reflects on me. I thus have an interest in addressing the actions of foreign governments that receive United States government aid.

Sunshine is said to be the best of disinfectants.

Sincerely,

Bruce Fein
Fein & DelValle PLLC
300 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Suite 900
Washington, D.C. 20001

BUHARI'S ONE YEAR OF ROTTEN LIES & PROPAGANDA - Senator Ben Murray-Bruce

2016-05-31T20:59:00.001-07:00

BUHARI'S ONE YEAR OF ROTTEN LIES & PROPAGANDA.
By Senator Ben Murray-Bruce
MAY 29TH 2015

365 DAYS of Comical Satire ....??
On the 29th of may 2015, Nigeria, then the LARGEST ECONOMY IN AFRICA, (yes with re basing ) was handed over to APC (don't mention certificates or lack of it).
Today, Nigeria is PROUDLY 5TH IN AFRICA .......!!
And they still blame it on Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and the PDP?
PDP took over in 1999 with less than $4 billion in reserves ...oil prices was lower than the $51
it is today... A depressed and sunken country ...
In 2015.. APC took over with a total of $36 billion in reserves ... Another $5Billion in NLNG dividends ..... And took 7 months to appoint ministers .... The worst and most unsuitable ministers ever ...
OIL price was dwindling, yes .. but instead of working ...the president embarked on 33 foreign trips ...blaming the past government while denigrating the people he was supposed to take care of....
Insensitive to the machinations of today's worldly community spirit, using ethnic biased rhetoric in describing those that did not vote for him..
Cancelling Niger Delta delta retraining and development programs in favor of North East developmental programs...
HOW CAN YOU STOP THE MILITANTS PROGRAM TO START SAME FOR REFORMED BOKO HARAM MEMBERS?
Cameroon sends their captured Boko Haram prisoners to the ICC... How then can people support a government who makes noise about killing militants who rarely kill, while keeping mum and appeasing Boko haram Murderers?
This has been a year of vindictiveness, Insensitivity, nepotism, propaganda, ineptitude and total unabated cluelessness!!

A single Tomato is now more expensive than an Apple ...
Fuel is NGN145.
Electricity is lower than the lowest average of the PDP years.
We have no economic team nor semblance of anything near that...
Our finance minister is a neophyte,
Our power minister is a lawyer,
Our minister of petroleum says he has GCE...
Our Transport Minister is a lawyer...
Our housing minister is a Lawyer...
Our minister of interior a soldier,
Our labour minister is a Medical Doctor ...
Most of them have not practiced their own profession for the last ten years .... Check?
The masses do not care if $7000 Trillion is recovered ...if people cannot buy tomato, rice and meat ...with their meager salaries....
Let assume ...all PDP members are Jailed....... But there is no light, high unemployment, high distrust, unsavory remarks from the APC camps, high living costs ...

This government would still be attacked and vilified!
Give us Nigeria the way it was last year!
IMPLEMENT THE CONFAB REPORT ........ And we will surely thank and support this Government ....at least till the Next election!
Long live ..A Fair and Equal Nigeria!
My name is Ben Murray-Bruce, and I just want to make commonsense.

Stop complaining about crude price - Obasanjo tells Pres. Buhari

2016-05-31T20:27:00.001-07:00

Stop complaining about crude price, Jonathan left you $30 billion, Obasanjo tells Pres. Buhari

Ex President Olusegun Obasanjo has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to stop using dwindling crude prices for lack of performance.

According to Obasanjo, he met worse when he took power in 1999, but made the best of it.

He reminded Buhari that unlike his administration that met a paltry $3.7 billion, in the coffers, Goodluck Jonathan left behind a whooping $30 billion.

He said “When I assumed office in 1999, I inherited $3.7 billion in reserve, while Buhari met $30 billion, almost 10 times of what I met then, and the price of oil then was $9. When it got to $20, I was dancing. know the price is down now and with time, it will jump up again. What Buhari is doing currently is preparing ground for Nigeria to take advantage when it goes up again.”

Obasanjo expressed angst against those asking him to account for recovered Abacha loot, describing them as illiterates and silly people

.Obasanjo, who stated this in an interview, weekend, said the role of his office was to facilitate the recovery process and not how it was put to use.

He said: “They said the money recovered from Abacha, I should account for it. What stupidity! The man who asked for it, the man who gave the judgement or who answered them are all silly, with due respect.

“I don’t keep account, all Abacha loots were sent to Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and every bit of it was reported to Minister of Finance. My job was to write where we can get help to recover the money.

“Every penny that comes out of it went to CBN, so if they want to know what happened to the money, they should call CBN governor or call the Minister of Finance.

