"Life is
terribly deficient in form.
Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way.
There is a grotesque horror about its comedies.
And its tragedies seem to culminate in farce."
Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way.
There is a grotesque horror about its comedies.
And its tragedies seem to culminate in farce."
– Oscar Wilde
The January 15, 1966 military coup and the concomitant
tragic death, fifty-two years ago, of Major-General Johnson Thomas Ummunnakwe
Aguiyi-Ironsi on July 29, 1966
in the hands of young Majors from Northern Nigeria
extraction manifest the historical sense that creates a difference between mere
politics and constructive statesmanship in Nigeria 's turbulent history.
Aguiyi-Ironsi was a victim of our collective failure to appreciate the fact
that, in any given society, personality is not a welter of primitive impulses but
an achievement of the conscious will. Nigeria began its seemingly long
and tenuous political walk towards self-rule and democracy in 1960. Vividly
divided between the predominantly Muslim North and substantially Christian
South, there is always a marked ethnic and religious tension in the polity with
the Muslim in the North often hinting to their right to federal power.
*Gen Aguiyi-Ironsi |