By joshua 
THE IBB OWN GOAL- .A TIME TO THINK AND BE HONEST WITH OURSELVES
I think Gen. Ibrahim Babangida just came out to embarrass himself with the public presentation of that book he calls his autobiography. I say this because it is reasonably expected for Babangida to be more well informed than the majority of Nigerians on the matter of Nigerian history especially concerning the 15th January 1966 coup.
But ofcourse we have always known that HONESTY, SINCERITY AND INTEGRITY are three virtues not commonly associated with IBB otherwise how can a man of his reputation say the mutinous coup of 15th January 1966 wasn’t at Igbo coup?
As at the time of the 15th January 1966 coup, Babangida was already a commissioned officer of the Nigeria Army. He was a lieutenant or Captain. He was an active player in the counter coup of 29th July 1966. He was involved in the Biafran war. Over time, during his career, he was in the Reconnaissance battalion of the Army which must be linked to Army Intelligence, he rose to the rank of Army General, became the Chief of Army Staff and eventually commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria.
He was there all the time in the centre of the security architecture of Nigeria for about 30 years. It is then practically impossible for any sensible person to say that Babangida didn’t have a complete grapse of INFORMATION ON SECURITY matters of this country, the 15th January 1996 coup included.
He MUST know, not because he is an 84-year old man but because he definitely had access to first-hand information which is infact available to even today’s youths if they bothered to research and also their brains.
What Babangida said of that coup is unfortunate, very illogical and untrue and he must know. He willfully misinformed Nigerians, most definitely for the purpose of arranging some sinister story lines for another set of clandestine projections.
Let’s look at it together.
1. Right from DAY ONE of the amalgamation of Nigeria, the country was a badly founded contraption to the extent that the people being forced together into the so-called union were not consulted and they never consented to it
The arrangement was so utterly unsuitable especially for the people who weren’t Fulanis or Igbos because, to me, they were the only two groups who stood to benefit from the Nigerian project and indeed, thinking about it now, the British may have set up Nigeria for the Fulanis and/or the Ibos are their ultimate tax collectors.
By the late 1930s, there were already clear signals from the Igbos of the Eastern Region of an inordinate ambition to dominate Nigeria judging from the several reckless statements of men like Nnamdi Azikiwe, Jaja Wachukwu etc.
2. By the 1950s, while Obafemi Awolowo was preoccupied with an obsession for Yoruba Nationalism, Ahmadu Bello and Nnamdi Azikiwe left no one in doubt that they both harboured a desire to advance a Jihadist and Zionist expansion scheme respectively.
3. In the politics of the First Republic, Nnamdi Azikiwe and his Igbo people were already well-positioned and of great influence over the country.on the strength of their numbers in the administration of Tafawa Balewa, the Civil service structures, Officer cadets of the Armed forces and their population distribution across the country. The Igbos held most of the key portfolios in the Balewa Government and the greatest number of officers in the Army, including the General Officer Commanding the Nigerian Armed Forces, Aguiyi-Ironsi.
4. By 1965 it was obvious that the Igbos were going to lose this advantage. This was as a result of the emerging Nationalism in the North as being championed by the Fulani Ahmadu Bello and, much worse, the gathering forces from the SW as being led by Ladoke Akintola. Akintola was going to form an alliance with Ahmadu’s NPC which would have effectively put paid to the influence of Azikiwe’s kinsmen at the Federal level and also curtail the progress of their zionist expansionism.
This was very obvious in the appointments of Tarawa Balewa Government after the October 1965. The Igbos lost out just as they did in 2015 and 2023 when Asiwaju Bola Tinubu led the SW into another alliance with the core North.
5. By the FACT of (4) above, it’s no brainer that the Igbos of the East already had a CAST IRON MOTIVE for the action of 15th January 1966!!!
With benefits of hindsight today, what is well known about the Zionist Igbo character, it was only logical to have expected the action of 15th January 1966. Perhaps the leaders of that era either didn’t know the capacity of the Igbos for rabid opportunism or reckless brigandage otherwise the Government ought to have taken precautionary measures to discourage them.
Just recently in 2023 we saw the reaction of the same people to the victory of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. They went totally out of their way to call for a Military intervention to stop Tinubu from being sworn into office. Imagine that such a people had stood on commanding heights of the military at the time!!!
6. A few weeks before that day of 15th January 1966, Nnamdi Azikiwe was conveniently out of the country on some kind of leave.
A group of scatterheads, Igbo irredentists gathered themselves under the banner of revolutionaries. Amongst those in the officer cadets there were at least FOURTEEN (14) MEN, only TWO (2) of them were non-Igbos, two Yoruba, one of them knew absolutely nothing about it but was commandeered under military orders and the other, Major Ademoyega was just a naive and ignorant young man to have gotten himself railroaded into the plot.
IBB in 2025 at age 84, a General and former HoS was heard parroting the Propaganda of the Igbo Zionists, saying that Nzeogwu wasn’t Ibo but from Mid-West and that he was more of a Hausa man.
Very funny logic. Would an Hausa or any Moslem Northerner at the time ever have tried such a thing on Ahmadu Bello?
Would an Hausa man have chased Ahmadu Bello into his wife’s bedroom to shoot him down?
NEVER.
It’s a very mischievous logic, the type Azikiwe preached in Ibadan in account of his fluency in Yoruba.
7. Those guys set out with the clear agenda to eliminate all the Non-Igbo Military and Political Leadership to install an Ibo Man in the hope of advancing their Zionist agenda over Nigeria.
