Elias concluded that NPC¬NNDP held the mandate not the NCNC and so the most senior NPC politician should fill the post of the Prime Minister. The NCNC ministers disagreed arguing that it should be the most senior minister in the cabinet, not merely in the party, and with Mbadiwe as the acting PM, the government was still that of the missing Abubakar. Then the rancour resumed. Ironsi sat there watching and listening not like a sphinx in Egypt guarding the pyramids but like a terrible judgement that would soon find its word.
Meanwhile earlier that morning, around 8:30 am, at the Parliament buildings at Onikan, the legislators converged in the open air. Out of 312 parliamentarians, only 33 were present. Few knew a coup was on going. One of them was R.N. Okafor. He was only appointed the Minister of State for Trade the previous day by Abubakar after months of lobbying by Mbadiwe the senior minister. Okafor was the chairman of ceremonies planning whose efforts culminated in a 3-day extravaganza to commission Mbadiwe’s Palace of the People at Arondizuogu in Orlu three weeks earlier. He was also with Mbadiwe on 3-4th January at the secret meeting the NCNC parliamentary leadership had with Dauda Adegbenro, their UPGA partner and AG’s acting Leader at Dr Okpara’s residence in Enugu. In the absence of the Speaker, the Deputy speaker, Benjamin Nzeribe observed there was no quorum – only 33 mostly NCNC 312 members of the House were present – Okafor then moved for the adjournment of the House “in view of the incidents of the last few hours”. The parliament was adjourned and would remain adjourned for the next 13 years. The whole pre-determined proceedings took less than is minutes. They then moved to Mbadiwe’s residence in 1koyi where they were told that there was going to be an emergecy Cabinet meeting at the Force HQ.
After the rancorous emergency meeting ended with the NPC and NNDP ministers vowing to kick start the process of swearing in Dipcharima, Ironsi called Njoku and asked him to summon Gowon and other senior officers to the Force HQ which had become the Joint Operations Centre through the efforts of the British expatriates of the Police at the HQ: Leslie Alfred Marsden, the acting Inspector General of Police, George Duckett, Assistant Superintendent of Police, and Arthur Stacey Barham, Assistant Commissioner of Police. They were all included in the Queen’s Birthday honours later in June for their effort in keeping Nigeria united and containing the bloodshed.
However, a month later the full-scale massacres started. Meanwhile, at exactly 5:45am, Marsden, went to the British Deputy High Commissioner D.E Hawley’s Bourdillon Road residence to alert him that a coup was going on. He went again at 10:45am after flying to Ikeja to procure Ironsi and Njoku. He said the hierarchy of the Police Force was loyal but they were not sure of the loyalty of the Armed Forces. And so to harmonise loyalties, it was best, argued Marsden, Duckett and Barham to establish a Joint Operations Centre at the Force HQ where there was no fear renegade soldiers would burst in to abduct or shoot anyone. FBC endorsed the place by agreeing to meet Dipcharima only at the Force HQ. Dipcharima had no choice but to move the council of ministers’ meeting there.
Marsden again later went to inform the British diplomats that Ironsi and his officers were planning to take over the government and he and Barham were asked to write the takeover speech and Ironsi’s provisional statement of policy. According to the report FBC later wrote to London, Barham who was an assistant superintendent of police in Palestine used a Palestine precedent and Ironsi’s speech ended up resembling the one Nzeogwu gave the previous day without the fatwas on homosexuality, bribery, rumour mongering etc etc. In the middle of the night of Ironsi’s takeover, Marsden again went to advice FBC that to have an edge for British interests, he should be the first to pay Ironsi a symbolic visit in the morning. This FBC promptly did to confirm they were not backing up the North but any one in power.
The Inspector General of Police, the 54-year-old Louis Orok Edet was on holiday at his native home in Calabar. Edet joined the police force as a mere clerk in 1932 and rose through the ranks after helping the colonial police track down ritualists who beheaded human beings for cultural sacrifices. Edet was roundly criticised by his villagers for joining “the enslavers,” “imperialists,” “colonial exploiters,” the destroyers of native cultures.” His villagers never saw anything wrong or inhuman in the beheadings; it was the generational preservation of their ancestral culture that mattered. When he was appointed as the first indigenous IG in 1964, given his background, he was sceptical of the call for rapid Nigerianisation of Police. He refused to terminate the contract of the several colonial officers still within the top hierarchy of the police force.
