After the Coup | Major Patrick Nzeogwu & Major Timothy Onwuatuegwu | Kaduna | No Sound | Jan 1966

January 1966.

Footage of Major Patrick Nzeogwu and Major Timothy Onwuatuegwu speaking to the foreign press after the coup of January 15 at the Headquarters of the Nigerian Army 1st Brigade in the northern city of Kaduna.

The 29-year-old Nzeogwu, who announced the coup on radio on January 15th, took control of Kaduna and the Northern Region. But the coup failed elsewhere and so on January 19th, he pledged his loyalty to the head of the army, Major General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi.

Nzeogwu would later give himself up and be placed in detention.

The mutiny would have great ramifications for the country.

Most of the political and military figures who were murdered during its execution were from the Northern and Western regions, while the coup itself had been orchestrated mainly by ethnic Igbos such as Major Nzeogwu. In the following months would develop a climate of mistrust in the army and fears in the wider population that the coup had been a plot designed to establish the political hegemony of Igbos.

A second mutiny in July, which was orchestrated by Northern soldiers led to mass assassinations of soldiers from the Eastern region, while anti-Igbo pogroms were launched in May (following the promulgation by Ironsi of a decree changing Nigeria from a federation to a unitary state) and in the latter part of September and early October.

The concatenation of violence would culminate in a civil war fought from July 1967 to January 1970 between federal Nigeria and the secessionist state of Biafra which was created out of the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region of Nigeria.

NB.

On January 15th, Major Nzeogwu led the operation in which the Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto who was Premier of the Northern Region, was assassinated while Major Onwuatuegwu led troops to the home of Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun who was killed along with his wife.

Both men were detained by the Ironsi regime and had not faced a military tribunal at the time of the reprisal coup six months later.

They were released on the orders of Lieutenant Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, the military governor of the soon-to-secede Eastern Region. Both were absorbed into the army of the secessionist state of Biafra.

Nzeogwu was killed during an ambush by Federal Nigerian Army soldiers on July 29th 1967.

The Nigerian Military head of State Major General Yakubu Gowon described him as a "misguided but gallant officer" and granted him a military funeral in Kaduna.

Onwuatuegwu became a prominent commander during the civil war.

His death is still something of a mystery.

One version of his death posits him as having been killed on the Cameroon border by Northern soldiers as payback for the murder of the Sardauna of Sokoto.

Another version claims that soldiers of Yoruba origin lured him to his death at a hotel in Owerri as payback for the murders respectively of Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, Ademulegun's wife, as well as Colonel Ralph Shodeinde.

A third version provides that he was killed by Brigadier Hassan Katsina in Kirikiri Prison, Lagos. Katsina is supposed to have flown from Kaduna to put a bullet in Onwuatuegwu's forehead.

Ben Gbulie's "Fall of Biafra" offers a slightly different narrative which puts the location of his execution as Enugu prison. Onwuatuegwu was supposedly shot with 2 other captured Biafran army officers after been betrayed by certain civilians from Nnewi, the home town of the Head of State of the secessionist state of Biafra. Ignatius Ebbe's book "Broken Back Axle: Unspeakable Events in Biafra" claims his betrayers were part of the wider "Osu conspiracy" of sabotage which "caused" Biafra's eventual defeat. The Osu are an untouchable caste in traditional Igbo society.

Audio.

Major Nzeogwu Speaks about the Night he killed the Sardauna
   • Major Nzeogwu Speaks about the Night ...  

Blog Article.

Roll Call of Death: The Tragedy Of A Fair Number of West African Military Officers Who Graduated From Sandhurst http://adeyinkamakinde.blogspot.com/2...