“But again, it shows ignorance, total ignorance, which is lacking and you wonder, are these people educated? They can also approach the man who helped us in recovering process to give the list of
money recovered and where he took it.”

President Buhari’s Democracy Day message to Nigerians

2016-05-29T09:36:00.000-07:00

My compatriots,

It is one year today since our administration came into office. It has been a year of triumph, consolidation, pains and achievements. By age, instinct and experience, my preference is to look forward, to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead and rededicate the administration to the task of fixing Nigeria. But I believe we can also learn from the obstacles we have overcome and the progress we made thus far, to help strengthen the plans that we have in place to put Nigeria back on the path of progress.
We affirm our belief in democracy as the form of government that best assures the active participation and actual benefit of the people. Despite the many years of hardship and disappointment the people of this nation have proved inherently good, industrious tolerant, patient and generous.

The past years have witnessed huge flows of oil revenues. From 2010 average oil prices were $100 per barrel. But economic and security conditions were deteriorating. We campaigned and won the election on the platform of restoring security, tackling corruption and restructuring the economy. On our arrival, the oil price had collapsed to as low as $30 per barrel and we found nothing had been kept for the rainy day. Oil prices have been declining since 2014 but due to the neglect of the past, the country was not equipped to halt the economy from declining.

The infrastructure, notably rail, power, roads were in a decrepit state. All the four refineries were in a state of disrepair, the pipelines and depots neglected.

Huge debts owed to contractors and suppliers had accumulated. Twenty-seven states could not pay salaries for months. In the north-east, Boko Haram had captured 14 local governments, driven the local authorities out, hoisted their flags. Elsewhere, insecurity was palpable; corruption and impunity were the order of the day. In short, we inherited a state near collapse.

On the economic front, all oil dependent countries, Nigeria included, have been struggling since the drop in prices. Many oil rich states have had to take tough decisions similar to what we are doing. The world, Nigeria included has been dealing with the effects of three significant and simultaneous global shocks starting in 2014:
1. A 70% drop in oil prices.
2. Global growth slowdown.
3. Normalization of monetary policy by the United States federal reserve.

Our problems as a government are like that of a farmer who in a good season harvests ten bags of produce. The proceeds enable him to get by for rest of the year. However, this year he could only manage 3 bags from his farm. He must now think of other ways to make ends meet.

From day one, we purposely set out to correct our condition, to change Nigeria. We reinforced and galvanized our armed forces with new leadership and resources. We marshaled our neighbours in a joint task force to tackle and defeat Boko Haram. By the end of December 2015, all but pockets and remnants had been routed by our gallant armed forces. Our immediate focus is for a gradual and safe return of internally displaced persons in safety and dignity and for the resumption of normalcy in the lives of people living in these areas.

EFCC was given the freedom to pursue corrupt officials and the judiciary was alerted on what Nigerians expect of them in the fight against corruption. On the economy, in particular foreign exchange and fuel shortages, our plan is to save foreign exchange by fast tracking repair of the refineries and producing most of our fuel requirements at home. And by growing more food in Nigeria, mainly rice, wheat and sugar we will save billions of dollars in foreign exchange and drastically reduce our food import bill.

We resolved to keep the Naira steady, as in the past, devaluation had done dreadful harm to the Nigerian economy. Furthermore, I supported the monetary authority’s decision to ensure alignment between monetary policy and fiscal policy. We shall keep a close look on how the recent measures affect the Naira and the economy. But we cannot get away from the fact that a strong currency is predicated on a strong economy. And a strong economy pre-supposes an industrial productive base and a steady export market. The measures we must take, may lead to hardships. The problems Nigerians have faced over the last year have been many and varied. But the real challenge for this government has been reconstructing the spine of the Nigerian state. The last twelve months have been spent collaborating with all arms of government to revive our institutions so that they are more efficient and fit for purpose:
· That means a bureaucracy better able to develop and deliver policy
· That means an independent judiciary, above suspicion and able to defend citizen’s rights and dispense justice equitably.
· That means a legislature that actually legislates effectively and
· Above all; that means political parties and politicians committed to serving the Nigerian people rather than themselves.

These are the pillars of the state on which democracy can take root and thrive. But only if they are strong and incorruptible. Accordingly, we are working very hard to introduce some vital structural reforms in the way we conduct government business and lay a solid foundation on which we can build enduring change.

An important first step has been to get our housekeeping right. So we have reduced the extravagant spending of the past. We started boldly with the treasury single account, stopping the leakages in public expenditure.

We then identified forty-three thousand ghost workers through the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information system. That represents pay packets totalling N4.2 billion stolen every month. In addition, we will save Twenty-Three Billion Naira per annum from official travelling and sitting allowances alone.

