Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, has said that he made personal efforts to save the life of former Military Head of State, General J.T.U. Aguiyi Ironsi, but that the effort was thwarted by a major in the army.
Ironsi, then head of state, from January 16, 1966 was killed during the counter-coup of July 1966, barely five months on the saddle.
Recalling the circumstance during the launch of his autobiography My Life of Duty and Allegiance in Abuja yesterday, Gowon said a major simply ignored his orders to send a helicopter to evacuate the former head of State from danger, but it happened that the person was sympathetic to the coup.
This was after he had received a phone call at about midnight from one Major Martin Adamu, that a mutiny had broken out in Abeokuta.
He had also informed him that the mutiny was triggered by rumours of the disarming of Northern commanding officers and soldiers in the barracks by the Commanding Officer, Col. Gabriel Okonweze.
“My immediate worry was that General Ironsi’s life might be in danger if I did not make an effort to reach him as quickly as possible to give him a situation report”, Gowon recalled, adding:
“I reckoned that if a mutiny had broken out in Abeokuta, it would be unsafe for him to travel via the city, and Ikorodu would have been blocked by the mutineers.
“In the end, I felt it might be a lot safer for him to fly from Ibadan to Lagos.
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“On impulse, I called the airport at Ikeja to instruct Major Paul Dickson, who oversaw the airport, to send a helicopter to Ibadan to evacuate the Supreme Commander. At once, he responded: ‘Yes, Sir.’”
Major Dickson, Gowon recalled turned out to be a member of the group that planned the coup and was not willing to carry out the instruction of safeguarding Ironsi.
“I therefore called the Government House, Ibadan, intending to give General Ironsi the sitrep, advise him to avoid Abeokuta, and intimate him of the contingency plan I had made to keep him safe.
But I did not realise that by this time the mutineers had closed in on Government House.”
The operator had instead, passed the call to Major Theophilus Danjuma, who told him he was Ironsi’s escort for the tour that was ending in Ibadan.
“I requested that he pass the call to the Supreme Commander, but he told me it would not be possible then, as Ironsi had been placed under close arrest by some officers.
“The presence of so many hot-headed young officers from the North at the scene momentarily unsettled me because they felt hurt by the events of January 15, 1966 and were, therefore, capable of doing anything,” he recalled.
“I kept my phone line open after the brief discussion with Danjuma in the hope that there would be follow-up calls from him.
“Unknown to me, however, as I would later learn, the Supreme Commander and his host governor, Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, had already been taken away in a Land Rover by their abductors without waiting for Danjuma to give them any last instructions,” Gowon said.
“On impulse, I called the airport at Ikeja to instruct Major Paul Dickson, who oversaw the airport, to send a helicopter to Ibadan to evacuate the Supreme Commander. At once, he responded: ‘Yes, Sir.’”
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