Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi

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Major General

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}}{{#if:|{{#ifeq:{{#ifeq:|no|yes}}|yes||}} }}{{#if:|{{#ifeq:{{#ifeq:|no|yes}}|yes||}} }}{{#if:|{{#if:||{{#ifeq:{{#ifeq:|no|yes}}|yes||}}}} }}{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:Infobox officeholder with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|ignoreblank=y| regexp1 = 1blankname[%d]* | regexp2 = 1namedata[%d]* | regexp3 = 2blankname[%d]* | regexp4 = 2namedata[%d]* | regexp5 = 3blankname[%d]* | regexp6 = 3namedata[%d]* | regexp7 = 4blankname[%d]* | regexp8 = 4namedata[%d]* | regexp9 = 5blankname[%d]* | regexp10 = 5namedata[%d]* | allegiance | alma_mater | regexp11 = alongside[%d]* | alt | regexp12 = ambassador_from[%d]* | regexp13 = appointed[%d]* | regexp14 = appointer[%d]* | regexp15 = assembly[%d]* | awards | battles | battles_label | birth_date | birth_name | birth_place | birthname | regexp16 = blank[%d]* | bodyclass | branch | branch_label | cabinet | candidate | caption | categories | regexp17 = chancellor[%d]* | children | citizenship | regexp18 = co%-leader[%d]* | commands | committees | regexp19 = constituency[%d]* | regexp20 = constituency_AM[%d]* | regexp21 = constituency_MP[%d]* | regexp22 = convocation[%d]* | regexp23 = country[%d]* | regexp24 = data[%d]* | date | death_cause | death_date | death_manner | death_place | demo | regexp25 = deputy[%d]* | regexp26 = district[%d]* | education | election_date | embed | father | regexp28 = firstminister[%d]* | footnotes | regexp29 = governor[%d]* | regexp30 = governor_general[%d]* | regexp31 = governor%-general[%d]* | height | honorific_prefix | honorific-prefix | honorific_suffix | honorific-suffix | image | image name | image_name_alt | image_size | imagesize | image_upright | incumbent | regexp32 = jr/sr[%d]* | regexp33 = jr/sr and state[%d]* | known_for | regexp34 = leader[%d]* | regexp35 = legislature[%d]* | regexp36 = lieutenant[%d]* | regexp37 = lieutenant_governor[%d]* | mainwidth | regexp38 = majority[%d]* | regexp39 = majority_floor_leader[%d]* | regexp40 = majority_leader[%d]* | regexp41 = majorityleader[%d]* | mawards | regexp42 = military_blank[%d]* | regexp43 = military_data[%d]* | regexp44 = minister[%d]* | regexp45 = minister_from[%d]* | regexp46 = minority_floor_leader[%d]* | regexp47 = minority_leader[%d]* | regexp48 = minorityleader[%d]* | regexp49 = module[%d]* | regexp50 = monarch[%d]* | mother | name | nationality | native_name | native_name_lang | nickname | nocat | regexp51 = nominator[%d]* | nominee | occupation | regexp52 = office[%d]* | opponent | regexp53 = order[%d]* | otherparty | parents | regexp54 = parliament[%d]* | regexp55 = parliamentarygroup[%d]* | partner | party | party_election | portfolio | regexp56 = preceded[%d]* | regexp57 = preceding[%d]* | regexp58 = predecessor[%d]* | regexp59 = premier[%d]* | regexp60 = president[%d]* | regexp61 = primeminister[%d]* | regexp62 = prior_term[%d]* | profession | pronunciation | rank | rank_label | relations | relatives | residence | resting_place | resting_place_coordinates | restingplace | restingplacecoordinates | regexp63 = riding[%d]* | runningmate | salary | serviceyears | serviceyears_label | signature | signature_alt | signature_size | smallimage | smallimage_alt | source | speaker | speaker_office | spouse | spouses | regexp64 = state[%d]* | regexp65 = state_assembly[%d]* | regexp66 = state_delegate[%d]* | regexp67 = state_house[%d]* | regexp68 = state_legislature[%d]* | regexp69 = state_senate[%d]* | regexp70 = status[%d]* | regexp71 = suboffice[%d]* | regexp72 = subterm[%d]* | regexp73 = succeeded[%d]* | regexp74 = succeeding[%d]* | regexp75 = successor[%d]* | regexp76 = taoiseach[%d]* | regexp77 = term[%d]* | regexp78 = term_end[%d]* | regexp79 = term_label[%d]* | regexp80 = term_start[%d]* | regexp81 = termend[%d]* | regexp82 = termlabel[%d]* | regexp83 = termstart[%d]* | regexp84 = title[%d]* | unit | unit_label | regexp85 = vicegovernor[%d]* | regexp86 = vicepremier[%d]* | regexp87 = vicepresident[%d]* | regexp88 = viceprimeminister[%d]* | regexp89 = assuming[%d]* | website | width | year }} Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi Template:Post-nominals Template:Post-nominals (3 March 1924 – 29 July 1966) was a Nigerian military officer who served as the first military dictator and head of state of Nigeria. He seized power during the ensuing chaos after the 15 January 1966 military coup. Ironsi ruled from 16 January,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> until his assassination on 29 July 1966 during the July counter-coup. He was assassinated by a group of military officers from the Northern Region led by Murtala Mohammed.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Early life

Aguiyi-Ironsi was born on 3 March 1924 in Ibeku, Umuahia, British Nigeria to Igbo Catholics.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His father was Ezeugo Aguiyi.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>He took the last name of his brother-in-law as his first name in admiration of Mr. Johnson for the father-figure role that he played in his life.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Aguiyi-Ironsi had his primary and secondary school education in Umuahia and Kano, respectively. At the age of 18, he joined the Nigeria Regiment against the wishes of his sister, Anyamma.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Dead link</ref>

