Lt. Colonel Francis
Adekunle Fajuyi, military governor of Nigeria’s Western Region, who was
assassinated during the army mutiny of July 29th 1966.
Adekunle Fajuyi occupies a unique, almost mythical place in Nigerian
history. He is largely viewed as the gallant officer who, in the midst of an
episode of bloodletting among Nigeria’s soldiers, refused to stand aside as his
commander-in-chief was being led to the slaughter, and, instead, opted to share
the fate of a brutal death at the hands of renegade soldiers. And although some
participants and witnesses to the events in Ibadan on July 29th 1966 adamantly expressed
the view that Fajuyi like Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi had already been
earmarked for death, the legacy of a soldier possessed of physical and moral
courage remains essentially unimpaired.
The
background to the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi was that
of a country in turmoil. A mutiny by middle-ranking army officers on January
15th 1966 had led to the overthrow of the civilian government which had ruled
Nigeria since it had formally become independent from British rule in October
1960. But the majors at the heart of the coup had not assumed power since they
were opposed by Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, the General Officer
Commanding the Nigerian Army, to whom they eventually surrendered. Ironsi had
had the mantle of national leader thrust on him when the civilian rulers had
“voluntarily” transferred power to the military.
However, the
narrative that Ironsi’s assumption of power had been the accidental culmination
of a chain of events was one which came to be doubted by many in the country.
True, the majors had terminated the rule of a government which had been plagued
by accusations of incompetence and corruption, but the choices they had made in
regard to the figures they had selected for elimination appeared to be grossly
slanted. In short, most of the assassinated politicians came from the Northern
region, while the coup was led by officers of mainly Igbo ethnicity, the
dominant group of Nigeria’s Eastern region. And Ironsi, himself an Igbo, had
been handed power by an acting Vice President, an Igbo, who was representing
the Igbo president, Nnamdi Azikiwe who conveniently, critics assumed, had been
abroad at the time of the mutiny.
The soldiers
who surrounded Government House, Ibadan in the early hours of Friday, July 29th
did so with a sense of vengeance. They hailed from the Northern region and felt
aggrieved by the fact that several senior Northern army officers had been
assassinated by the mutineers who had struck in January. The commanding officer
of the Ibadan-based 4th battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel Abogo Largema, had been
murdered during that putsch.
Composed in
the main of soldiers of Northern origin, they had refused to obey the orders of
the officer appointed by Ironsi to replace him, because he was Igbo. This act
of dissent was a harbinger of what would transpire on the day of the murder of
Fajuyi and Ironsi. They seethed over the fact that Ironsi had failed to put the
January conspirators on trial, and that while in custody, the likes of Major
Chukwuma Nzeogwu were being paid their salaries and, supposedly, were enjoying
a relatively comfortable existence.
Northern
soldiers had also grumbled over certain promotions Ironsi had made which were
construed as favouring officers from his ethnic group even though chief
complainers such as Lieutenant-Colonel Murtala Muhammad, who would be among the
leaders of the counter-coup of July, had been beneficiaries. There was a
feeling that the North needed to strike in order to preempt another coup by
Igbos aimed at consolidating their grip on power.
The
dissatisfaction and suspicion in the army reflected the wider feeling of
grievance among Northerners who reacted with fury at Ironsi’s decision to
promulgate a decree in May which transformed the federal structure of Nigeria
into a unitary one. It was interpreted as the completion of an elaborate plot
designed to entrench Igbo hegemony. This, as they perceived it, had been
achieved through the control of the army in which Igbos were preponderant in
the officer class, as well as through the mechanism of a unified civil service
in regard to which the less educated Northerners would be unable to compete
with higher attaining Igbos.
Adekunle
Fajuyi, an ethnic Yoruba, had been appointed by Ironsi as the governor of the
Western Region. He had hosted a cocktail party on the evening of the 28th to
mark the conclusion of Ironsi’s nationwide tour aimed at consulting with Nigeria’s
traditional rulers about the situation in the country. The northern Muslim
Emirs in particular sought reassurances about the direction that the country
was heading.
Fajuyi like
others in Government House that early morning were likely roused by the sound
of gunfire outside the building. He sent messages to the guard house and to his
aide-de-camp, one Lieutenant Umar, a northerner. Most of the staff were
northerners and they were part of the coup which had already claimed the lives
of Igbo soldiers at a garrison in the city of Abeokuta. Umar falsely reported
back that all was well. Fajuyi met with Ironsi and it quickly became apparent
that they were surrounded by troops with hostile intent. They had taken
positions from all vantage points. Some were nestled in tree tops, while others
lay around the grounds in combat posture. A 106mm gun, an anti-tank weapon, was
positioned in support. The entrances and exits were blocked.
They intended
for no one to escape.
Major
Theophilus Danjuma who was coordinating the siege resisted calls from impatient
non-commissioned officers to storm Government House, and was content with
arresting those who intermittently emerged from the building on errands on
behalf of the governor and the head of state. His aim, he would later claim,
was to arrest Fajuyi and Ironsi. But when Lieutenant-Colonel Hilary Njoku, the
Igbo commander of the 2nd Brigade in Lagos was sighted leaving, a burst of
machine gun fire was aimed at him. He sustained a leg injury but managed to
escape.
