January 1966 Coup was a Marxist Revolution, Ignore IBB

These days, we confuse the contrived political perception of Igbophobia for actual Igbophobia. What is real is the former, and the latter does not exist in the South, where intergenerational cultural stereotypes, not Igbophobia, are rather unexceptional. Every social group is historically known to have one form of cultural stereotype or the other toward other groups. These stereotypes rise and fall in popularity and acceptance based on the period’s historical period and subjective conditions.

The January 1966 coup was a Marxist Revolution that had little to do with Awolowo or the interests of a particular ethnic group. This was why the coup eliminated forces of contradiction in both the South and the North. Of course, the architects of the January coup failed to consider what several scholars have termed the “independent [uncontrollable] variable” in ethnic calculations, a fault which was not wholly theirs since Marxist theory does not sufficiently address the question of nationalism. At any rate, those unfamiliar with history should do well to catch up and not feed into the wicked schemes of IBB and his EmiLoKan cult, who are simply pawns on the Northern hegemony chessboard. The British knew what they were doing when they piggishly backed the so-called “July Rematch” and amplified ethnic feelings to nip what they apprehensively perceived as the “rise of communism” in the bud in Nigeria.

In the 1950s and 60s, phrases like “social revolution,” “social action,” “proletarian dictatorship,” “proletarian revolution,” and so on were profoundly popular Marxist ideals among the educated and ordinary folks in the newly independent African nations. Before the January coup, Chinua Achebe had charged his publishers to publish a novel titled “A Man of the People,” which predicted a military coup along the lines of an ideological revolution. After the January 1966 coup, another intellectual and poet dedicated his book “To the heroes of January 1966,” which was what Major Nzeogwu and others were originally perceived as. In fact, articles were written by student and socialist groups about the urgency of “consolidating the gains of the January 1966 coup” by eliminating primitive accumulation and the bourgeois and neo-colonialist capture of the Nigerian state.

If the coup had been an ethnic one by any means, at least either Awolowo or Azikiwe—the real Marxist intellectuals of those days widely revered in their respective regions—would have been dispatched. Although Awolowo eventually became a social democrat, Azikiwe’s influence as a Marxist intellectual transcended the borders of Nigeria and fundamentally radicalised people like Nkrumah in the Gold Coast.

The British conveniently tasked their puppets in the North to capture the narrative and turn it on its head to plunge Nigeria into unprecedented chaos and prevent the Igbos and Westerners from severely threatening or ending what they had made. Even so, if the forces of contradiction like IBB had not systematically attacked the ideological base that ensured the elaboration of organic intellectuals in the 1980s and 90s, Nigeria would certainly have more Nzeogwus today than we did in the 50s and 60s.

Those who have studied IBB’s devious tactics would know that the old nark is up to something, and whatever it is would be easily achieved if these silly interethnic recriminations in the South are not quickly resolved.

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Raphael Adebayo

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