posted 23rd February 2025
The Myth of the Igbo Coup and Nigeria’s Deep-Rooted Igbophobia by Charles Ogbu
Just so we are clear, IBB writing in his autobiography that the January 15th 1966 coup was not an Igbo coup ought not be news to any adult Nigerian with even the littlest knowledge of Nigerian history. And IGBOPHOBIA in Nigeria DID NOT start because of that coup. Not at all. People don’t usually need a reason to hate you. They hate because it’s just who they are, not necessarily because of what you did or didn’t do.
As far back as 1945 at a time Nigeria has not even dreamed of independence, the first anti-Igbo pogrom took place in Jos. Was the January 15th coup responsible for that?
In 1953, another major anti-Igbo pogrom happened in Kano. This time, all that was required was a minor legislative disagreement at the Lagos parliament where Northern lawmakers were booed for trying to delay a motion for Nigeria’s independence by claiming their region wasn’t yet ready. Was the January 15th coup responsible for that?? Was the coup responsible for Ahmadu Bello saying in a BBC interview that he would rather give job to an expatriate than give same to an Igbo man?
Were we not all here during the last election when some Yoruba thugs announced before hand that they would attack Igbos who would dare come out to vote and not only did the attack happen as they threatened, these thugs even attacked their fellow Yoruba people who, in their bigoted lense, looked like Igbos and the spokesperson of Nigeria Police Force, one Adejobi Olumuyiwa came on a live TV, Channels Television to tell us that the thug, MC Oluomo who made the threat which he later carried out, was merely joking. Was any arrest made even as I type?
The Nigerian state has an Igbo problem. And it has nothing to do with any coup.
This is a country where Professor Ahmed Bako of the Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto, left all the challenges directly affecting northern Nigeria to pick “THE IGBO FACTOR IN THE HISTORY OF INTER-GROUP RELATIONS AND COMMERCE IN KANO” as the topic of his valedictory lecture wherein he claimed that Igbos embraced western education mainly so they could dominate others. This same Professor, in a desperate bid to push his agenda cited a fictitious rental incident where a Kano-based Igbo businessman, one Obi Okonkwo supposedly paid £30,000 for a textile shop in Kano in 1986, in order to drive out an Hausa trader, one Alhaji Salisu Barau previously occupying the shop. Meanwhile, even Olaedo my 14 year old daughter knows that Nigeria abolished the use of ££ in 1973. So how could shop rent in Kano have been in ££ in 1986?? This was a professor who spent nearly 45 years teaching and researching Nigerian history! Imagine what this man must have taught his students for over 4 decades he was in the classroom?
My point is, there is really no point trying to find a reason why Nigeria view the Igbos with contempt. And it has nothing to do with the January 15th coup.
Was it not a common knowledge that Hassan Usman Katsina who later became the military governor of the northern region was Nzeogwu’s right-hand man and a major participant in the coup? Was Adewale Ademoyega - the author of “Why We Struck” not a major participant in the coup? Was it not two Igbo sons, Aguyi Ironsi and Odumegwu Ojukwu who foiled the coup in the West (Lagos) and North (Kano) respectively?
On the evening of the January 15th coup when a Boeing 707 belonging to the Nigerian Airways arrived Kano with almost the whole Northern establishment back from Lagos where they had gone to attend Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference, was Ojukwu who received them and offered them security as against the instruction of the coup boys who wanted all politicians neutralized, not an Igbo man?
When an intellectually sophisticated sage like the late Chinualumogu Achebe wrote that the only common point of agreement for most Nigerians is their common resentment for the Igbos, some of you probably thought he was talking Akuko Mike Ejeagha?
Make we leave matter for Mathias abeg! One thing is for sure, we will never apologize for being Igbo.
