After the rancorous emergency meeting ended with the NPC and NNDP ministers vowing to kick start the process of swearing in Dipcharima, Ironsi called Njoku and asked him to summon Gowon and all other senior officers to the Force HQ which had become the Joint Operations Centre through the efforts of the British expatriates of the Police at the HQ: Leslie Alfred Marsden, the acting Inspector General of Police, George Duckett, Assistant Superintendent of Police, and Arthur Stacey Barham, Assistant Commissioner of Police. They were all included in the Queen’s Birthday honours later in June for their effort in keeping Nigeria united and containing the bloodshed. However, a month later the full-scale massacres started. Meanwhile, at exactly 5:45am, Marsden, went to the British Deputy High Commissioner D.F. Hawley’s Bourdillon Road residence to alert him that a coup was going on. He went again at 10:45am after flying to Ikeja to procure Ironsi and Njoku. He said the hierarchy of the Police Force was loyal but they were not sure of the loyalty of the Armed Forces. And so to harmonise loyalties, it was best, argued Marsden, Duckett and Barham to establish a Joint Operations Centre at the Force HQ where there was no fear renegade soldiers would burst in to abduct or shoot anyone. FBC endorsed the place by agreeing to meet Dipcharima only at the Force HQ. Dipcharima had no choice but to move the council of ministers’ meeting there.
Marsden again later went to inform the British diplomats that Ironsi and his officers were planning to take over the government and he and Barham were asked to write the takeover speech and Ironsi’s provisional statement of policy. According to the report FBC later wrote to London, Barham who was an assistant superintendent of police in Palestine used a Palestine precedent and Ironsi’s speech ended up resembling the one Nzeogwu gave the previous day without the fatwas on homosexuality, bribery, rumour mongering etc etc. In the middle of the night of Ironsi’s takeover, Marsden again went to advice FBC that to have an edge for British interests, he should be the first to pay Ironsi a symbolic visit in the morning. This FBC promptly did to confirm they were not backing up the North but any one in power.
The Inspector General of Police, the 54-year-old Louis Orok Edet was on holiday at his native home in Calabar. Edet joined the police force as a mere clerk in 1932 and rose through the ranks after helping the colonial police track down ritualists who beheaded human beings for cultural sacrifices. Edet was roundly criticised by his villagers for joining “the enslavers,” “imperialists,” “colonial exploiters,” the destroyers of native cultures.” His villagers never saw anything wrong or inhuman in the beheadings; it was the generational preservation of their ancestral culture that mattered. When he was appointed as the first indigenous IG in 1964, given his background, he was sceptical of the call for rapid Nigerianisation of Police. He refused to terminate the contract of the several colonial officers still within the top hierarchy of the police force.
With the politicians gone after their rancorous Cabinet meeting, Ironsi summoned all the senior officers alive in Lagos for an emergency meeting. Commodore Wey, the head of the Navy, Lt Colonels Victor Banjo, the head of NAMAE in Yaba, Lt Colonel Francis Fajuyi, head of the Abeokuta Garrison, Lieutenant Colonels Gowon and Njoku were all there. Ironsi narrated the coup as he knew it and Gowon narrated his effort to rally the army under him, find the abducted politicians and officers. Excepting Gowon who kept on maintaining that the army should avoid political leadership, the consensus was that this was the army’s opportunity and Ironsi as the head of the army should not waste it. As Njoku later wrote of that day in his book Tragedy Without Heroes, he told Ironsi during the earlier tête-à-tête at Ikeja to take over the affairs of the state; that the younger officers may actually be doing the nation a favour. Njoku knew that in Chinese language, crisis and opportunity meant the same thing. That confirmed earlier Gowon’s suspicion that Ironsi and Njoku showed zero zeal to liquidate the mutiny. They sat down faraway safely in Ikeja until the British expatriates came to pick them up by helicopter.
To Banjo, the young officers had apparently provided the boots on the ground for the takeover, it was totally unfair that only senior officers should enjoy the seats at the table. He then went further to suggest that Nzeogwu who with his broadcast had emerged as the face of the coup must be invited to join the proposed Supreme Military Council. Ironsi said the Ministers were on their way to the Ikoyi Crescent home of the Senate President to arrange the swearing in. They must be stopped.
