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THROWBACK SIGNAL | Aguiyi-Ironsi’s First Press Conference After the January 15, 1966 Coup [VIDEO]

On 14th January 1966, soldiers of mostly Igbo extraction led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, an Igbo from Okpanam near Asaba, present day Delta state, eradicated the uppermost echelon of politicians from the Northern and Western provinces. This and other factors effectively led to the fall of the Republican Government.

Though Ironsi, an Igbo, was purportedly slated for assassination, he effectively took control of Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory. With the President, Nnamdi Azikiwe, also an Igbo refusing to intervene and ensure the continuity of civilian rule, Ironsi effectively at gun point forced the remaining members of Balewa’s Government to resign. He then made the Senate President, Nwafor Orizu, another Igbo who was serving as acting president in Azikiwe’s absence, to officially surrender power to him, staging a coup of his own and ending the First Nigerian Republic.

Ironsi inherited a Nigeria deeply fractured by its ethnic and religious cleavages. The fact that none of the high-profile victims of the 1966 coup were of Igbo extraction, and also that the main beneficiaries of the coup were Igbo, led the Northern part of the country to believe that it was an Igbo conspiracy.

Though Ironsi tried to dispel this notion by courting the aggrieved ethnic groups through political appointments and patronage, his failure to punish the coup plotters and the promulgation of the now infamous “Decree No. 34”- which abrogated Nigeria’s federal structure in exchange for a unitary one-crystallized this conspiracy theory.

During his short regime, Aguiyi-Ironsi promulgated a raft of decrees. Among them were the Constitution Suspension and Amendment Decree No.1, which suspended most articles of the Constitution (though he left intact those sections of the constitution that dealt with fundamental human rights, freedom of expression and conscience were left intact). The Circulation of Newspaper Decree No.2 which removed the restrictions on press freedom put in place by the preceding civilian administration. 

According to Ndayo Uko, the Decree no.2 was to serve “as a kind gesture to the press” to safeguard himself when he went on later to promulgate the Defamatory and Offensive Decree No.44 of 1966 which made it an “offense to display or pass on pictorial representation, sing songs, or play instruments the words of which are likely to provoke any section of the country.” 

In this video below, details of Ironsi’s first press conference on assumption of power are captured.

Credits: Wikipedia

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Copyright 2015 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.

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