Furthermore, the efficiency unit will cut costs and eliminate duplications in ministries and departments. Every little saving helps. The reduction in the number of ministries and work on restructuring and rationalization of the MDAs is well underway. When this work is complete we will have a leaner, more efficient public service that is fit for the purpose of changing Nigeria for the good and for good.

As well as making savings, we have changed the way public money is spent. In all my years as a public servant, I have never come across the practice of padding budgets. I am glad to tell you now we not only have a budget, but more importantly, we have a budget process that is more transparent, more inclusive and more closely tied to our development priorities than in the recent past. 30% of the expenditure in this budget is devoted to capital items. Furthermore, we are projecting non-oil revenues to surpass proceeds from oil. Some critics have described the budget exercise as clumsy. Perhaps. But it was an example of consensus building, which is integral to democratic government. In the end we resolved our differences.

We have, therefore, delivered significant milestones on security, corruption and the economy. In respect of the economy, I would like to directly address you on the very painful but inevitable decisions we had to make in the last few weeks specifically on the pump price of fuel and the more flexible exchange rate policy announced by the central bank. It is even more painful for me that a major producer of crude oil with four refineries that once exported refined products is today having to import all of its domestic needs. This is what corruption and mismanagement has done to us and that is why we must fight these ills.

As part of the foundation of the new economy we have had to reform how fuel prices had traditionally been fixed. This step was taken only after protracted consideration of its pros and cons. After comprehensive investigation my advisers and I concluded that the mechanism was unsustainable.

We are also engaged in making recoveries of stolen assets some of which are in different jurisdictions. The processes of recovery can be tedious and time consuming, but today I can confirm that thus far: significant amount of assets have been recovered. A considerable portion of these are at different stages of recovery. Full details of the status and categories of the assets will now be published by the Ministry of Information and updated periodically. When forfeiture formalities are completed these monies will be credited to the treasury and be openly and transparently used in funding developmental projects and the public will be informed.

On the Niger Delta, we are committed to implementing the United Nations Environment Programme report and are advancing clean-up operations. I believe the way forward is to take a sustainable approach to address the issues that affect the delta communities. Re-engineering the amnesty programmes is an example of this. The recent spate of attacks by militants disrupting oil and power installations will not distract us from engaging leaders in the region in addressing Niger Delta problems. If the militants and vandals are testing our resolve, they are much mistaken. We shall apprehend the perpetrators and their sponsors and bring them to justice.

The policy measures and actions taken so far are not to be seen as some experiment in governance. We are fully aware that those vested interests who have held Nigeria back for so long will not give up without a fight. They will sow divisions, sponsor vile press criticisms at home and abroad, incite the public in an effort to create chaos rather than relinquish the vice-like grip they have held on Nigeria.

The economic misfortune we are experiencing in the shape of very low oil prices has provided us with an opportunity to restructure our economy and diversify. We are in the process of promoting agriculture, livestock, exploiting our solid mineral resources and expanding our industrial and manufacturing base. That way, we will import less and make the social investments necessary to allow us to produce a large and skilled workforce.

Central Bank of Nigeria will offer more fiscal incentives for business that prove capable of manufacturing products that are internationally competitive. We remain committed to reforming the regulatory framework, for investors by improving the ease of doing business in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, the first steps along the path of self-sufficiency in rice, wheat and sugar – big users of our scarce foreign exchange – have been taken. The Labour Intensive Farming Enterprise will boost the economy and ensure inclusive growth in long neglected communities. Special intervention funds through the Bank of Agriculture will provide targeted support. Concerns remain about rising cost of foods such as maize, rice, millet, beans and gari. Farmers tell me that they are worried about the cost of fertilizers, pesticides and the absence of extension services. The federal and state governments are on the same page in tackling these hurdles in our efforts at increased food production and ultimately food security.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for the increasing role that our women are playing in revitalizing the agricultural sector. Modern farming is still hard and heavy work and I salute our Nigerian women in sharing this burden. In this respect I am very pleased to announce that the government will shortly be launching the national women’s empowerment fund, which I have approved to provide N1.6 billion in micro-finance loans to women across the nation to assist in rehabilitating the economies of rural communities, particularly those impacted by the insurgency and conflict.

With respect to solid minerals, the minister has produced a roadmap where we will work closely with the world bank and major international investors to ensure through best practices and due diligence that we choose the right partners. Illegal mining remains a problem and we have set up a special security team to protect our assets. Special measures will be in place to protect miners in their work environment.

For too long, ours has been a society that neglects the poor and victimizes the weak. A society that promotes profit and growth over development and freedom. A society that fails to recognize that, to quote the distinguished economist Amartya Sen “poverty is not just lack of money. It is not having the capability to realize one’s full potential as a human being.”