Frantic calls
were placed to officers around the country to explain their dire predicament.
An attempt to get a helicopter to rescue them came to nothing. Fajuyi was the
first to make his way to the living room where he paced up and down in full
uniform. He summoned Ironsi’s air force aide-de-camp, Captain Andrew Nwankwo
and told him to go outside to find out what was happening. Nwankwo met Major
Danjuma who told him that he wanted “to see Ironsi”. It was during this
prolonged, tense conversation that Fajuyi came outside to find out why Nwankwo
hadn’t returned.
Danjuma
recounted the following conversation taking place between Fajuyi and himself:
Danjuma: Sir,
you are under arrest. Raise your hands.
Fajuyi: What
do you want?
Danjuma: I
want the supreme commander.
Fajuyi:
Promise me that no harm will come to him.
Danjuma
agreed, but objections were raised by a number of NCOs who felt that Fajuyi
ought to have been detained and not allowed back in. Danjuma noted this and
produced a grenade informing Fajuyi that if he made a “false move” he would
blow both of them up. So Danjuma, grenade in hand and walking behind Fajuyi,
made his way to meet Ironsi in the company of a handful of NCOs. After
disarming two police guards at the staircase, they made their way up to the
living room which was situated on the first floor.
When they
encountered Ironsi, Danjuma saluted him and an argument ensued between both men
over Danjuma’s complaint that Ironsi had not kept his promise to court martial
the mutineers of January. Fajuyi reportedly interjected with repeated reminders
that Danjuma had assured Ironsi of his safety. Ironsi was then seized. He was
relieved of his trademark crocodile swagger stick and his major-general’s pips
and shirt were torn from him. Ironsi, Fajuyi and Ironsi’s military aides,
Nwankwo and Lieutenant Sani Bello, had their hands tied behind their backs with
telephone wire.
Danjuma, who
had given Fajuyi assurances that there would be no bloodshed, then claimed to
have instructed an adjutant of the 4th battalion to take Fajuyi and Ironsi to a
guest house on a nearby cattle ranch. But, he recalled, an NCO impatiently
tapped him on the shoulder with the butt of a rifle and took the prisoners from
him. They were then spirited away in two of what formed a convoy of three
vehicles. He was forced to hitch-hike back to the barracks. However another
account has Danjuma entering one of the vehicles and being a part of the convoy
until waving them on and heading for the barracks.
They entered
Lalupon, a town on the outskirts of Ibadan, and disembarked at a location on
the outskirts of a forest. Fajuyi led the way as he and the others, all now
stripped of their shirts and repeatedly beaten, were marched along a narrow
footpath. When he stumbled and fell as he attempted to cross a small stream,
the response of some of his captors was to beat him. By now, both Fajuyi and
Ironsi were so weakened by the beatings that they could hardly stand up. They
were laid face down on the earth before each man was executed with a burst of
sten gun.
It was a
callous, gruesome end.
The bodies of
both were left at the spot of their execution until the next day when a group
of Northern soldiers buried them in the shallow graves discovered a few days
later by a unit of the police Special Branch. They were disinterred and
reburied at the military cemetery in Ibadan.
No official
announcements of the death of either man was made by the succeeding government
led by Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon, a Christian Northerner who had been
Ironsi’s Chief of Staff. A second exhumation would occur at the beginning of
1967 after the meeting in Aburi between Gowon and members of Nigeria’s post-Ironsi
government and Lieutenant-Colonel Ojukwu, the military governor of the Eastern
Region who disputed the legitimacy of the regime which had succeeded that of
Ironsi’s. Both Fajuyi and Ironsi were accorded state funerals with each being
buried in his hometown: Fajuyi in Ado-Ekiti and Ironsi in Umuahia. A civil war would nonetheless ensue, and in many respects
the counter-coup of July 1966 was only completed with the collapse of Biafra,
the name given to the seceded Eastern Region, in January 1970.
With soldiers
acting as death squads, lynch mobs and assassins, the episodes of violence
unleashed within the Nigerian Army during the mutinies of 1966 were not of the
sort which by any standards would confer glory on the protagonists. But in the
personage of Fajuyi, one of the victims, a story began to evolve of courage and
sacrifice.
The nutshell
story is this: the coup of July was viewed by Northern soldiers as a revenge
operation against their Igbo counterparts, and in this enterprise they bore no
animus towards Yoruba soldiers. Thus, in the ensuing onslaught Yorubas were
largely spared the fate that would befall their Igbo comrades. The modus
operandi was to separate Yoruba soldiers and others of non-Igbo ethnicity from
Igbo ones before exacting their brand of vengeance on Igbo victims. Of course,
Yorubas such a Major Benjamin Adekunle who made efforts to enable Igbos to
escape their executioners put themselves in danger of being killed, but
provided they stepped aside, they would not be harmed. It is from this
background that the widely related story that Fajuyi, who was not meant to die,
had informed his captors that if they were going to kill the man who was his guest;
they would have to do the same to him.