On Sunday 16 January around noon, Shehu Shagari, Richard Akinjide and some other NPC-NNDP ministers waited in Senate President’s sitting room. At the other side of Ikoyi, Dipcharima was at his Bourdillon Road residence awaiting the outcome. Then came FBC, the British High Commissioner who withdrew the promise of transmitting the request for British security to the Commonwealth office in Downing Street and had a gentleman’s pact with Dipcharima to deny such a request was ever made. The Ministers still sat there with the Senate President not knowing that the need for the office of the Acting Prime Minister had been voided. Had the request not been made, it was not likely that Ironsi would have been motivated to seize power then. The Senate President who also was the acting President and Head of Government continued to work the phones upstairs away from the ministers. He was struggling to get in touch with Azikiwe who was recuperating in the UK after contracting a lung infection during his holidays.
But something mysterious was happening.
Late on Saturday, 15th January, at his Surrey hotel, Azikiwe heard the news of the disappearance of the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister and the death of two premiers on the BBC. The details of who did what were yet to emerge. The coup plotters had shut down the telephone exchange and all external communications facilities. In fact, at the private meeting between Ironsi and FBC on 17th January, Ironsi narrated how he was lucky to escape death because Pam phoned him around 3:00am that a mutiny was ongoing. FBC later wrote that he doubted if a phone call was possible at the time because some of their diplomats living in Ikoyi heard gunshots and the menacing troop movements. They tried to contact their High Commission for security assurance but the phones were down. Unlike Ibadan telephone exchange that was fully automatic, Lagos telephone exchange was partially automatic and when Major Ademoyega’s unit arrived to relieve the manual connectors of their posts, the automatic exchange to which all officers’ lines emanated was still connecting calls for 20 minutes in the basement before Ademoyega’s men finally reached it and shut it down. That 20 minutes window gave Pam the opportunity to warn Maimalari and Ironsi. If not for Pam, Ironsi and Maimalari – two high value targets – would have been slaughtered in their respective residences. The rebels would have consolidated their HQ at the Federal Guards officer’s mess and commenced the second phase. Pam’s quick call was instrumental to the failure of the Revolution.
Betty Emery, Azikiwe’s private secretary arrived at the Nigerian High Commission in London from “Suite of the President of Nigeria, Burford Bridge hotel, Box Hill in Dorking, Surrey” where Azikiwe was recuperating on public finance. She brought a letter stamped Top Secret that Azikiwe wanted transmitted to Lagos. His usual hotel phones and cablegram facilities were avoiding Lagos and so he sent Miss Emery to the Nigerian High Commission in London. But the High Commission too was having problems connecting to Lagos so in company of Mr Dosunmu, the Acting high commissioner and Brigadier Ogundipe his military attaché, Emery proceeded to the Commonwealth Relations Office(CRO) in Downing Street to connect with the British High Commission in Lagos. They arrived there at around 4pm. British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson who left Nigeria three days before the Revolution had given Arthur Bottomley the CRO’s secretary of state up to 8pm to submit a report of what happened in Nigeria, how they were caught unawares and what could be done to locate their friend and ally Sir Tafawa Balewa Abubakar. FBC had already forwarded a long preliminary report of what they knew so far and whom was currently steering the affairs of the nation. The DI 4(a), Defence Intelligence under the Ministry of Defence and Col Hunt the military adviser had been tasked to find how an operation of such scale eluded British spies. Nigeria had been extra vetted for security in order that the Queen’s cousin, Prince William of Gloucester could serve at the High Commission there. Nigeria held Britain’s fourth largest diplomatic outpost in the world.
St John Chadwick an Assistant Under-Secretary at the CRO was the first to notice to whom Azikiwe’s letter was addressed. He gently corrected Emery/Azikiwe’s ignorance saying when next they wanted to send a letter to the person running the country, they should address it to Zanar Dicharima, c/o Council of Ministers and not to Major General Aguiyi Ironsi. But Azikiwe knew something they did not know.
The letter read:
Dear Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi,
The news is now wide-spread about the unfortunate events which have occurred in the last two days in our dear country. I am very much perturbed to learn that all lines of communication between Nigeria and the outside world have been temporarily disconnected, so I am obliged to use the good services of a friendly medium because I understand that you are now actively engaged in restoring order in the capital and other parts of the country.
Since this is a Herculean task which must be undertaken by all of us who are interested in the peace and stability of our Federal Republic, I now inform you of my desire to return home immediately in order to be in position to discharge any duty, Constitutional or otherwise, in which my services may be required.
As you appear to be the only means of communication to my Government, I hope that you will be kind enough to give me your considered advice, at you earliest convenience, through the bearer of this letter.
Sincerely yours,
Signed
NNAMDI AZIKIWE
President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Source: Daily Trust