So, today, I am happy to formally launch, by far the most ambitious social protection programme in our history. A programme that both seeks to start the process of lifting many from poverty, while at the same time creating the opportunity for people to fend for themselves. In this regard, Five Hundred Billion Naira has been appropriated in the 2016 budget for social intervention programmes in five key areas. We are committed to providing job creation opportunities for five hundred thousand teachers and one hundred thousand artisans across the nation. 5.5 million children are to be provided with nutritious meals through our school feeding programme to improve learning outcomes, as well as enrolment and completion rates. The conditional cash transfer scheme will provide financial support for up to one million vulnerable beneficiaries, and complement the enterprise programme – which will target up to one million market women; four hundred and sixty thousand artisans; and two hundred thousand agricultural workers, nationwide. Finally, through the education grant scheme, we will encourage students studying sciences, technology, engineering and maths, and lay a foundation for human capital development for the next generation

I would like to pay a special tribute to our gallant men and women of the armed forces who are in harm’s way so that the rest of us can live and go about our business in safety. Their work is almost done. The nation owes them a debt of gratitude.

Abroad, we want to assure our neighbours, friends and development partners that Nigeria is firmly committed to democratic principles. We are ready partners in combating terrorism, cyber crimes, control of communicable diseases and protection of the environment. Following on the Paris Agreement, COP 21, we are fully committed to halting and reversing desertification. Elsewhere, we will intensify efforts to tackle erosion, ocean surge, flooding and oil spillage which I referred to earlier by implementing the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

We are grateful to the international community notably France, the US, UK and China for their quick response in helping to tackle the recent Ebola outbreak in our sub-region. We also acknowledge the humanity shown by the Italian and German governments in the treatment of boat people, many fleeing from our sub-region because of lack of economic opportunity. We thank all our partners especially several countries in the EU.

We appreciate the valuable work that the UN agencies, particularly UNICEF, ICRC, the World Food Program have been doing. We must also appreciate the World Bank, the Gates Foundation, the Global Fund and Educate A Child of Qatar for the excellent work in our health, education and other sectors.

Fellow citizens let me end on a happy note. To the delight of all, two of the abducted Chibok girls have regained their freedom. During the last one year, not a single day passed without my agonizing about these girls. Our efforts have centred around negotiations to free them safely from their mindless captors. We are still pursuing that course. Their safety is of paramount concern to me and I am sure to most Nigerians. I am very worried about the conditions those still captured might be in. Today I re-affirm our commitment to rescuing our girls. We will never stop until we bring them home safely. As I said before, no girl should be put through the brutality of forced marriage and every Nigerian girl has the right to an education and a life choice.

I thank you and appeal to you to continue supporting the government’s efforts to fix Nigeria.

COURT THROWS OUT BUHARI’S APPLICATION TO STOP SCHOOL CERTIFICATE CASE TRIAL

2016-05-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

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COURT THROWS OUT BUHARI’S APPLICATION TO STOP SCHOOL CERTIFICATE CASE TRIAL

The Honorable Justice Ademola Adeniyi sitting at the Federal High Court 7, Abuja on Thursday 26th, May 2016 dismissed the Preliminary Objections filed by President Muhammadu Buhari in the case instituted against him, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/110/2015 by an Abuja based Legal Practitioner, Barr. Nnamdi Nwokocha-Ahaaiwe challenging his competence to stand election into the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria when he lacks the basic educational qualifications set out in the Constitution.

The development has reportedly thrown the Nigerian presidency into disquiet as President Buhari and his handlers greeted the ruling with shock, as very few Nigerians including members of Buhari’s government realized the case was still in court.

According to an informed source on the development, the ruling has caught the Buhari presidency unawares and has posed a big distraction for government activities at the Villa. “Nobody even knew the case was still on. The story was not even reported in the mainstream media. No paper carried the Thursday ruling.

But I can tell you the Presidency is rattled and seriously hoping that the case does not resurface again in the public domain because of the huge embarrassment it could cause the President. But more importantly, there are concerns about the safety of the judge and the plaintiff”, the source disclosed.

Recall that in February 2015, Nnamdi Nwokocha-Ahaaiwe, Esq. filed an Originating Summons at the Federal High Court, Abuja praying the Court to among others declare that Buhari is unqualified to aspire to the position of President not having sat for the Secondary School Certificate and also deposing to a false affidavit about his educational qualifications contrary to the Electoral Act.

Buhari and the APC instead of entering a defence on the merits and exhibiting any educational certificates obtained by Buhari, tried to frustrate the hearing of the case by filing several objections to the competence of the action.

President Buhari reportedly retained over twenty SANs led by Chief Wole Olanipekun, Chief Akin Olujinmi, Femi Falana, etc., who for over one year now have failed to file any defence for Buhari or APC but instead used every trick in the book to delay the case.

