Former Military President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) has identified the January 1966 coup and the subsequent counter-coup of July and September of same year as the immediate causes of the 30-month fratricidal Civil War.

The war, which lasted from July 6, 1967 till January 13, 1970, according to IBB, were some of the darkest in the history of Nigeria.

“The sporadic killings and the tension created by the unrest compelled some 50,000 Igbos to flee northern Nigeria for the eastern region by the end of July 1966.

But, the build-up to that painful situation began earlier. After the Head of State, General Aguiyi-Ironsi, and Lt-Col. Adekunle Fajuyi were abducted by rampaging soldiers in the early hours of July 29, 1966, in Ibadan and taken away, the country was literally without a government for three days.

Between July 29 and 31, when their whereabouts were unaccounted for, an atmosphere of uncertainty enveloped the country.

“Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, then the most senior military officer after Aguiyi-Ironsi and considered in certain quarters as the ‘natural’ successor to him, made a broadcast on the afternoon of July 29, 1966, calling for the cooperation of the public in the government’s ‘effort to restore law and order’ in the country.

“In an attempt to further restore calm, Brigadier Ogundipe sent Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon to the Ikeja cantonment to appeal to the group of headstrong northern officers led by Lt-Colonel Murtala Muhammed, Majors Shittu Alao, Musa Usman and Captain Joe Garba, who were spoiling for a fight and even toying with the idea of a secession! Those efforts didn’t yield results,” he said.

In his autobiography, A Journey of Service, in Chapter 4 titled “Nigerian War and the NDA Teaching Years,” Babangida recalls that both coups deepened the distrust among ethnic groups in the country, distrust that continues to plague us to this day.

According to him, even more fundamentally, those coups led to one of the bloodiest fratricidal conflicts in modern Africa, the thirty-month Nigerian civil war, with devastating consequences that we have never fully recovered from as a country.

Babangida said the emergence of Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon as the new Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces marked the beginning of the tension between Gowon and Lt-Col. Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu.

Consequently, in an early morning broadcast from Enugu, Ojukwu rejected Gowon’s emergence as Head of State, insisting that in the absence of Aguiyi-Ironsi, the most senior Nigerian Army officer in the person of Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, should be Head of State and Commander-in-Chief.

He said this led to increase in tension across the country, and that eager to restore confidence in the country, Lt-Col. Gowon assembled regional politicians, dubbed Leaders of Thought, to fashion a way forward for the country.

“Then, he turned his attention to the military, making a few tactical changes. Those changes were detailed enough to affect younger officers like me.

“But Gowon went further. In a move that turned out to be a political masterstroke, in August, he released the leader of the Yorubas, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, from Calabar prison, where he was serving a prison sentence for treason, and secured, in the process, the much-needed support of the Yorubas at that time.

“Unfortunately, Gowon’s commitments to the Igbos that their lives were safe in northern Nigeria were unfulfilled.

“Almost simultaneously with the deliberations of the Leaders of Thought taking place in Lagos, perhaps the most horrific killings of Igbos occurred in different parts of northern Nigeria on September 29, 1966.

“The killings were frightening. A deluge of refugees swamped eastern Nigeria from practically all parts of Nigeria. Faced with this intolerable situation, Ojukwu, understandably, barred the eastern Nigerian delegation from further attending Gowon’s Peace and Reconciliation Talks in Lagos, insisting that the lives of Igbos outside eastern Nigeria were unsafe.

The country was locked in a national stalemate until Lt-General “Joseph Arthur Ankrah, who had become Ghana’s Head of State after the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, stepped in by suggesting a neutral and safe venue for an actual Reconciliation conference between Ojukwu and the Federal government,” he said noting that the intervention, seen as the last chance to prevent an all-out war, led to the famous Peace Conference in the southern regional town of Ghana, Aburi, between January 4 and 5, 1967.” (The Nation)