The second Nigerian coup on July 29, 1966 was quite brutal. That is the brutal truth. To avoid what may be brutal, I do not set out to write the truth, but what is historical. There are two main strands protruding from that coup like a buried corpse with two visible hands. The first is that it was “a revenge coup” allegedly to avenge the killings of non-Igbo leaders in the January 1966 coup. The second is that it was a coup to enable the North secede from Nigeria.
However, with the success of the coup, the British advised the plotters to drop their secession plan and take over the entire country rather than confine themselves to the North.
The two main leaders of the second coup were the genial Chief of Staff, Army, Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Jack Gowon and the mercurial Lieutenant Colonel Murtala Ramat Muhammed. While the former saw the sense in the British advice, the latter thought they should stick to their original plan. So he left for his home in Kano on what I will term Away Without Leave, AWOL.
But Mohammed was not court martialed as he appeared to have done the donkey work in the coup while Gowon reaped the benefits. It is like the worker sweating in the sun while the person, who will reap the profit, sat in the shade.
The coup eventually led to the Civil War and Mohammed was the General Officer Commanding the Second Division. The Division swept through Benin and captured Asaba. After the capture, unarmed civilians, almost all males who had been separated from the rest of the populace, were from October 5-7, 1967 massacred. It was a heinous war crime for which nobody was charged despite the fact that the military leaders on ground, like Major Ibrahim Taiwo, were known.
Mohammed next focused his attention on crossing the River Niger from Asaba to Onitsha. On the other side was the Biafran military. The tempting Niger Bridge stood between the two armies but everybody was aware it was mined and would be blown up at the slightest movement from the Nigerian Army side.
As it would be suicidal to attempt crossing the river with non-amphibious troops and equipment, the option was to move the troops to Idah and enter what was rebel territory.
But shockingly and despite the objections of Head of State General Gowon and some military officers in the war front like Major Alani Akinrinade of the Division’s Sixth Brigade, Mohammed choose the suicidal option to cross. Needless to say, it was a disaster that resulted in huge loss of lives.
But Mohammed was too headstrong to listen to anybody or see reason, and General Gowon, as Commander-in -Chief, was too weak to call him to order. Incredibly, Mohammed decided to make a second crossing. Akinrinade whose brigade was enlisted to participate said he asked Mohammed for equipment and was given “ragged” ones. He recalled in his ‘My Dialogue With Nigeria’ published in 2017: “The river had so much heavy current; so you needed some powerful boats, which we didn’t have”. Akinrinade said he had a final disagreement with Mohammed and: “I offered to leave the division. I handed over my brigade to someone else.”
The second crossing resulted in a worse disaster, so much that it reverbrated on the streets of Lagos.
Incredibly, Mohammed decided on a third open crossing! Since he was above discipline, he had to be persuaded to abandon his third suicidal mission.
On July 29, 1975, there was a bloodless palace coup which saw Mohammed, the Minister of Communications, become Head of State and General Olusegun Obasanjo, the Works Minister, become his Deputy. Mohmmed’s six-month stay was, expectedly, tempestuous. He would not accept basic human errors even if it may have devastating consequences.
For instance, he appointed Adamu Ciroma, an historian-journalist who was Editor of the New Nigerian Newspapers, as Managing Director of the Daily Times Newspapers, and Aliko Mohammed, an accountant, as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN. There was an error and the names were mistaken for one another. This was immediately brought to Mohammed’s attention but he retorted that his regime must not be seen to be making mistakes. So, the journalist went to run the CBN and the accountant sent to the newspaper.
Perhaps, the most infamous and devastating act of the Murtala regime was its decapitation of the civil service. Before then, the Nigerian Civil Service which was built on the British model, was a first class bureaucracy. It was so strong that it withstood the earthquakes of the Western Region crises, two bloody military coups and the Civil War. The service religiously observed and enforced rules, processes and procedures and civil servants had guaranteed well-paid jobs and access to loans and mortgage.
The Permanent Secretaries were so confident that when the ruling council returned from Ghana clutching the Aburi Peace Agreement, they subjected it to a forensic assessment. In clear terms, they told the rulers that although as military officers, their word should be their honour, they have to renege on the Aburi Agreement as it is unimplementable. The regime bowed to the civil servants’ submission.
However, when Mohammed seized power, one of his first acts was to decapitate the civil service. There was a mass purge across the federal and state services. No known processes or criteria were applied. Civil servants just heard their names, sometimes on radio and television, sacked for allegedly being “deadwood”.
Given the uncertainty, the surviving civil servants simply sat at the edge of their seats aware they could be kicked out at any time even if they are hardworking, knowledgeable and corruption-free. Today, 50 years later and despite series of facial surgeries, psychological and therapeutic sessions, the civil service has not recovered.
Mohammed proclaimed he was on an anti-corruption mission, but when accused by University of Lagos Law Lecturer, Dr Obarogie Ohonbamu, of gross corruption, he quickly detained the latter. When Mohammed was told that if Ohonbamu were prosecuted, the defence lawyer might seek to cross-examine him in which case he would have no immunity, he quickly released the lecturer.
Doubtlessly, the golden era of Nigerian diplomacy was the Mohammed era when Nigeria stood up for Africa against the bullying of the United States, and for the liberation of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. His famous ‘Africa Has Come of Age” speech at the Organisation of African Unity, OAU, Summit in Addis Ababa on January 11, 1976 remains evergreen. Thirty three days later, he was assassinated.
Every country needs or deserves a hero. Murtala Mohammed is an undisputed Nigerian hero even if some point at his clay feet.