But on Thursday, the Hon. Justice Ademola Adeniyi in his ruling on the case, dismissed all applications by the defendant as totally lacking in merit. He held that the suit filed by Nnamdi Nwokocha-Ahaaiwe was competent and the service on Buhari and APC was also competent.

He thereafter adjourned the case to the 16th day of June 2016 for hearing of the substantive Originating Summons to determine whether Buhari’s educational qualifications meets the minimum standards required by the Constitution.

According to reports made available to the press, only the counsel to INEC was in Court, the plaintiff was absent but wrote to the Court explaining that he received notice of the date for the ruling the previous night and was out of town and could not make it. APC (2nd Respondent) and Buhari (3rd Respondent) were absent, were not represented and did not write to Court.

WILL NIGERIA DISINTEGRATE? Treats of breakup is common place

2016-05-24T13:22:00.002-07:00

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WILL NIGERIA DISINTEGRATE?
Treats of breakup is common place

It is with great pain that I chose the above caption; will Nigeria disintegrate? Another question that bothers my mind is; what is the problem with Nigeria. President Buhari claims that Nigerians are corrupt and I chose to ask Mr.President 'how corrupt are you?' The big problem with Nigeria is that Mr. President chose to be economical withe truth. Truth is Mr. President is richer than he claims to be and the next question is how did he make his money? I don't know.

The international communities know that most past Nigerian leaders are corrupt and those in government today are as corrupt. These are the people that sulked Nigerian oil wealth in the past. They are stupendously rich yet they don't have legitimate business doing.

Now to the question that made me pick my pen; the reason for agitation in some quarters for the break up of Nigeria. I know that ninety percent (90%) of Nigerians don't know how many oil wells existing in the country neither do they know much the country makes from oil. It is a pity. Every youth in Nigeria believes that Nigeria is rich and as such non is supposed to suffer but reverse is the case herein. I read the below piece and I felt I should cry for Nigeria. Treat of breakup of the country is common place and I wonder why now. Read a sample of the treat below:

The militant group known as the Isoko Liberation Movement has threatened war unless certain demands, including the disintegration of Nigeria, are met.
In an email Entitled Peaceful Disintegration or War, Spoke Man Of The Group ,Com Paul Iziakpono Said..
” We the Members of Isoko Liberation Movement, after much consultations with our fellow Brothers in the struggle for the peaceful disintegration of this fraud called Nigeria Wish to Issue the Following Statement.
We Identify with the Niger Delta Advengers, the Red Egbesu Water Lions and all fellow Agitators in The Struggle for the actualization of Niger Delta Republic
We Commend and Support our Fellow Brothers (IPOB) and their peace struggle to the actualization of the Baifra Republic. But we wish to let them know that peace and lengthy litigation’s will not yield any result in this corrupt and wicked Islamic Government controlled by an illiterate old fool.
We advise all Niger Deltan’s still living in the northern and western part of the country to return home within seven days as their safety cant not be guaranteed after then.
We advise the Buhari Lead Government to as a matter of urgency call a national conference to discuss the peaceful disintegration of Nigeria or standby and watch the country sink.
We are giving the Buhari Lead Government of this fraud called Nigeria seven Days to Release IPOB Leader kanu Nnamdi or we shall rain hell on all oil installation within the Isoko Land.
For all those Isoko politicians who thinks they want to work with the Nigeria government to fish us out, our advise for you is watch your back, for we know all your every move.
Finally we really do not think that any Isoko sons or daughter’s blood is worth spilling, so please stay out of our way.”

The Chibok girl - truth or scam

2016-05-22T06:18:00.001-07:00

The Chibok girl - truth or scam

A girl abducted 14th - 15th April 2014, was rescued with her 15 months old baby by May 2016. She must have been pregnant before her abduction.

She was to have written her SSCE by 2014 and should have been about 17 years old then, today she is about 17 years old. Having gone through secondary school education, she ought to understand, write and speak simple English language, today she doesn't understand nor speak simple English language.

She was given or handed over to a Boko Haram commander in marriage, today she and same Boko Haram commander are being celebrated by Nigerian officials, the wife of the President and indeed the President himself.

Kudos to Nigerian military for rescuing a Chibok girl and giving us a new story.

Abraham Lincoln said 'You can fool some people all the time and all the people some of the times but you can't fool all the people all the time.

Another story Jaree. Second base my brother.

Nigerian Ministers Are Noise Makers; Buhari

2015-09-20T13:39:00.003-07:00

Nigerian Ministers Are Noise Makers; Buhari

France 24 TV asked President Buhari; if the lack of a finance minister was not hurting Nigeria’s economy. “No,” he replied. “The ministers are there, I think, to make a lot of noise – for the politicians to make a lot of noise. But the job is being done by the technocrats.”

