July 29 In Nigerian History: Aguiyi-Ironsi And Fajuyi Assassinated In Ibadan

July 29 In Nigerian History: Aguiyi-Ironsi And Fajuyi Assassinated In Ibadan

Nigeria has seen the rise and fall of many military regimes since she became a sovereign state in 1960 and this, at every turn, has altered the direction of the country.
A second coup since independence which happened on July 29, 1966, would see to the brutal death of Nigeria’s Supreme Commander, General J.T.C Aguiyi-Ironsi (the nation’s 1st military head of state) and his friend, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, who was the sitting and 1st Military Governor of the Western Region.

Aguiyi-Ironsi was a guest at the Government House, Ibadan, as he came to hold a meeting with traditional rulers in the Western region. Ironsi arrived Ibadan the previous day and unknowingly, he met his death during the counter-coup which is generally believed to be a retaliation to the January 15th 1966 coup in which prominent Northerners in power were killed.
The Northerners were believed to hold a grudge since the first coup as they lost leaders including Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (Nigerian Prime Minister) and Sir Ahmadu Bello (Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of the Northern Region). They tagged it an ‘Igbo Coup’ as no Eastern casualty was recorded in both the military and public service as even the West lost Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola in the coup.
This counter-coup of July 29, 1966, led by General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma was tagged the bloodiest coup by many in the history of Nigeria. Ironsi and Fajuyi’s death which still remains a controversial debate among historians because how they were killed isn’t clear but both bodies were found in a bush in outskirts of Ibadan. Read a comprehensive account of how Aguiyi-Ironsi was killed here.
Aside from the Head of State and Western Military governor, many other casualties were recorded in the army and most killed or maimed were Easterners, particularly Igbos. This will be one of the many reasons the country would go into a civil war the following year as the Eastern region tried seceding.
54 years after, we remember this gruesome act done in the Brown Roof City and how much has happened or changed since then.
This Is The Reason Wole Soyinka Was Declared Wanted in 1965
Chief S.L. Akintola was slated to give a victory speech after the rigged 1965 regional election which returned him to power as Premier of the Western Region.
On 15 October 1965, just before a radio broadcast of the Premier’s speech, a certain armed man allegedly gained entrance into the premises of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) at Ibadan, and seized the tapes containing the Premier’s pre-recorded speech.
The armed man, alleged to be Wole Soyinka, then compelled the continuity announcer to broadcast another tape which he had brought along with him. Instead of the triumphant address of the Premier, the people of Western Nigeria heard, inter alia, the following defiant message:
“Akintola get out; Akintola, get out and take with you your band of renegades who have lost with you any pretence to humanity, and have become nothing, but murdering beasts. . . .
The lawful government of Western Nigeria is the UPGA government, elected by the people of the West. Let every self-seeking impostor get out now before the people, losing patience, wash the streets in their polluted blood. . . .
In the name of Oduduwa and our generation, get out! Before the frustration of ten million people, their anger and their justice in an all-consuming fire come over your heads.”

This incident embarrassed and angered the Premier, and Wole Soyinka was swiftly declared wanted, detained, and subsequently charged with the offences of conspiracy and theft of the Premier’s tapes.

Soyinka’s detention caused many influential literary figures and public intellectuals to lodge protests and appeals for clemency with the Nigerian government.

Although Soyinka unsuccessfully raised an alibi, at trial the prosecution failed to secure a conviction due to the conflicting testimony of several witnesses concerning the identity of the armed man.

According to Justice Kayode Eso (as he then was), who presided over the trial, the proper course of action in the circumstances was to acquit and discharge the accused person.

Resisting pressure from powerful Western region politicians who wanted Soyinka convicted at all costs, Justice Eso held as follows: “All the eye-witnesses [at the radio station] were positive that the [armed] man who held them up was not masked.
The place was well lit, they said, and they had no doubt about their examination of the gunman’s face. The gunman, they had all said, was bearded.
[One of the witnesses who gave evidence for the prosecution testified that Soyinka, whom he saw two hours before the incident at the radio station, was clean-shaven].

While l can understand a bearded man at five o’ clock in the evening becoming clean-shaven at 7 p.m., I cannot unravel the mystery of a clean-shaven man at 5 p.m. becoming bearded at 7 p.m. [when the incident occurred] except he is somehow masked.
Wole Soyinka
Wole soyinka

And the overwhelming evidence placed before the court by the prosecution itself, was that the gunman, who held up the cubicle that night was not masked. That ‘un-masking’ kept up recurring like a ‘recurring decimal’.

It is clear to me therefore, that no tribunal should be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was the clean-shaven ‘Wole Soyinka’ at 5 p.m. without a mask who metamorphosed into the bearded gunman at 7 p.m.

With this sharp contradiction in the evidence of the prosecution, I am bound to give the accused person the benefit of the doubt. I therefore find him not guilty and he is, accordingly, acquitted and discharged.”
Reflecting on this incident several decades later, in 2019, Soyinka recalls that he was strongly motivated to intervene in the old Western Region Crisis on behalf of the disenfranchised people whose democratic rights had been frustrated by brazen electoral fraud:

“I was one of them, my voice was being stolen. I could not sit down and accept that somebody should steal my voice. I felt at one with the majority of the people.”

References

J.F. Ade Ajayi & Yemi Akinseye George, ‘Kayode Eso: The Making of A Judge’ (Ibadan: Spectrum Books 2002) 144-150
Ademola Adegbamigbe, “Wole Soyinka at 85: His Ibadan Radio Station Invasion and Why Court Set Him Free” (The News 15 July 2019)
Henry Louis Gates Jr., ‘Being, the Will, and the Semantics of Death’ in Biodun Jeyifo (ed.), ‘Perspectives on Wole Soyinka: Freedom and Complexity’ (University Press of Mississippi, 2001) 65 Ugo Ezeh – NPP

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