Jan. 15th 1966: A Night of Blood & Slaughter by Femi Fani-Kayode

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