We enjoy mental escapism believing that giving a bad condition some form of good name will change the condition but this is not always the truth.

Why do Nigerians want to impress it on President Mohammadu Buhari to appoint ministers or to use the president’s on words “noise makers’’ to form his cabinet. We have a very intelligent man as president; who can do all things and manage all things all by himself, so why expect him to appoint noise makers whom he knows won’t do any work but make noise and distract his wonderful vision for the country.

If Mr. President believes that these ministers are noise makers. It connotes that he can’t trust them enough to move his visions forward. He does not believe in delegations of people into political authorities. He does not see the need for a large number of people running the affairs of government. Mr. President knows that he can sit back at ASO ROCK and give directives to the technocrats and they will deliver the necessary democratic dividends to all Nigerians. He will always supervise them from his office.

Mr. President as a former minister (Minister of petroleum) and a former noise maker knows that ministers don’t achieve anything. They are nothing but noise makers.

Mr. President you're appreciated..

REASON WHY OBASANJO DIDN'T SUPPORT JONATHAN

2015-02-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

REASON WHY OBASANJO DIDN'T SUPPORT JONATHAN

I have been wondering why Chief Olusegun Obasanjo hates Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency. The question is; what went wrong? To try to answer this question, I want to look at a few areas vis-à-vis the past and the present.

During the time of General Obasanjo as Nigeria military head of state, he had late General Shehu Musa Yar’dua; the then chief of staff supreme military council as his number two man.
The two men were later to go to prison under General Abacha. Both had felony charges against them. They were accused of having hands in an attempted coup d’état against Late General Abacha. While Obasanjo survived the prison, Shehu Musa Yar’adu was not that lucky; he died at Abakaliki prisons.

Obasanjo was later to be compensated with the presidency. When his time was up, he needed to also compensate the family of Yar’adu and late Umoru Musa Yar’adua; the then gorvernor of Katsina state was the bride. Obasanjo’s sole effort brought him to Aso Rock. He was a man of good heart but death cut him short. I am convinced he had a good heart as president of Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Yar’adu’s vice president Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was not meant to succeed him had he completed his tenure. One important thing though was the fact that Obasanjo chose Dr. Goodluck Jonathan because he needed a man who will be humble and who is not ambitious as vice president for Yar’adua; who was known to be a humble and easy going person but without the knack for extended pressure. Chief Obasanjo in his wisdom would have thought of the jeopardy that would have trailed Yar’dua presidency if he was matched with a strong personality as his vice president. Therefore, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s vice presidency was a deliberate act of compromise.

I herein believe that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was chosen not because he had shown good leadership qualities but because of his meek character. A character that made Obasanjo believed he was an easy push.
Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency is purely the work of fate. The same man that oiled the wheel of fate for him is today in strong opposition of his character and ambition. The question I chose to ask is ‘WHY?’

The code was broken immediately Dr. Goodluck Jonathan ascended the presidency. He knows the game plan so he changed it. He knows that his chief benefactor is in regrets and as such would not want him to continue.
Not wanting Dr. Jonathan as president, I believe was the reason Chief Obasanjo did not and will not support his bid for a second term.

Another angle to the question is; why is General Buhari the new choice of Chief Obasanjo for the presidency of Federal Republic of Nigeria? I don’t think I have good reasons for a good answer to the above question. However I want to look at it piece by piece.

General Buhari was ousted in a coup-d'état orchestrated by General Babangida and his boys.
From the above, Chief Obasabjo may want to compensate General Buhari for the lost time. He may want him to occupy Aso Rock so the compensation could go round. I don’t think this is a good answer.

Maybe Chief Obasanjo wants to punish Dr, Jonathan for not listening to him even when he wrote an open letter to him.

Another might be that Chief Obasanjo considers Buhari a colleague who deserves to be compensated. He might be thinking that he deserves something better than the PTF. I also don’t see this as good answer.

Could it be that Chief Obasanjo wants to hold on to something having seen that Dr. Jonathan is no longer a boy he could trust. Maybe it is because Dr. Jonathan is a bloody civilian who didn’t know the sacrifice they the Generals made to keep Nigeria as a one indivisible country. It is better to dig it the Military Generals way; shon sir! A General is always a General; General Buhari and General Obasanjo. I think this is a better pair or may be a good answer.

Let me conclude this piece by leaning on good advice:
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln

2013-10-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

1. The Lord is my provider; I am abundantly blessed.
2. He prospers me beyond imaginations; He gives me the peace that is above all understanding.
3. He restores my soul; He guides me towards righteousness, to honour and to love Him.
4. For the truth, even if I am faced with the greatest of dangers and death: I will never be afraid; for the Lord is with me, His presence is my greatest assurance.
5. The Lord blesses me even to the surprise of my enemies; my enemies look on with shame even as God's blessings overwhelms me and even as I attract all that I need in riches and prosperity: Lord, You've made me king; I have all that I need in excess abundance.
6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will be in the presence of God forever.

