Fifty years after the first military coup that led to the killing of some top officials of the first indigenous civilian administration which include the Prime Minister, Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello, Premier of the Northern Region, among others, the second and only surviving wife of the late Prime Minister, has said his orderly led soldiers to the official residence of the Prime Minister in Lagos, and whisked him away on a journey from which he never returned.
80 year old Hajiya Jummai Abubakar Tafawa Balewa said though she and the Prime Minister’s first wife, Hajiya Zainab were in Bauchi when the incident happened in Lagos, his third and fourth wives, Hajiya Aisha and Hajiya Laraba, were with him in Lagos when soldiers came to the house late in the night, and took him away.
“The Prime Minister had four wives. I was the second. I married him when he was a Headmaster at the Present Kobi Primary school. The four of us used to rotate when he was the Prime Minister in Lagos. Two will go and stay with him in Lagos, while two will remain in Bauchi before we rotate after some time. On the day of the 15 January, 1966 incident, the third and fourth wives were with him in Lagos, and they told us everything that happened when they returned.
“His orderly who was an Igbo officer led soldiers into the house around 2am that night, and they went straight to his room and knocked. They told him that soldiers wanted to stage a coup and that he should follow them to safety. He said he wasn’t going anywhere and that he prefers to remain with his family, but they forced him to go with them. That was the last time they saw him. He said a short prayer and followed them. For six days, no one could tell us where he was.”
“But the morning after the coup, we all heard that the Premier of the Northern region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto had been killed. I was pregnant and the senior wife escorted me to the hospital for the antenatal check up. We were in the hospital when we heard that the Sardauna was killed, and the whereabouts of the Prime Minister was not known. Even when the corpse of our husband was discovered and brought to Bauchi seven days after he was killed, the same day our two mates that were living with him in Lagos were also brought to Bauchi. None of us was told about his death until all the four wives were assembled in this house in Bauchi,then they told us that he was dead,” she said.
Hajiya Jummai who said she has six living children for the late Prime Minister, said there was no form of special treatment accorded to them as wives of the Prime Minister, in terms of vehicles or motorcycles blaring sirens to clear the way for them, saying, “Even the Prime Minister was not enjoying that.
“No single woman came to us to seek for any favour of any kind, because we had nothing to do with governance. If you see women coming here they must be our relations and family friends, coming when we have events like naming ceremonies. We were very close to the wives of the late Ahmadu Bello. Those ones used to visit us. Some times when some close associates of the Prime Minister have something to celebrate in their houses, the first wife will go, but we had nothing to do with political or government events.
The late Prime Minister who was born in December, 1912, got a scholarship in 1945 to study in the Institute of Education of the University of London from 1945 to 1946, where he developed interest in politics and governance. On his return, he said, “I returned to Nigeria with new eyes, because I had seen people who lived without fear, who obeyed the law as part of their nature, who knew individual liberty.”
The Prime Minister and late Sir Ahmadu Bello jointly founded the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC) that started as a cultural group, before it transformed to become a political party in 1951. Tafawa Balewa was elected into the Colony’s Northern House of Assembly shortly after he returned from London in 1946, and later to the Legislative Assembly in 1947.
He became more popular in 1948 following his election as Vice President of the Northern Teachers Association, which was the first trade union in Northern Nigeria, before he became Minister of Works in 1952 before he was elected Chief Minister under the NPC in 1957.
Following the formation of a coalition government between his party, the NPC and the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroun (NCNC) led by Dr Nnamdi Azikwe, the Chief Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa became the Prime Minister when Nigeria got her independence for a four year term. He was re-elected for another term of four years as Prime Minister ,but was killed in 1966 before the expiration of his tenure in 1968.
Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who played a very active role in the formation of the defunct Organization of African Unity (OAU) which later became a rallying point for African countries, delivered a heartwarming speech in 1963 in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, during the maiden meeting of the organization, where he got a standing ovation from other African leaders.
A British acquaintance after listening to the speech described him as “Perhaps the perfect Victorian gentleman,” while other African leaders at the meeting tagged him “The Golden Voice of Africa.”
Alhaji Sule MBS was a chieftain of the defunct Northern Element Peoples’ Union (NEPU) that gave NPC a very good fight as the major opposition party in the Bauchi native authority. He said even when Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa won his election, NEPU did not congratulate him but they mourned his death.
“There was nothing like political thugs during our time. You do not need money to contest an elective position. All you require is a good record. We were using bicycles to go to remote areas for our campaigns, and that was why we were targeting people with bicycles, those operating commercial bicycles hiring outfits and repairers of bicycles, so that they can provide them for us to use for campaigns.
“Where we need money to print posters, we tax ourselves. We really criticize each other during the campaigns to win votes. We could easily say things like ‘Do not vote for NPC because they have no plans to improve your medical care, but we intend to build a dispensary 10 kilometers away from here.” You cannot hear insults like his father is this or that. Our total allegiance then was to party and not to the candidates.
“I knew the Prime Minister and he knew me. I have never contested for any elective office ,but I was prominent because I had followers. I never thought of decamping from the NEPU because I knew I will not fit into any other party. Then, I spent my days and nights thinking of what to say to the electorate, to convince them to vote and support NEPU.
“Throughout the period he was the Prime Minister, he never did anything to deal with us, because we were a strong opposition. He focused on governance and we kept opposing. But when he was killed, we mourned him and some of us even wept. But politically, we had no meeting point. Each party was on its own,” he said.
81 year old Alhaji Hamidu Noma is an Azare based retired teacher who was a student at the defunct Bauchi Middle school in 1943, which is now the Kobi Primary school, when late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was the Headmaster.
He said as Headmaster, the late Prime Minister was still teaching the pupils, adding, “Then we go to school as early as 6:30am to sweep the compound and our classes, before forming assembly by 7:15am as lessons always start by 7:30am. But we shall meet the Headmaster and some of our teachers waiting for our arrival. We all close and leave them in the school.
“About 7 months after I became a teacher in Misau, I heard that the Prime Minister was on a visit to Bauchi. I went to his house but was told that he went out. I waited for him to come back. When he returned and I told him I was his student in Kobi, he held my hand as we entered his house. He was such a humble person,” he said.
