Lord Louis Mountbatten on
naval exercises around Malta and Gibraltar in 1956
The visit of
Prince Charles to Nigeria brings to mind one of several visits made to Nigeria
by his great-uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten in his capacity as the Chief of the Defence
Staff.
I recall my father once telling me about meeting Mountbatten in the 1960s and what an
impressive figure he seemed to be in both physical stature and intellect. He
was taken aback when I replied that a then recent biographer had intimated that
the earl had slipped up as a sea commander in a few instances that would have
likely resulted in a court martial were it not for his royal connection. He had
also been the principal architect of the disastrous allied raid on Dieppe in
1942.
Anyway, this
film footage of Mountbatten’s arrival at the naval base at Apapa in Lagos
provides scenery with which I became familiar during my childhood: The lagoon,
naval jetty and Carter Bridge in the distance. Also, the uphill walk to the
main building of the base past vintage cannon emplacements. There is also a
brief glimpse of a building block which for a time housed naval officers -we
temporarily lived there in an apartment after we returned to Nigeria from my
father’s posting as the Deputy Defence Advisor at the Nigerian High Commission
in London.
Commodore
Wey, the naval Chief of Staff, can be seen saluting him on arrival and
escorting him to an observation post.
The final
scene where Mountbatten and Wey pose with mainly army officers is most
interesting. The army officer right behind Mountbatten appears to fit the
stocky, balding profile of a certain Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, who after the first
army mutiny of 1966, would be appointed as the military governor of the Eastern
Region, the region that would form the breakaway Republic of Biafra.
Mountbatten
was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army on August 27th 1979
while vacationing at his summer retreat in Mullaghmore, County Sligo in the
Republic of Ireland.
© Adeyinka
Makinde (2018)
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