Memoire: Emmanuel Ifeajuna: Legend behind Nigeria's 1966 Coup and First Black African to Win a Gold Medal

 

This is in memory of the feat he achieved when he became the first black African to win a gold medal in Canada at the Commonwealth Games in 1954. 

 

The Late Emmanuel Ifeajuna, unarguably became the first single individual Nigerian-  African to write both Nigeria and Africa’s name on the world history map in sports  and became the first Nigerian and black African to win Africa’s first gold medal in all time sport event. 

 

Before he joined the Nigeria Army, Ifeajuna, then a Medical Student at the University College Ibadan, earned for himself this honour. 

Today, he is remembered as the hero of the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Men’s - High Jump Final. There were other athletes, Emmanuel IFEAJUNA (NGR)  2.03 m, 

Patrick ETOLU (UGA)   1.99 m and 

Nafiu OSAGIE    (NGR) 1.99 m.

 

The 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games’ events took place at Empire Stadium in Vancouver, Canada in on July and August 1954. A total of 29 athletics contested at the Games, 20 were men and 9 were women. 

 

A total of twenty-four games records were set and improved over the competition, leaving just five previous best marks untouched.

Emmanuel Ifeajuna of Nigeria became the first Commonwealth athlete to clear six feet and nine inches in a new Commonwealth record for the high jump he set at the games. Even before then, Major Ifeajuna was a distinguished fellow in international circles, a graduate of the University of Ibadan and the first African sportsman to win a gold medal at a global sports event, namely the Commonwealth Games of Vancouver in 1956.

 

Nigerian sports authorities still act as if Ifeajuna never won a gold medal for the country at the 1954 Commonwealth games in Canada -the first by any Nigerian in any individual sports event. He won it years before joining the army. That record can never be erased as long as Nigeria exists.

In 1966, a military revolution was conceived in Nigeria by a group of Army officers led by Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna.

Eleven years after he wrote Nigerian’s name on the world map, Ifeajuna in August 1965, made another history when he and two other army officers, Major Donatus Okafor and Captain O. Oji, began the active planning of Nigeria's first coup. 

 

The coup was executed on January 15, 1966, but was foiled by Major Aguyi Ironsi. Ifeajuna fled to Ghana, but was sent back to Nigeria when Nkrumah was overthrown in February. He was jailed in the East but was later released by Lt. Col. Ojukwu in September.

On August 9, 1967, as a Biafra Lt. Col., Ifeajuna was the first Chief of Staff of the 'Midwest Liberation Force' (101 Division) under Victor Banjo. 

 

However, he got involved in an alleged plot to overthrow Ojukwu, and he was tried under Ojukwu's Biafran Law and Order (maintenance) Decree of 1967, before being executed in Enugu on September 25, 1967 along with Banjo, Alale and Agbam.

Ifeajuna’s role in the first coup remains in doubt. Some writers have qualified its leadership to have some quality intellectual having gone through the four walls of the ivory tower before joining the Army.

 

Some historians have also said that Ifeajuna stood for a new, united Nigeria. There are argument that he was thorough breed pan-Nigerian revolutionary who has no tribe of his own and perhaps that was why he has to be killed by Ojukwu who saw him as never supportive of his secessionist agenda. Ifeajuna was killed in East by Ojukwu government who ordinarily supposed to have secured his life.

 

Those who disagreed of his nationalistic quality argued on the basis of the fact of that single factor of the execution of the coup which turned the entire affair against him.

 

 The plotters and executioners of the coup detailed to carry out the operation in the Ibo East allegedly failed woefully to carry out their assignments. The reason for their inability to execute the coup to the letter either by accident or design is still a matter of debate. The report was that Ifeajuna spared the Ibo politicians and reportedly did well in the Hausa-Fulani North and the Yoruba West. Major Nzeogwu, spearheading the Northern effort, effected the executions of key Northern leaders, most notably the supremely iconic Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto. On the Western front, it was all but quiet as the Premier; Akintola was killed in a hail of bullets. In the capital city of Lagos, Ifeajuna himself took charge and saw to the demise of key leading elements, most notably the Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa.  However, the execution of key Ibo leaders such as Azikiwe, Okpara, Ibiam and Ironsi never took place. And the rest is now history.

One writer writing on Ifeajuna said. “Ifeajuna’s was a classic case. His vision was unambiguous. He wanted a united Nigeria from start to finish and stuck to those dreams and paid for it. He was the brain behind the revolution, not Nzeogwu, who is now regarded as such in folklore. Ojukwu himself had been approached by the coup planners but he balked only to later ride the waves of the circumstances and become the people’s general.

 

Why is Ifeajuna so unsung, even by his own people of Onitsha, he, the real revolutionary of Nigeria, an international sports champion and a true nationalist? Even Nzeogwu, who killed the Sardauna, was given a hero’s burial at the military cemetery in Kaduna by Nigerian officers of Hausa-Fulani extraction, who might have been forgiven for quartering his corpse in retaliation for that killing. Ojukwu, who led the Ibos to near-extinction, driven perhaps more by obfuscated visions of a place in history than by lucid military calculations is now immortal,” he wrote, “He was accorded the funeral of an emperor even by natives of Onitsha, Ifeajuna’s own kinsmen, who should rightly have been offended by his execution and enduring vilification. No funeral has been given him to this day. His great status in world sports is not only remembered but, I suspect, actively swept under the carpet. Among his own people of Onitsha, there is no rehabilitation or commemoration of his name and all the while, I keep hearing that charity begins at   home”. 

 

Henry Chukwuemeka Onyema. Emmanuel Ifeajuna was an Officer of the Nigerian Army and later of the defunct Republic of Biafra. Born on November 25, 1946 in the town of Ringim in the Old Kano State, he hails from Onitsha in Anambra State. He attended Ilesa Grammar School Abeokuta, Ogun State and later University College Ibadan, Oyo State.

Ifeajuna returned to Enugu as Liaison Officer for the Liberation Army. He was killed in Enugu State in a public execution.