But this was
not the story told in the immediate aftermath of his murder. Indeed there was
little public discourse on the matter given the muteness of the central
government which made no official announcement of his death. Many Nigerians were
not aware that he and Ironsi had been killed. However, after his state funeral
much attention began to be focused on Fajuyi’s conduct before his execution.
Beginning with the book Fajuyi the Great,
an official publication of the Information Division of the Western regional
government in 1967, the narrative of Fajuyi choosing to die with Ironsi firmly
entered the realm of public consciousness. Over the decades, it was
consolidated by other works with titles such as A Great Hero and Tribute to
Gallantry. In Fajuyi: The Martyred
Soldier, which was published in 1996, the author, one Sanmi Ajiki, resorted
to artistic licence when recreating the scene where Fajuyi was arrested with
Ironsi with the following dialogue:
Fajuyi: I
make bold to declare to you that I am with you soul, spirit and body. And mark
my words, whatever happens to you today, happens to me. I am your true friend,
dear J.U.T. like the dove to the pigeon, and by the grace of our good God, so
will I humbly yet proudly remain till the very end.
Ironsi: Yes!
Francis, I retain my absolute confidence in you. I have never for once doubted
your integrity.
Such dialogue
does not sound plausible given the tense and chaotic circumstances of the arrest
of both men. None of those involved in Fajuyi’s arrest who went on the record
have claimed that Fajuyi had been asked to stand aside while Ironsi was taken
away. Indeed, according to William Walbe and Theophilus Danjuma, Fajuyi was
specifically earmarked for death because he was believed by the mutineers to
have had a hand in the planning of the first mutiny. They also heard that
Fajuyi had acted to block any attempts to bring the January mutineers to trial.
According to
William Walbe: “We arrested him as we arrested Ironsi. We suspected him of
being party to the January coup. You remember the Battle Group Course which was
held at Abeokuta. Fajuyi was the commander of the Battle Group Course. All
those who took part in the January coup were those who had taken part in that
course. It gave us the impression that the Battle Course was arranged for the
January coup, so he had to suffer it too. I am sorry about that but that is the
nature of the life of a military man.”
Danjuma also
claimed that Fajuyi was in command of another training camp in the northern
town of Kachia during which time Major Nzeogwu went through a mock assault on a
house which Northern officers later took to be a rehearsal for the attack on
the home of Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, the most powerful politician
in the north. “The chaps could not stomach Fajuyi”, Danjuma would say, “such
that if there was anybody who should die first, as far as they were concerned,
it was Fajuyi, not even Ironsi.”
Researchers
have concluded that both Danjuma and Walbe’s accounts are ridden with
inaccuracies. For instance, Fajuyi was not involved in the Kachia training camp
which took place in mid-April 1966 when Nzeogwu was in detention. And while
Danjuma may have mistaken the training camp for that of the Battle Group course
held in September 1966, only one of the seven instructors (Major Wale
Ademoyega) and one of the thirteen attendees (Captain Ben Gbulie) were
participants in the January mutiny. Several of the attending officers were from
the North. Nonetheless, in the atmosphere of seething distrust and rumour
mongering as existed in the army in the build up to the counter-coup, factual
information often took a back seat.
Still,
evidence of Fajuyi’s involvement in the January mutiny came from one of the
mutiny’s five leaders, Ademoyega. Ademoyega, a Yoruba and the only non-Igbo
among the leaders, would write in his book Why
We Struck that Fajuyi was aware of the coup and supported it by making
suggestions to the plotters as to how it could be best carried out. He further
claimed that the only reason Fajuyi had not been an active participant was
because of a posting. Importantly, he confirms that Fajuyi did in fact
strenuously oppose all efforts made by the Ironsi-led Supreme Military Council
to bring the plotters to trial.
A more
accurate rendition of Fajuyi’s conduct during the events of July 29th and the
lead up the mutiny staged on that day arguably does not diminish the man.
Pushing to one side the embellished story that he positively elected to face
death with Ironsi rather than to abandon his host to death, it is clear that
Fajuyi acted in a physically courageous way when he stepped outside of state
house to confront the rebellious soldiers when attempting to ascertain what had
happened to Captain Nwankwo, Ironsi’s ADC. It is also clear that he believed as
a matter of honour that he was morally duty bound to do what he could to
protect his guest General Ironsi, hence his repeated entreaties to Major
Danjuma to assure him that no harm would come to Ironsi.
Like Ironsi,
Fajuyi was a veteran of the UN peacekeeping operation in the Congo. He was the
first Nigerian officer to be awarded an international military citation when as
a major, he was the recipient of the Military Cross for leading his company in
combat on November 27, 1960 and also for subsequently extricating it from an
ambush during operations on January 3, 1961.
The story of
Fajuyi gallantly electing to die was perhaps consciously developed as means of
emphasising the virtue of gallantry in the midst of the savagery unleashed in
the army. But if the preeminent function of the competent and objective
documentarian is to clarify the past, then it is imperative that myths
surrounding historical figures are laid to rest.
In the case
of Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, that time is long overdue.
© Adeyinka
Makinde (2019)
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England.
