COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Very few of Nigeria’s former military leaders are spoken of with any great affection. There is on notable exception: General Murtala Muhammed. The time of his regime is recalled with nostalgia by Nigerians of both civilian and military persuasions as a golden age. Whereas today, military rule, and military rulers, have been demonised, Murtala gave Nigeria a glimpse of the principled and dynamic leadership that its citizens crave.Here, I attempt to give readers a closer look at the most popular Head of State in Nigeria’s history.

IN THE BEGINNING

Murtala Muhammed was born in Kano on November 8, 1938.   Like many of his northern colleagues in the army, he attended Barewa College in Zaria.   He began his military training in 1959 and was commissioned into the Nigerian army as a second lieutenant in 1961.   Like so many Nigerian army officers of his generation including future Head of State Yakubu Gowon, he trained at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in England.   Early in his career, Murtala was taught military tactics by an eloquent and intelligent Oxford University educated officer named Chukwuemeka Ojukwu.   Little did teacher and student realise that one day, they would end up as protagonists on opposing sides of the battlefield.

In 1962, Murtala served as a member of the Nigerian led UN peacekeeping force in the Congo.   That UN peacekeeping force was later commanded by Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, who would subsequently become Nigeria’s first military Head of State.   Murtala specialised in the army’s signals corps and was stationed in Lagos where his Uncle: Inua Wada served as the Federal Government’s Defence Minister. The emotionally volatile Murtala first came to prominence after Nigeria suffered what was to prove the first of many military coups, on January 15^th 1966. Had a group of young army Majors not overthrown the civilian government of Tafawa Balewa, most Nigerians would never have heard the name “Murtala Muhammed”.

THE FIVE MAJORS

Murtala was in Lagos when a young and charismatic instructor at the Nigerian Military Training College in Kaduna named Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu (“an incorruptible idealist without ambitions of power, in many ways a man born before his time” – see Muffett – “Why They Struck”) killed the premier of the northern region: Ahmadu Bello.   After a group of young army officers (including Nzeogwu) toppled the civilian government in a violent military coup d’etat, Nzeogwu was in de facto control of the northern region of Nigeria.   Tense negotiations were conducted via intermediaries, between Nzeogwu and the General Officer Commanding the Nigerian Army: Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi.   In the ensuing melee, Ironsi emerged as Nigeria’s first military Head of State.   After a few days of these negotiations, Nzeogwu, wearing his trademark white scarf, emerged to address reporters.   He agreed to hand over the administration of the northern region to the officer hand picked by Ironsi: the newly promoted Lt-Colonel Hassan Usman Katsina.   He also agreed to surrender to, and come to Lagos in the company of Lt-Colonel Conrad Nwawo (an officer trusted by Nzeogwu and who had been recalled from his post as Nigeria’s military attaché in the United Kingdom for this purpose).   Murtala was among the troops who along with Nwawo took Nzeogwu from Kaduna to Lagos.   However, Murtala’s co-operation with Ironsi’s regime and policies did not last long after this episode.  

As the pattern of killings during the January 15^th coup emerged, northerners (including Murtala) became convinced that the coup had been targeted specifically at them when it became evident that the four highest ranking northern officers in the Nigerian army: the “astute and articulate” Brigadier Maimalari (see Madiebo – “The Biafran Revolution and the Nigerian Civil War”), the acting Chief of Staff at army headquarters Colonel Kur Mohammed, the Adjutant-General Lt-Colonel James Pam, and the commanding officer of the 4^th battalion Lt-Colonel Abogo Largema, had been murdered during the coup.   In an attempt to dismiss charges of an anti-northern agenda, Ironsi with great courage surrounded himself with northern soldiers and promoted northerners to some sensitive military posts.   He had northern bodyguards and a northern ADC.   He also appointed Lt-Colonel Yakubu Gowon to replace Colonel Kur Mohammed as the Chief of Staff at army headquarters, and Mohammed Shuwa was promoted to Lt-Colonel and selected to replace Lt-Col ‘Emeka’ Ojukwu as the commander of the 5^th battalion in Kano.   Murtala himself was promoted to Lt-Colonel and appointed as the Nigerian army’s inspector of signals.  

However, Murtala and his northern colleagues were still not happy and were further infuriated when they learnt of the promotion of several Igbo officers, and worse still, that some of these Igbos has been promoted to occupy the posts previously held by the northern officers slain in January.   Murtala made no secret of his dislike of Ironsi’s actions. In an outspoken outburst in the presence of Igbo officers, Murtala referred to Ironsi as a “fool” and made it clear that he would take steps to avenge the deaths of his northern officer colleagues.   The anger of northern troops at the perceived Igbo bias of Ironsi’s regime was such that there was an undeclared consensus among them that they too would stage their own coup, except this time, Igbos would be the victims of such a coup. Once this consensus was reached, Murtala became the effective leader of the northern faction in the Nigerian army. Using his sensitive position as the inspector of signals, northern soldiers met at Murtala’s Lagos house to plan for their “July rematch” with Igbo soldiers.

While Igbos suspected that northerners were planning a revenge coup, northerners were convinced that Igbo soldiers were planning a second coup to finish them off.   Lt-Col Patrick Anwunah openly confronted Murtala with the accusation that he was planning a northern led coup.   The two had an angry exchange of words.   Anwunah hoped that the confrontation would convince Murtala to drop his coup plan.   It had the opposite effect.   Realising that the plot had leaked, Murtala decided that he had to strike immediately. This allied to wild conspiracy theories of a grand Igbo design to annihilate northerners convinced northern soldiers that they had to take pre-emptive action.   At their lowest level, these theories claimed that Igbo soldiers were planning to kill all remaining northern soldiers, and at their highest level, that Igbos were planning to kill all northern males whether military or civilian.   That many northern soldiers believed these stories must be taken into account when assessing the brutality of their response to Igbos.  