With the politicians gone after their rancorous Cabinet meeting, Ironsi summoned all the senior officers alive in Lagos for an emergency meeting. Commodore Wey, the head of the Navy, Lt Colonels Victor Banjo, the head of NAMAE in Yaba, Lt Colonel Francis Fajuyi, head of the Abeokuta Garrison, Lieutenant Colonels Gowon and Njoku were all there. Ironsi narrated the coup as he knew it and Gowon narrated his effort to rally the army under him, find the abducted politicians and officers. Excepting Gowon who kept on maintaining that the army should avoid political leadership, the consensus was that this was the army’s opportunity and Ironsi as the head of the army should not waste it. As Njoku later wrote of that day in his book Tragedy Without Hero he told Ironsi during the earlier tete–a–teteat Ikeja to take over the affairs the state; that the younger officers may actually be doing the nation a favour. Njoku knew that in Chinese language, crisis and opportunity meant the same thing. That confirmed earlier Gowon’s suspicion that Ironsi and Njoku showed zero zeal to liquidate the mutiny. They sat down faraway safely in 1keja until the British expatriates came to pick them up by helicopter.
To Banjo, the young officers had apparently provided the boots on the ground for the takeover, it was totally unfair that only senior officers should enjoy the seats at the table. He then went further to suggest that Nzeogwu who with his broadcast had emerged as the face of the coup must be invited to join the proposed Supreme Military Council. Ironsi said the Ministers were on their way to the Ikoyi Crescent home of the Senate President to arrange the swearing in. They must be stopped.
On Sunday 16 January around noon, Shehu Shagari, Richard Akinjide and some other NPC-NNDP ministers waited in Senate President’s sitting room. At the other side of Ikoyi, Dipcharima was at his Bourdillon Road residence awaiting the outcome. Then came FBC, the British High Commissioner who withdrew the promise of transmitting the request for British security to the Commonwealth office in Downing Street and had a gentleman’s pact with Dipcharima to deny such a request was ever made. The Ministers still sat there with the Senate President not knowing that the need for the office of the Acting Prime Minister had been voided. Had the request not been made, it was not likely that Ironsi would have been motivated to seize power then. The Senate President who also was the acting President and Head of Government continued to work the phones upstairs away from the ministers. He was struggling to get in touch with Azikiwe who was recuperating in the UK after contracting a lung infection during his holidays.
But something mysterious was happening
Late on Saturday, 15th January, at his Surrey hotel, Azikiwe heard the news of the disappearance of the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister and the death of two premiers on the BBC. The details of who did what were yet to emerge. The coup plotters had shut down the telephone exchange and all external communications facilities. In fact, at the private meeting between Ironsi and FBC on 17th January, Ironsi narrated how he was lucky to escape death because Pam phoned him around 3:00am that a mutiny was ongoing. FBC later wrote that he doubted if a phone call was possible at the time because some of their diplomats living in Ikoyi heard gunshots and the menacing troop movements. They tried to contact their High Commission for security assurance but the phones were down. Unlike Ibadan telephone exchange that was fully automatic, Lagos telephone exchange was partially automatic and when Major Ademoyega’s unit arrived to relieve the manual connectors of their posts, the automatic exchange to which all officers’ lines emanated was still connecting calls for 20 minutes in the basement before Ademoyega’s men finally reached it and shut it down. That 20 minutes window gave Pam the opportunity to warn Maimalari and Ironsi. If not for Pam, Ironsi and Maimalari – two high value targets – would have been slaughtered in their respective residence. The rebels would have consolidated their QH at the Federal Guards officer’s mess and commenced the second phase. Pam’s quick call was instrumental to the failure of the Revolution.
