![]() When news of the pogroms first began circulating in the southeast, people from the towns and villages started to trek to cities like Enugu and Onitsha, some 70km away, in search of telephones. A counter-coup in July saw soldiers from the north seize power as Aguiyi-Ironsi was overthrown and killed. His plan to abolish the regions and establish a unitary government further compounded northern fears that southerners would take over. Many northerners interpreted it as an attempt to subjugate the north, which was less developed than the south.Īrmy commander Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, suppressed the coup but took power himself. As several of those involved were Igbo, and many of those killed were politicians from the north, it was erroneously labelled an Igbo coup. Then on January 15, 1966, a military coup overthrew and killed Nigeria’s first prime minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, a northerner. Less than six years later, there was widespread disillusionment with the government, which was perceived as corrupt and incapable of maintaining law and order. When Nigeria had gained its independence from the United Kingdom on October 1, 1960, a federal constitution had divided the country into three regions, each run by one of the main ethnic groups: The Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest and the Igbo in the southeast. They said Igbo people – the ethnic group to which my father belonged – were being rounded up and killed in Kano, Kaduna and Sokoto, some 600-1,000km away. ![]() In the markets and on the way to the stream, people had started to whisper tales about pogroms in the north. ![]() ![]() The writer’s father with his teacher, before the start of the war ![]()
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