Violence begets violence

2013-05-20T15:32:00.000-07:00

I want to begin this write up by asking these questions; how do you feel when people die? How do you feel when you see someone cry? Let the questions go thus; how do you feel when someone cry or die as a result of your actions?

These questions hit me on the face day in day out when I see someone or group of people perpetuate actions that lead to others suffering, actions that result to body injuries or even loss of lives. Today, we live in environment where some people feel good killing others. We are faced with the unthinkable and unspeakable. Man inhumanity to man is unfathomably unbalancing the scale of life. The media is filled with the stories of wars and warnings of wars. People take pleasure in the killings of fellow humans. Hostages and abductions of innocent people jump the scale. Then the question; is this the world we are dreaming for ourselves?

Some people may have reasons for turning to violence but what reasons do they have in killing people or making others feel pain. I still don’t believe there is any reason for extreme violence. Yes as humans, we may sometimes loose control of our emotions but this may not be enough to let loose of our cannibalistic instincts. If we truly believe that life is sacred and that only God can give life then we should also know that it is big wrong to destroy what we can never create. Our world is fast decaying and peace is melting to oblivion but one man could change all these…

One major reason why these are happening is our desire for revenge. We want to revenge the wrongs done to our family members, our friends, our community or our religious group. Revenge in our societies is the reason why violence is cyclic. Revenge has never healed any wound it only deeps to sore and resonates the multiplier effects that creates a continuum. One man could change all these…

Another reason is found in people who use violence as diplomatic tool. Bombing is the order of the day. Bombs against civilians and other targets in peace time is unspeakable but that is happening in our time. Who is to be blamed for all these? I see religious leaders in their hamlets giving commands to faceless and brainwashed followers on how to destroy the world. There is ongoing war between religions and politic. This unconventional warfare has pitched religious devotes against the state. The result is violence in day time and all times. Innocent citizens are sacrificed just to gain the attention of people in government. Children are killed in the hands of their mothers just to start off diplomatic solutions. Our world is decaying but one man could stop all these…

When next you perpetuate your wickedness, walk across the streets and feel the pains of those you killed their loved ones. Stretch your hands and feel the hands of the innocents whose lives you’ve melted away. Remember violence begets violence. I believe that one man could stop all these…

Now that the page is written, let us find peace. In the deepest of our hearts, let us find peace. Only one man could help us achieve a non-negotiated peace. Peace without preconditions is the only peace that wipes away fears and gives no room for revenge. Only one man could change all these… only one man… that man is you. I believe you could change all these.

WORLD WITHOUT PEACE

2012-03-09T12:02:00.000-08:00

ISLAND OF CULTURE - poem

2012-02-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

Island of culture
Facial neutrality equals ignorance
Those who know the truth have refused to talk;
Lest them be denied of cakes baked on greedy oven
And fired with our blood.

Stupidity leads to dominance
But who shall ever be stupid?
Other than elders of the land
Who were shown the reminiscence mark of how they were saved and non of how they were killed.
They see the bread but not the syringe
Nor the vampire's pipe buried deep into our veins.

Only the lords celebrate their birthdays
They are the few in whose tent we're forced to entrust our tents.
They steal from us
And borrow for us when there is nothing to steal
Only to steal what they've borrowed.

They found friends on these vultures wheeling over our bones;
On the big shinning bellies of our children they wait for a meal.
Like the lords, they grow fat on our pain.

A new one; helmeted Agbada.
Zero-corruption forms the creed
(same creed endorsed by greed)
Yet the commanders race to empty the treasury.
From our grass houses,
We watch them on banquet atop their glass houses
Their siren and matching guns scare us and some of our heroes to their graves.

Island of culture
Every heart hope engraved
One day;
A every house shall name a revolutionary
To write a new creed by the people for the people.
That day, this yoke on our weak necks shall be broken
And this army of young scavengers shall go home to their teachers.
That day, from the Sahara to the bank of the Niger,
We shall sing the rhapsody of a people freed.

MY PRAYER - Poem

2012-02-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

Oh God, look upon my faith
And heal my fate
Let me not be confused by the religious
Whose claims are outrageous
Let me never to walk in the shadow of death
Lest my heart die from the fear of death
Guide me through to greener pastures
And open my eyes to diverse cultures.
Fill my day with the desires of my heart
And my world with wonderful works of art
Let me dwell in your presence
That I may continually feel your essence

Let my tongue be blessed
That upon my words you people shall be blessed
Bless the works of my hands
And let every culture see them as tools in their hands.

