By Lola Fabowale
The book, Why We Struck, by Late Major Adewale Ademoyega, gives a gripping account of the inside dynamics of Nigeria’s first coup and its aftermath.
The book challenges the previously widely held view that the January 1966 coup was ethnically-motivated rather than inspired by nationalistic and revolutionary considerations. Rather, it contends that lethargic reactions and ethnically-conscious counter-coups contrasted sharply with the nationalistic fervour epitomized by that first coup.
A Conservative Helping While Nigerian Conservatives may reel from the book’s Marxist-Leninist cum Communist propositions, they may glean, from the picture it paints, a stark warning that now that Nigeria has opted out of studying its own history let alone learning from it, it threatens once again to unfortunately repeat it.
Observations The core thesis of the book is that the Nigerian-Biafran 1967-1970 horrific war was the result as much of deliberate as of inadvertent malentendus that unleashed worrisome centrifugal forces in the yet fledgling nation. Its insights provide a basis for the view that the head-of-the-ostrich-buried-in-the-sand approach of the current regime threatens a sad replay of the quagmire Nigeria found itself in after the Northern riots of May 1966 and the July 29, 1966 counter-coup.
The book contends that war became inevitable when, contrary to the otherwise euphoric Aburi Accord, the Nigerian centre downplayed key concessions it had made for greater regional autonomy.
Analysis The current Nigerian centre does not even seem to be entertaining entreaties that the nation is, once again, on the brink of disintegration and, that only meaningful decentralization proffers the right solution. Yet, progressives from every political spectrum endorse such restructuring.
