THE GREATEST BETRAYAL IN NIGERIA: How Northerners and Igbos Went From Best Friends To Civil War Enemies
THE GREATEST BETRAYAL IN NIGERIA: How Northerners and Igbos Went From Best Friends To Civil War Enemies
This Is The Story They Will NEVER Teach You In School Or NYSC Camp.
They will give you the sanitized version. The one that offends nobody and heals nobody.
But truth bites.
And Nigeria is sick because we run from truth.
If you love comfortable lies, unfollow now.
If you want the uncomfortable truth that can actually heal this country, read this to the end.
Before there was Biafra. Before there was January 15, 1966. Before there was “Nyamiri” and “Aboki”…
Northerners and Igbos were the BEST OF FRIENDS in Nigeria.
I know that shocks you. But history does not lie.
As early as 1938 – 88 years ago – Our Lady’s High School was built in Kaduna by the Catholic Mission.
Who were the backbone of that Catholic Mission?
Answer: Igbos.
By the 30s and 40s, the Igbo man in the North was not a stranger. He was your teacher, your clerk, your railway staff. He spoke Hausa fluently.
By the 1950s, everything changed. The Igbo man stopped looking for salary and started building an empire.
He dominated transport and haulage. He took over retail and distribution. He bought land. In Kano, in Kaduna, in Jos, in Zaria – he was not planning to return to the East. He was digging his heels in to stay FOREVER. The North was home. That’s why Igbos defended unity of Nigeria like lifeblood, before the age of Biafra!
Also, that is why the greatest Igbo leaders in history were not born in the East.
Nnamdi Azikiwe – Zungeru, Niger State. Born and bred in the North.
Chukwuemeka Ojukwu – Zungeru, Northern Nigeria’s capital.
Chukwuma Nzeogwu – Kaduna, Northern Nigeria’s new capital.
They were Northern boys.
So it should not surprise you that in 1959, when Nigeria was about to get Independence, Zik did not go to Awolowo, his fellow Southerner. He went to his Northern brothers.
Azikiwe and his NCNC – predominantly Igbo – chose Ahmadu Bello and his NPC – predominantly Northerners. Against all odds. Zik looked at Ahmadu Bello and said, “Let us forget our differences.”
This alliance was so strong that together, they put Chief Obafemi Awolowo in prison. North and East were one political family. The West was the opposition.
Everything was fine. Until ONE THING broke it: NUMBERS.
THE CENSUS THAT KILLED A FRIENDSHIP
In 1962/63, Nigeria conducted a census. In Nigeria, politics is a game of numbers. Who has the numbers controls the country.
When the first result came out in July 1962, it showed something explosive: The biggest population in Nigeria were the Igbos!
The North could not and would never accept that. How could the vast North, stretching from Ilorin to the borders of Chad, be less than the East?
So they cancelled it. They ordered a recount.
The second result was released in November 1963. This time, the North had the largest numbers.
That was the atomic bomb that destroyed the Northern-Igbo love story.
As Nelson Ottah recorded at that time:
“The emotional climate that the publication of the 1963 census had created was at its all-time high. Dr. Michael Okpara, national president of the NCNC, had just announced that his party and government rejected the census figures while Sir Ahmadu Bello, leader of the NPC, quickly countered that his party and government accepted the census figures and warned that the NCNC, which had been working the Federal coalition with the NPC, should do well to accept the census figures or get out of the coalition.”
For the first time, the NCNC and NPC were no longer brothers. They were threatening each other. The coalition collapsed. The trust evaporated.
And then, just three years later, the unthinkable happened.
JANUARY 15, 1966
Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, the most beloved leader of the North, was assassinated in his own home. Along with him, top Northern political and military leaders – all killed.
And Igbo top leaders? Not one was touched. They were all intact.
To the ordinary Northerner in the street, it did not matter what the coup plotters later said in their books. What mattered was one fact: The man who killed Ahmadu Bello was called “Chukwuma.” That was how Major Nzeogwu was known in the North.
Chukwuma. An Igbo name.
Just like Chukwuemeka
From that day, the label was pasted. It became an Igbo coup in the eyes of the North, no matter how many disclaimers were written later.
Census had planted the suspicion that Igbos wanted to dominate by numbers. January 15 planted the fear that Igbos now wanted to dominate by the barrel of the gun.
That fear led to the counter-coup of July 1966. That counter-coup led to the massacres. Those massacres led to Ojukwu saying “we can no longer be safe in Nigeria.” And that led to the Civil War that killed 2 million people.
From best friends to bloodshed in just 4 years.
We were not always enemies. We were made enemies by power, fear, and politics.
I do not write this to reopen wounds. I write it because a wound that was never cleaned will never heal. If we don’t understand where we broke, we will never know how to fix Nigeria.
This is PART 1.
Follow me for PART 2: What Ahmadu Bello REALLY Thought About The Igbos Before He Was Assassinated – In His Own Words. You will be shocked.
If this truth offended you, bear with me. A physician must sometimes ignore the cries of the patient to cure the sickness.
Share this so that the younger generation will know the truth.
