“The immediate event behind the coup appears to have been a meeting between the Northern and Western Premiers, during which it was widely believed that the decision had been made to use the army to impose a drastic solution to the disorders precipitated by the Western Regional elections.”
Alan Feinstein, African Revolutionary, The Life and Times of Aminu Kano, Fourth Dimension, 1987, pp. 220
Apart from the Western Nigeria inferno, which, according to Moses Ihonde in his First Call, an Account of the Gowon Years, the election itself had been brazengly rigged, with women in various parts of the region discovered to be pregnant with ballot papers and even with funeral processions found to be conveying ballot papers in coffins. The people resorted to direct action since that Western government had effectively killed the constitutional process. In no time, the region had the singular infamy of being the most insecure part of the country. ‘Operation Wetie,’ as it was called became the symbol of that insecurity, as persons, vehicles and goods traveling by road through the South-west to the capital city of Lagos risked being wet with petrol and set ablaze.
That was in the West. In the Middle-belt Region of the North, a Daily Times report of HEADLINES, August 17, 2003, Vol. V, No 435, Soldiers Invade Tiv Land revealed that: “There had been violent disturbances in the Tiv Division in 1939, 1947 and in 1960. Early 1964 there were various suggestions as to the appropriate solution to the problem of the Tiv. But in November 1964, the Federal Government decided that something drastic and definite had to be done about the Tiv situation.”
The Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, sent into Tiv Division units of the Nigerian Army, who were to assist the police, who had been trying their best to maintain law and order and to ensure a return to normal life in the area as soon as possible. The reporter followed closely on the heels of the army units in order to see for himself what the situation in the Tiv Division was really like. He can only sum it up in these words: “It is terrible. It is frightening. It is dangerously explosive.”
“One had to be in the Tiv Division in order to feel the spine-chilling danger of poisoned arrows. Stories of the atrocities committed by the “Temtios” – that is what Tiv rioters are called and it means ‘break the head into pieces and make the blood curdle.’ Malam Tanko Yesufu, the Benue Provincial commissioner, is alive and he has been a recurring decimal in the tragic drama of the Nigerian floundering state.
Continuing, the Daily Times Tiv war riot correspondent observed that “trouble had broken out in Daudu village, a town about 35 miles north of Makurdi and an army detachment, consisting of two units was sent to put down the riot. The reporter followed this crack detachment into Daudu village. He was frightened …as the two army units rolled into action immediately they arrived at Daudu village. They surrounded the riot area and appealed to the rioters in their own dialect to surrender all the dangerous weapons they had. When the rioters failed to comply they threw smoke bombs to frighten them into submission….”
“The next riot area of the Tiv Division was Tombul, which is about 73 miles from Makurdi. This time the reporter was in greater danger. At Daudu village, he had the protection of the two army units. But he had no such protection on his journey to Tombul. He had been warned that the ordinary folks in the area were very suspicious of the army, the police and, unfortunately, prying cameramen. The air at Tombul was filled with stories of riots, arson and murder. Straight on his arrival, he visited one of the drinking places where he was told by one of the local inhabitants that some wounded policemen had been conveyed to Makurdi. He also saw two wounded policemen. One was shot in the eye with a poisoned arrow; the other was shot in the arm. From Tombul he went to Adikpo where many houses had been burnt down and he was informed that earlier some “Temtios” had murdered the village head.
In most of the Tiv Division, people had to carry a sign-tie green leaves to their bicycles, or their hands in order to be left unmolested. There was the pathetic story of a peasant, who forgot to do so. Some rioters reminded him of this by carving a leaf with a knife on the skin of his hand.” That was the situation in the Middle-belt and throughout the West before the emergence of the Nine Majors, who carried out the January 15 coup.
On the other side of the debate, the conservative North has always maintained that the January 15 coup was an Igbo coup led by Igbo officers, who upset the status quo. In his lecture in Memory of Ali Akilu, published by the New Nigerian, Saturday, January 23, 1982, Alhaji Liman Ciroma C.F.R, posited that “the 1966 coup was a deliberate and co-ordinated plan to bring the efforts of the then leaders of the North down and put an end to effective northern participation in government and other spheres of national life, such as the army. These were the only two sectors in public life with major northern involvement. Not the Civil Service, home or foreign affairs, banks, commerce, industry, the professions, etc. It is also difficult to rule out foreign connections,” he remarked.
Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate, was even more detailed in offering the content from which the tenseness of those days needs to be appreciated. “But there comes a moment when the committed must ask; do I accept the January 15 action or do I reject it? To reject it means two courses of action; immediate and public denunciation of the execution of January 15 and the demand for a restoration of the pre-January 15 position. The other choice; acceptance of the January basis was a demanding alternative made without some deep resentment, at least, for those who have been involved in the wider strategy of Western uprising. The army’s intervention was accepted gratefully because it anticipated the other army intervention planned by the Mafia-feudalist alliance to take place two days later… It was asking too much to accept that Akintola, recently returned from his decisive meeting with Sarduana had been shot dead, or that the diabolical schemes set between the two of them with Balewa’s direct consent had been forestalled by a preemptive strike.”- see Blood on the Niger, pp.223.
While Emmanuel Ifeajuna, the golden boy of the 50s generation was moved into action by the debacle he witnessed on the streets of Ibadan, Ijebu Ode, Shagamu, Ondo, Ikorodu, etc. Major Chris Anuforo refused orders from Colonel Pam to employ his recce unit and join in the scorch earth blitz against the courageous Tiv freedom fighters. Chris Anuforo, who, in 1966, had a Masters in Mathematics, in the face of the genocide against a defenseless people, on the spot in Gboko in 1964 made a commitment to move against that oppressive system.
He was the original leader of the January 15 revolution and he was the one, who converted his St. John’s Kaduna schoolmate, the charismatic Kaduna Chukwuma Nzeogwu. Their mission was to install the prisoner Chief Obafemi Awolowo the Prime Minister of Nigeria.