As I continue on this journey
Be my attorney
Defend me
From them that persecute me
Let my eyes not see the destruction of war
Nor my ears the drums of war

Bless our nation
And wipe away her commotion
Give our leaders a new vision
That will lead them to their mission
Above all,
Grant me the strength to give you my all

Amen.

LOST ON THE WINGS - poem

2012-02-23T13:25:00.000-08:00

LOST ON THE WINGS

Bleeding ears aching for peace
Boom boom bang
Peace hide
Little sharp metals
Opening skins to free blood
Expire our freedom.
Everyday, one week, two weeks
Looking at peace so solid to melt
Thirsty ears cried.

Boom boom bang
Trained men in metal berets
Gangs of restless and ruthless
Celebrating on our tables of pain.

How long will our frontiers weep
And our streets soaked in blood?
Friendly enemies in soft berets spreading across Sudan
Corrupt corrupting corruption.

How long?
War in our bedrooms
Cables share our gratitude
Gratitude for serving us wars but little cake.

Blame the war merchants
Plead with our brothers with girdles of death and masked faces
To fill the air with peace.

Oh! my little baby cries;
Could her little tears be flood enough against wars?
That her consciousness will never know war
And her friends never see war
But hand-shake across continents.

when love flies away - Poem

2012-02-22T14:42:00.002-08:00

When love flies away

See beyond me
a sinful man
caught.
Doing things that squeeze the heart
breaking promises
emotions uncontrolled.
Close your eyes
my heart
I’m home.
Remember the promise
hand in hand
nature sings.
Kisses
Warmth
Emotions

A pinch of love
enough to share
just us.
Before my fall
our first date
remember?
We promised;
blind to mistakes
gossips
fault.

Me; a sinful soul
back
to my promise.
Unlock the door
Shelter my wild soul
You promised a home
Am back
Empty handed
Just love.

Thank you my love

hope - Poem

2012-02-22T14:37:00.000-08:00

HOPE

The arms of the risen sun pierced through the clouds
Our lit faces rejoiced
And from the distance, some shouting voices echoed; “hope at last”
Hope at last
Hope as the ageless dark cloud over our tents starts to melt
Revealing clots of tears that time crystallized

We could see through the streets
Even men whose pains are heavy stole a smile
The homeless, kids scavenging through the bins, the amputees who had no sins but drove through the trap; the very unlucky ones are long rested in their graves,
Even the workers whose take home couldn’t take home
All glued to their radios
Votes are counted
“Hope at last”.

Hope that young Azikiwe would grant us our freedom and sustain this JEGAishness
Hope that promises will be kept
Hope that the power holders will at least light our bulbs
Hope that our school gates are not to be closed again
Hope that vultures don’t feast on our highways
Just hope.

Hope that these dry taps will be tapped for moisture
Hope that our school leavers will stand to live
Hope that our youths who went out to serve are not served to their graves
Hope that like the old Azikiwe, we don’t see the boom then the doom
Just hope.

Hope that those in whose tents we trust our tents are not the only ones celebrating their birthdays
“Hope at last”
Just hope.

Papa, a great man - Poem

2012-02-22T14:34:00.001-08:00

PAPA; A GREAT MAN.

Just this morning
I woke up and
The children were
Disagreeing on faces;
Who has father’s face?
My daughter’s voice on the ceiling.

Their voices echoed through my mind
Searching for my father’s
Through the pages.
All I could see was mound of clay
Played on by the elements.
No marble
No epitaph
Except the one written on my mind;
‘Here sleeps a great man’.

Papa left without a print
Nor a mark on canvas
Mama said he had
But all was lost
Before the soldiers left the trenches.

I could hear her story;
''We returned home
Some returnees met their homes burnt
Some with holes defaced with our hero’s blood
And a few lucky ones standing were without treasure.
Papa left soon after.
There was no doctor to say
‘I am sorry’
Nor a nurse to clean our wounds’’.

From mama’s story;
On nimble feet
Not knowing that papa had set on a journey
I searched for him.
With the passing years,
All I could find was vegetation
And sweet songs descending from the trees
When mama was not there
To tell me a story.
It is always painful trying to find papa’s face
Through this foggy landscape
Never registered for a recall.

As my mind echoes through the void
Shouting ’papa, papa’
I could hear him call ‘my son’
I feel my feeble body
In the cloak of his arm as
He looks into my eyes
Telling me his story.
I believe he never knew
The journey was for a while.

His friends say
He was a great dancer.
He came to the stage
Performed,
But left when the theater was half full
Leaving me with different designs of his face
Buried in friendly tales.

This is the face I have
Of my papa;
A great man.