Betty Emery, Azikiwe’s private secretary arrived at the Nigerian High Commission in London from “Suite of the President of Nigeria, Burford Bridge hotel, Box Hill in Dorking, Surrey” where Azikiwe was recuperating on public finance. She brought a letter stamped Top Secret that Azikiwe wanted transmitted to Lagos. His usual hotel phones and cablegram facilities were avoiding Lagos and so he sent Miss Emery to the Nigerian High Commission in London, But the High Commission too was having problems connecting to Lagos so in company of Mr Dosunmu, the Acting high commissioner and Brigadier Ogundipe his military attaché, Emery proceeded to the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) in Downing Street to connect with the British High Commission in Lagos. They arrived there at around 4pm. British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson who left Nigeria three days before the Revolution had given Arthur Bottomley the CRG’s secretary of state up to 8pm to submit a report of what happened in Nigeria, how they were caught unawares and what could be done to locate their friend and ally Sir Tafawa Balewa Abubakar. FBC had already forwarded a long preliminary report of what they knew so far and whom was currently steering the affairs of the nation. The DI 4(a), Defence Intelligence under the Ministry of Defence and Col Hunt the military adviser had been tasked to find how an operation of such scale eluded British spies. Nigeria had been extra vetted for security in order that the Queen’s cousin, Prince William of Gloucester could serve at the High Commission there. Nigeria held Britain’s fourth largest diplomatic outpost in the world.
St John Chadwick an Assistant Under-Secretary at the CRO was the first to notice to whom Azikiwe’s letter was addressed. He gently corrected Emery/Azikiwe’s ignorance saying when next they wanted to send a letter to the person running the country, they should address it to Zanar Dicharima, c/o Council of Ministers and not to Major General Aguiyi Ironsi. But Azikiwe knew something they did not know.
The letter was striking more for what it did not contain. The Prime Minister and Finance Minister and some top officers were missing; Akintola and Sardauna had been confirmed dead. Azikiwe offered no word about how the abducted would be found or commiseration with the family of the deceased. He only asked Ironsi to clue him into any decision, “Constitutional or otherwise” and expressed his wish to come home immediately. The CRO diplomats advised him not to go. He would later arrive the country on 12 February 1966, two days before Ifeajuna and proceeded straight to Nsukka after the takeover of his State House Mansion by Ironsi on 26th January. At a dinner party held for Sir Kerr Sovell the outgoing Inspector of Police in 1962, Abubakar told Sovell sitting next to him that: “When there is trouble you can always tell it because Zik will not be there – he will be in England, or America, or somewhere. He always thinks he is going to be assassinated, but he won’t be.” He then told Azikiwe seated on the other side: “Your Excellency, I am Muslim, and if it is the will of God for me to be shot, I’ll be shot.” Abubakar was so much like Shaihu Umar the hero of his eponymous novella.
Orizu had been using all excuses to deny the ministers their request to swear Dipcharima in. First he told the ministers that he would not be able to oblige their request because the absence of NCNC ministers implied their lack of consent. When eventually some NCNC ministers were produced, Orizu buried himself in a side room and was trying to call Azikiwe on a phone line that was not working. Ironsi then turned up in the sitting room with his menace-looking armed bodyguards. He requested to have a word with Orizu in his side room and for 40 minutes the ministers were patiently waiting for them. The presence of the soldiers terrified them. Was it not their colleagues that had wrecked lives and wreaked havoc on the nation? The fear of being next to be killed or abducted loomed large over them. Ironsi emerged and left without saying a word to the ministers. Afterwards the Senate President emerged to tell them he would not be able to oblige their request; there was a new development. Without going into details, he dismissed the ministers and said they should await further instructions. The ministers were shocked; it was fishy that for six hours, Orizu dragged his feet but the secret meeting with the GOC portended something very, very ominous.
The truth was: Dr Abyssinia Akweke Nwafor Orizu being a crook should never have held any political office had Nigeria been a proper country. In 1946, Orizu presided over a new form of heartless fraud. Families and whole villages in the East sold their possessions to send a single student from their village to university because like Awolowo, they were passionate about the benefit of good education. Orizu a PhD holder, formed an agency, American Council on African Education (ACAE) to find these village students admission into American universities. He collected the maintenance funds from their parents and other sponsors and diverted them partly or totally to other personal and business schemes. In 1947, two prominent African Americans, Alain Locke and George Schulyer, resigned over Orizu’s conduct of affairs. Horace Mann Bond, the African American president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania who provided Orizu’s agency with many tuition-free scholarships complained regularly and bitterly about Orizu’s failure to financially support the students whom Orizu had placed in his school.
