January 15, Fajuyi And The Northern Christians

By Emma Okocha

 “Colonel Francis Fajuyi was the Commander of Operation Baby Chimra, the mock battle at Lenlete before Abeokuta few days to Operation Damisa…. Even if a tree stands in Yoruba land, Akintola will rule that tree!”

– Colonel Fajuyi addressing the Revolutionaries at the mock battle, Lenlete.

*Fajuyi

Revisionists of the Nigerian Civil war history distort the role, diminish the active participation of Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi’s support to the boys of the January 15 revolution. Without any scientific evidence, they have gone forward to present the Colonel as a hero, who sacrificed his life in solidarity with his condemned high priced guest. Encircled by the blood-thirsty Phalangists, who were in the Ibadan Government House to kill the Head of State and effect a change of government, the story went on to say that the Governor was offered an option… “The Governor decided to die with his guest when it was inevitable that the coup plotters wanted General Aguiyi Ironsi dead…” Bla bla bla.

Our researches on the other hand, counter that fable. In the first place, Adekunle Fajuyi did not belong to the same philosophical school of his guest. The late Colonel was a hero alright but his heroism was built out of his exceptional gallantry, as a field commander during the United Nation’s Peace Intervention in the Congo. Recently, in a Punch interview, Fajuyi’s sister shocked our present Roman leaders and governors when she revealed that her brother started to avoid her when she asked him to influence a contract job she had quoted for in one of the ministries under his government in 1966!

Like Kaduna Nzeogwu, who was going to die in the South African Liberation war, hence he refrained from getting married. Governor Adekunle Fajuyi had no house and would not allow his sister “disgrace his reputation” by getting him involved in contract jobs. Adekunle Fajuyi and the leaders of the January 15 revolution were pioneer African Revolutionaries, who were primarily motivated into action by their experience in the Congo. Kaduna Nzeogwu principally did not forgive the African conservative Monrovia Group led by Nigeria for their complacency, following the C.I.A conspiracy, which overthrew the legitimate government of the elected Prime Minister of the Congo. Since that despicable putsch and the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo has remained on the cliff hanger. Indeed, Kaduna Nzeogwu’s January 15 spontaneous Declaration of the Revolution was as arresting and in delivery, a carbon copy of Patrice Lumumba’s independent speech, which challenged Imperial Belgian’s enslavement of the Congo.

Aguiyi-Ironsi: Danjuma's Terrible Act Of Treason

By Obi Nwakanma

Fifty years ago, on a Friday night at the Western Nigerian Governor’s lodge in Ibadan, a group of soldiers led by Major Theophilus Danjuma committed a terrible act of treason. They accosted their Commander-in-chief, Major-General Johnson Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and Military Head of State of Nigeria only six months in the making, stripped him of his epaulettes and his swagger stick shaped in the form of the Crocodile, and proceeded to arrest him and his host, the Military Governor of the West, Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi.

*Major-General Johnson Thomas
Aguiyi-Ironsi

These soldiers, some of them far too drug-addled, did not stop there. They proceeded to administer brutal beatings and a careless torture of the General, and the Governor, Colonel Fajuyi, supervised by T.Y. Danjuma, and Ironsi’s ADC, William Walbe. They did not stop there: bruised and much bloodied, these two men were later bound hand and feet, as legends would have it, and tied to a military truck driven by Jeremiah Useni, through the streets of Ibadan, and taken to that quiet spot on Iwo road, where they were murdered and buried in mean and shallow graves.

Fajuyi was by then, nearly dead in any case, far too brutalized to endure any further humiliation. But Ironsi stood tall to the very end – the image of a great elephant enduring the beatings that accompanied him finally to the dug-spot. Accounts of Ironsi’s stolid, dignified and courageous handling of his brutal end come to us by a number of eye witnesses. He was travelling with then Colonel Hillary Njoku, Commander of the Lagos Garrison, in his entourage. They were upstairs in the Governor’s lodge when they sensed the change in the air, by the rustle of the mainly Northern troop that had been arranged for his guard detail.

As soon as they noticed the mutiny afoot on the grounds of the Governor’s lodge in Ibadan, they quickly knew that they had only one shot at getting out there alive. Ironsi ordered Hillary Njoku to find his way out of the grounds and make contacts with his headquarters in Lagos to send some reinforcement. Meanwhile, he got through to Yakubu Gowon on the phone which were still working, to send a Helicopter for him. The Helicopter did not come. Gowon, Ironsi’s Chief of Staff, was busy issuing different orders to Danjuma in Ibadan, and apparently to Murtala Muhammed and Martin Adamu in Lagos, the arrowheads of that July mutiny. Neither did any reinforcement come. Just as he was attempting to sneak out of the Governor’s lodge, the mutineers saw Colonel Hillary Njoku, and fired shots at him. He escaped by scaling the fence of the Government House, but was so seriously injured he had to find his way to the University College Hospital, where he was treated.