Abstract
On 15 January 1966 mutinuous middle-ranking officers of the Nigerian army led by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu overthrew the first post-independence civilian government headed by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. With the subsequent defeat of these rebel forces by federal loyalist troops led by the army commander, General Johnson Aguyi-Ironsi, a military junta was set up with him at its head to administer the country.
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Notes
See Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, ‘The Nigerian Plight: Shagari to Buhari’, Third World Quarterly, 7 (3), 1985, p. 619.
Cf. John Stremlau, The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 51.
Quoted in A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. I (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 413.
See, for instance, Billy Dudley, An Introduction to Nigerian Government and Politics (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 278–9.
For a recent focus on the background to Britain’s strategic control of Nigeria’s economy, see Toyin Falola (ed.), Britain and Nigeria: Exploitation or Development? (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1987).
Cf. General Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command: An account of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–70 (Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980), p. 146.
Ibid. See also Suzanne Cronje, The World and Nigeria: The Diplomatic History of the Biafra War (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972), p. 17.
See Sam Epelle (ed.), Nigeria Speaks: Speeches of Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (Lagos: Longman, 1964), p. 10.
Oye Ogunbadejo, ‘Ideology and Pragmatism: The Soviet Role in Nigeria, 1960–1977’, Orbis, Winter 1978, p. 810.
David Hunt, On the Spot: An Ambassador Remembers (London: Peter Davies, 1975), p. 194.
Cronje, ibid., p. 81, and Kennedy Lindsay, ‘How Biafra Pays for the War’, Venture, March 1969, p. 27 (cited in Stremlau, op. cit., p. 231).
See Bernard Odogwu, No Place to Hide (Crises and Conflicts Inside Biafra) (Enugu: Fourth Dimension, 1985), especially ch. 10.
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© 1990 Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
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Ekwe-Ekwe, H. (1990). Nigeria. In: Conflict and Intervention in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21071-8_2
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