They went round the country and began to murder men in their bedrooms, so savagely and in ways that were so full of HATRED. The manner that Timothy Onwuatuegwu murdered Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun in Kaduna, Ifeajuna reportedly did on Balewa and Maimalari in Lagos all had the trappings of HATRED. They could just have disarmed and kept those men in detention and under arrest to do all they needed to do.
But no, they murdered then savagely!!!
It tells you it was something very personally, something of very deep hatred and it was ethic based!
8. While they did all that, Major-Geneal Aguiyi-Ironsi was at the same party with Brig. Maimalari in the later’s house. Maimalari’s own protege, Ifeajuna who was also at the party returned to him later to murder.
What crime would Gen Maimalari and Gen. Ademulegun have committed in the civilian administration of Balewa over and above Gen. Aguiyi-Ironsi who was their GOC? How could their crimes have been greater than Aguiyi-Ironsi in the same era where Azikiwe was Governor-General, Nwafor Orizu was Senate President and there were many garrulous and corrupt Igbo politicians all over Lagos?
Aguiyi-Ironsi was never a target but Ademulegun and Maimalari were prime targets!
Ojukwu was never a target or he conveniently got out of the way
Dennis Osadebey, the Igbo Premier of Mid-West was never a target and so was Michael Okpara, the Ibo Premier in Enugu.
Not ONE Ibo man was targeted. The only Igbo man who died in the coup, Col Unuegbe was shot because he delayed in giving them the keys to the armoury. He wasn’t a target.
But every other Non-Igbo victim across the country was purposely targeted and they were all expertly tracked down and eliminated.
9. When the dust settled and the whereabouts of the Prime Minister couldn’t be ascertained, it was a matter of the Parliament nominating and electing another PM.
But the Igbos rose to demand that position. The Ibo NCNC was a very junior partner in the alliance that brought NPC & NCNC to the Government to produce Tafawa Balewa but the Igbos wanted the garrulous K.O Mbadiwe over Alhaji Dipcherima who was rightly due.
And the debate was on.
Nwafor Orizu, an Ibo man, President of Senate and Ag. Governor-General of Nigeria in the absence of Azikiwe, REFUSED to rally the parliament to form another Government.
Chief Richard Akinjide was in the parliament and he said this. We didn’t even need to hear from anybody. It was ONLY VERY LOGICAL to have expected Nwafor Orizu to ASK THE PARLIAMENT TO FORM AN ACTING GOVERNMENT IN THE WAKE OF BALEWA’S UNKNOWN WHEREABOUT OR FORM A NEW GOVERNMENT WHEN HE WAS CONFIRMED DEAD!
It will only require the MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT CASTING VOTES to get a new PM.
The only reason Nwafor Orizu REFUSED to do that, BEING THE ONLY OFFICIER WHO COULD DO IT AT THE TIME, was because he knew that the votes of the MPs would NEVER have produced K.O Mbadiwe or any Igbo man as PM.
For that singular reason, the knowledge that an Igbo man wouldn’t have emerged as PM, he went to Aguiyi-Ironsi, or he was ordered by Aguiyi-Ironsi to submit POWER TO MILITARY, the Military being Gen. Aguiyi-Ironsi ofcourse.
And he did exactly that. Some reports said he was constantly in touch with Azikiwe who was giving him directions.
THAT ACTION CONFIRMED THAT 15TH JANUARY 1966 WAS AN IGBO MUTINOUS COUP AIMED AT INSTALLING AN IBO ADMINISTRATION OVER NIGERIA!
10. And what did Aguiyi-Ironsi do with the powers?
He treated the 15th January coupists like they were National Heroes, kept them safe somewhere and was paying them the full salaries of their Military ranks. He couldn’t risk giving them a trial because he himself was the mastermind of the coup.
Next, he assembled a five-man team of advisers and they were ALL IGBOS.
..
Then he promulgated DECREE 34 which was called Unification Decree and with it, he demobilized the regions, created suitable and fertile grounds for Azikiwe’s “One Nigeria” settings and the Igbos started to fly everywhere across the country to take up jobs everywhere.
Aguiyi-Ironsi quickly effected the ruinous policy of harmonization of the civil service, a perfect template to allow for his Ibo kinsmen to insert themselves into the civil of the Federal and Regional Government. He ruined everything!!!!
All the time Aguiyi-Ironsi was plotting the IGBO ZIONIST AGENDA, NOT ONE IGBO MAN COMPLAINED. Ojukwu never complained about Decree 34. It was perfectly okay in the hands of Aguiyi-Ironsi and his team of Ibo Advisers.
It wasn’t until Gowon and the Fulani Establishment got hold of Decree 34 that Ojukwu suddenly realised it was an unjust system!!!
Babangida undoubtedly knew all these things because he was amongst the soldiers of the Northern Elements in the forefront of the 29th July 1966 counter-coup. The target of the counter coup was to avenge Ahmadu Bello’s killing and EXIT the North from Nigeria. The Igbos were probably the only casualties of the mutinous actions of 29 July 1966 except ofcourse for Col. Adekunle Fajuyi who opted to lay down his life with Aguiyi-Ironsi which was an unnecessary, unworthy and wasteful gesture in my own opinion
I am not sure Ojukwu wrote anything about the 15th January and Biafra war in his book “Because I am involved”. He must have had his reason. It is not easy to speak the TRUTH about those two incidents if you had something of selfish emotions involved or attached.
And this is the tragedy of Babangida in the twilight of his life of insincerity and dishonesty. He had something at stake which he wanted that book to serve. He didn’t just wake up to publish that book of lies at this time.
Unfortunately for him, the proverbial money has succeeded in roping and hanging himself in the village square. He will answer for it.