FCT, Abuja – Popular social media personality, Reno Omokri, has disagreed with the claim that the 1966 coup in Nigeria was to install a Yoruba man, late Obafemi Awolowo, in power.
In a post on his verified X (formerly Twitter) account on Sunday, February 23, Omokri said the January 15, 1966 mutiny was not an Awolowo coup.
Recall that during the coup 59 years ago, the prime minister (Abubakar Tafawa Balewa), a federal minister (Festus Okotie-Eboh), and top army officers mostly from the northern and western regions of the nation were also murdered.
Revisiting the incident, Omokri asked Nigerians to beware of “professional gaslighters”.
He wrote:
“Some revisionists claim that late Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna plotted the coup to make Chief Awolowo the Prime Minister. That attempt to revise history does not hold water because when the coup appeared to be succeeding, Ifeajuna made no moves to free Chief Awolowo. He neither sent soldiers to Calabar prison nor made any calls.
“Moreover, Major Ifeajuna was from the same village as late Nnamdi Azikiwe (ex-president of Igbo extraction), then a political archrival of Chief Awolowo and one of those who instigated the treasonable felony trial that sent him to prison. He was close to late Azikiwe, a regular visitor to his house and a friend to his son.”
Furthermore, Omokri stated that it was considered “strange” that Azikiwe went on a Caribbean cruise for his leave and very conveniently refused to return to Nigeria after the break from work.
He said:
“His (Azikiwe’s) ADC Orho Obada, who later rose to become a Major General, kept asking Chief Azikiwe when they would return to Nigeria as his leave was over. He eventually abandoned Chief Azikiwe in Haiti and returned to Nigeria.
“The actions of Chief Azikiwe left some people feeling he was aware of the coup. But that is conjecture. Nobody really knows. But that suspicion became even more heightened when Haiti provided support for Biafra when war broke out.”
Chief Awolowo remained in jail until ex-leader Yakubu Gowon freed him from Calabar prison in Cross River state on August 2, 1966. He was thereafter flown to Lagos state, where—according to Omokri—he was picked up by Lt. Colonel Murtala Muhammed (now deceased) and driven to Dodan Barracks to meet with Colonel Gowon.
Omokri continued:
“Lt Colonel Emeka Ojukwu (who later agitated for Biafra) did not release Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Colonel Ojukwu was Military Governor of the Eastern Region, and Chief Awolowo was convicted and later imprisoned by the Central Government in a federal prison in Calabar on September 11, 1963, for charges of conspiring with the late Kwame Nkrumah administration in Ghana to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nigeria.
“He was ordered released by the Gowon-led Federal Military on August 2, 1966 (the release took effect the next day). Gowon had become Head of State on August 1, 1966.”
Omokri asserted that it would have been impossible for Ojukwu to sanction the release of Awolowo while he was still a military governor under Nigeria. Thus, the social media commentator alleged that Radio Biafra has “deceived so many Nigerians with this lie.”
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