The 32-year-old Orizu was found out and on 2nd of February 1953 was arrested. Azikiwe, Mbonu Ojike and Kola Balogun went to bail him out. On 9th February, his brother Joseph Onyekusi Orizu was arrested in Gusau and taken to Port Harcourt. On 12th February both brothers were charged in a statement that read: “That you between May 1, 1946 and December 31, 1951 at Port Harcourt, in the Port Harcourt Magisterial District, conspired together with other persons unknown to defraud such person as might be induced to deposit money with you as officers and agents of a body known as the American Council on African Education Incorporated, and you thereby committed an offence punishable under the Criminal code.” When their lawyer told the court that Orizu was a honourable man, a PhD holder, a royal Prince in Nnewi, a member of the regional legislature, and also Azikiwe’s nominee for Minister of Local Government, Magistrate Dickson retorted:
“This court is not a department under the Government and it is not subject to any political party.” Orizu was later jailed for 7 years. On Tuesday 22nd September 1953, he arrived Lagos Prison by train under escort to serve his term. At the House of Commons debate of 29 April 1953, James Johnson the MP for Kingston upon Hull West berated Oliver Lyttelton, the secretary of Colonies for taking so long to arrest the Orizu brothers: “Is it not somewhat disgraceful that it has taken so long to investigate this case of defrauding parents and students?” Hence allowing him to cause untold hardship to his own people?
The so-called father of Nigerian nationalism and founder of NCNC, Hebert Macaulay was working in the Ministry of Land and Surveys when he was caught twice for diverting public lands for personal benefits. In 1914 he was convicted for forgery and in the second instance he was convicted for perjury. As an exconvict, he could not hold any elected office despite many pleas for pardon to first Lord Lugard and later to Donald Cameron the colonial governor who enabled elective politics in Nigeria. To Cameron who was then the warmest, friendliest governor with the Lagos high society, there was nothing politically-motivated in Macaulay’s conviction, it was pure criminality. Hence no pardon. His son, Oged (Ogedengbe) Macaulay lost his eligibility for elective office when in 1952 as a councillor on Lagos Town Council, he swindled J .M. Jazzar, the Lebanese transport magnate in Lagos by falsely pretending that he was in a position to influence the councillors of the Lagos Town Council to get him a bus route permit. (This was even different from the 1-year sentence handed him in 1950 for sedition and being a member of Zikist movement that promoted violence to achieve anti-colonial agenda). The logic behind the rule was that the government was a sacred job; if crooks were allowed to determine the destiny of the people, the people would suffer indefinitely.
But in the case of Orizu, who was the intellectual proponent of Zikism, Mbonu Ojike, Azikiwe, Mbadiwe started to entrench the false narrative that Orizu was convicted by the British colonial government not for embezzlement but as a revenge for his fiery anti-colonial speech given at the 1947 Enugu Coal riots rally. Never mind that more important figures such as H.O. Davies also gave fiery speeches at the rally too but were not fraudsters hence not fated for conviction by the colonial government. But in the case of Orizu, colonialism became the excuse for a crook to be turned into a national hero. Azikiwe made Orizu whole by nominating him unopposed to represent Nnewi in the Federal elections of 1959 that ushered in self-rule.
The existence of colonialism provided Nigeria’s moral system the perfect excuse to develop and strengthen the disdain for the objective perception of value on which any civilised society must rest. When colonialism expired in 1960, the disdain remained alive and thriving through the force of habit. In 1961, for instance, Dr Okejukwu Ikejiani, the prochancellor of University of Ibadan was caught lying about a certificate he never had. A visiting scholar from University of Toronto who happened to be from the same department which allegedly awarded Ikejiani’s certificate was the first to point out that Ikejiani never had that esteemed Doctor of Science degree. Ibadan erupted and there were calls for Ikejiani to resign and be prosecuted.
To Azikiwe who was the head of government, the visitor to the university and in charge of such appointments, said that Ikejiani was being “persecuted” because he, Azikiwe, had dared to appoint another Igbo after Francis Ibiam as the Pro-chancellor and head of the governing council of a flagship Federal University in a non-Igbo region in particular when the Vice chancellor was already an Igbo. Before departing Toronto University where he rightly earned his undergraduate medical degree, Ikejiani seduced and frequently unhooked the lovely secretary at the Vice Chancellor’s office until she embossed a Doctor of Science certificate in his name complete with authentic signatures but with no education behind it.