THE “JULY REMATCH”

Murtala and other northern soldiers had lost so much faith in the Nigerian federation, that they now wanted to break the northern region out of Nigeria. This intention was personified by the codename of their revenge coup: operation “Araba” (an Hausa term meaning “separate us” – presumably separation from the rest of Nigeria).

When the northern revenge coup began on July 29 1966, Murtala coordinated events from Lagos and led a team of soldiers who took over the international airport at Ikeja. In a remarkable irony, the same airport which he had taken over by force was named after him a decade later.   Airplanes were hijacked by northern soldiers in order to ferry their families back to the north in anticipation of the northern region’s exit from Nigeria. At the airport itself, an Igbo officer (Captain Okoye) was captured by Murtala’s troops at the airport, tied to an iron cross, beaten and left to die in the guardroom.   In military units at Lagos, Ibadan, and Kaduna, northern troops mutinied and murdered their Igbo colleagues in frightening and gruesome reprisals for the Majors’ coup in January. The Head of State, Major-General Ironsi, was kidnapped, beaten and shot by soldiers including men from his own security detail.   Other incidents of shocking brutality took place across the country as northern soldiers rose up and slaughtered hundreds of their Igbo colleagues.

After their blitzkrieg, the senior northern soldiers in Lagos retreated to Ikeja cantonment. The most senior surviving officer left in the army – Brigadier Ogundipe, dared not risk an open confrontation with them given the mood they were in.   He instead sent the Chief of Staff, Army, Lt-Colonel Gowon to go to Ikeja cantonment to bargain with the mutineers.   When Gowon arrived, he was placed under arrest on the orders of Murtala.   Murtala and the other northern soldiers were suspicious of Gowon’s high profile role in Ironsi’s regime.   Eventually the northern soldiers were joined by British diplomats and senior civil servants who engaged them in a lively debate.   Murtala became the spokesman of the northern soldiers and he was vociferous and uncompromising in his insistence that the north should secede from Nigeria.   He argued passionately for the secession of the north and declared that the northern soldiers would observe a “ceasefire” only when their conditions had been met. Namely –

1. the repatriation of northerners and southerners to their respective regions of origin
2. the secession of the northern region from Nigeria.

GOWON –Vs- MURTALA: WHO WAS IN CHARGE?

After days of tense negotiations in Lagos, the northern soldiers agreed to remain in Nigeria, but only if their most senior member, Lt-Colonel Gowon, became Head of State.   They got their wish.   Gowon’s ascension to power coincided with massive pogroms in the north during which tens of thousands of Igbos were killed by rampaging northern mobs. Many members of Gowon’s own constituency, the army, joined in with the mayhem. These murders continued to occur even after specific assurances of Igbo safety had been given by Gowon.   Realising the separation between the political, and military leadership of the country, Gowon always checked with Murtala before giving assurances of safety.   However, some northern NCOS had got so wayward after the orgy of violence that no one, not even Murtala, could control their trigger happiness. For example, Major Ekanem who had been promised safe passage, was shot dead on Cater bridge by a northern NCO while en route to an errand for Gowon.   This was typical of the total breakdown of military discipline at the time.   Orders which had been routinely obeyed in the past now became simply a “basis for discussion”.   It is arguable that the Nigerian army, and society, have never recovered from the wild days of 1966.  

As Gowon tried to consolidate his political leadership of the country, Murtala lurked in the background at the army’s de facto strongman.   Tension between the two was always beneath the surface, and simmered between the two for a decade.   The military governor of the east, Lt-Col C.O. Ojukwu refused to recognise Gowon as the Head of State. In response to national debate on the military’s continual hold on governance, Murtala announced plans for the military to disengage from politics.Some civilians had accused some military officers of behaving as if they had a right  to be in government, and forgetting that military rule was an aberration.   Murtala therefore laid out the framework for the return of Nigeria to democratic rule on October 1^st 1979.   Anxious to avoid the blatant ethnic based party politics of the 1960s, Murtala told the committee which would draft the new constitution, that the SMC would prefer it if they came up with a system of government without political parties.   In the end several “new” political parties emerged as clones of the parties of the 1960s.

Gowon’s regime had remained neutral in the simmering “cold war” between the world’s then two super powers: the USA and the Soviet Union.   Gowon’s regime bought weapons from the Soviets while remaining on cordial terms with western nations. However, Murtala’s regime embarked on a more assertive foreign policy.   Contrary to the wishes of the USA, it unilaterally recognised the Marxist MPLA as the legitimate government of Angola.   Murtala then rallied other African countries to follow suit, and backed up his diplomatic action with massive financial aid to the MPLA.   Some western powers may have become concerned that the new regime in Africa’s richest country was galvanising African countries to recognise a government with Communist ideology.

The massive funds generated by the oil boom had seen Nigeria embark on a series of grandiose construction projects for which tons of cement had to be imported from abroad.   This wasteful extravagance meant that at one point, half of the world’s cement orders were headed for Nigeria.   This caused a massive backlog at Lagos ports as ships waited to offload.