Military career

In 1942, Aguiyi-Ironsi joined the Nigerian Regiment, as a private with the seventh battalion.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was promoted in 1946 to company sergeant major. Also in 1946, Aguiyi-Ironsi was sent on an officer training course in Staff College, Camberley, England. On 12 June 1949, after completion of his course at Camberley, he received a short-service commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal West African Frontier Force,<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> with a subsequent retroactive promotion to lieutenant effective from the same date.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>

Aguiyi-Ironsi was granted a regular commission on 16 May 1953 (seniority from 8 October 1947),<ref name="Gazette_Ironsi">Template:London Gazette</ref> and was promoted to captain with effect from the same date (seniority from 8 October 1951).<ref name="Gazette_Ironsi"/>

Aguiyi-Ironsi was one of the officers who served as equerry for Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Nigeria when she visited Nigeria in 1956 and so he was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO).<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He was promoted to Major on 8 October 1958.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>

In 1960, Aguiyi-Ironsi was made commanding officer of the 5th Battalion in Kano, Nigeria, with the rank of lieutenant colonel.<ref name="Cyril">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In November 1960, the 5th Battalion under Aguiyi-Ironsi was dispatched to the Republic of the Congo as part of United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC). It was stationed in Kivu Province and headquartered in Bukavu.Template:Sfn On 15 December and Austrian medical unit arrived in Bukavu. Fearing they were Belgian troops, Congolese gendarmes, soldiers, and civilians began accosting the contingent. Aguiyi-Ironsi attempted to diffuse the situation, but Congolese troops eventually abducted the Austrians and detained them in the city's prison.Template:Sfn He continued to negotiate with local authorities to release the Austrians but the Congolese forces refused to let the Austrians leave.Template:Sfn With negotiations proving unfruitful, a rescue operation was organised by Aguiyi-Ironsi's second-in-command, Major Roderick Galloway.Template:Sfn Late in the morning on 16 December he ordered Galloway to intervene and rescue the prisoners.Template:Sfn Fighting broke out and Kivu Provincial President Jean Miruho demanded that the Nigerian forces withdraw to their camp. Aguiyi-Ironsi refused and in returned called for the withdrawal of all Congolese forces and the release of the Austrians.Template:Sfn With the arrival of reinforcements late in the afternoon, the Nigerians eventually prevailed and were able to free the Austrians.Template:Sfn

From 1961 to 1962, Aguiyi-Ironsi served as the military attaché to the Nigeria High Commission in London, United Kingdom. During that period he was promoted to the rank of brigadier. During his tenure as military attaché, he attended courses at the Imperial Defence college (renamed Royal College of Defence Studies in 1961), Seaford House, Belgrave Square. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, Military Division (MBE) in the 1962 New Year Honours list.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>

In 1964, he was appointed as the commandant of the entire United Nations peace keeping force in the Congo.<ref name="Cyril"/>

In 1965, Aguiyi-Ironsi was promoted to the rank of major general. The same year, Major General C.B. Welby-Everard handed over his position as the general officer Commanding, GOC of the entire Nigerian Army to Major General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, which made him the first Nigeria indigenous officer to head the entire Nigerian Army.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In January 1966, a group of army officers, led by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, overthrew the central and regional governments of Nigeria, killed the prime minister and tried to take control of the government in a failed coup d'état. Nzeogwu was countered, captured and imprisoned by Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Aguiyi-Ironsi was named military head of state on 17 January 1966, a position he held until 29 July 1966, when a group of Northern army officers revolted against the government and killed Aguiyi-Ironsi.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Fall of the Republic

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} On 15 January 1966, young radical and revolutionary soldiers drawn from different tribal extractions, led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, from Okpanam near Asaba, Noé in Delta State, eradicated the uppermost echelon of politicians from the Northern and the Western Provinces.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> That and other factors effectively led to the fall of the Republican Government. Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, was purportedly slated for assassination but effectively took control of Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory.<ref>Time Magazine "Nigeria: The Men of Sandhurst".</ref> Also an Igbo, President Nnamdi Azikiwe refusing to intervene to ensure the continuity of civilian rule, Aguiyi-Ironsi effectively compelled the remaining members of Balewa's government to resign. Seeing that the government was in disarray, Aguiya-Ironsi then allowed Senate President Nwafor Orizu, another Igbo who was serving as acting president in Azikiwe's absence, to surrender power to him officially, which ended the First Nigerian Republic.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Head of state

Aguiyi-Ironsi inherited a Nigeria that was deeply fractured by its ethnic and religious cleavages. None of the high-profile victims of the 1966 coup was of Igbo extraction. Aguiyi Ironsi, who was the most senior officer alive as at the morning of 15 January 1966. after managing to survive the coup by outwitting the coup plotters, he proceeded to rally some troops loyal to him and was able to crush the coup. The perception of many, including the Northern and Western soldiers that no high-profile politician of Igbo extraction was killed, added to the emergence of yet another Igbo General as the leader of the Military Government of Nigeria, led people of the northern part the country to believe that it had been an Igbo conspiracy. Though Aguiyi-Ironsi tried to dispel that 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 the country's federal structure in exchange for a unitary one, crystallized the conspiracy theory.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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Aguiyi-Ironsi in the early 1950s

During his short regime (194 days in office), 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 it left intact those sections that dealt with fundamental human rights, freedom of expression and conscience. The Circulation of Newspaper Decree No.2 removed the restrictions on press freedom that had been put in place by the preceding civilian administration.<ref name="Uko">Template:Cite book</ref> According to Ndayo Uko, the decree 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".<ref name="Uko"/>

The July counter coup

Template:FurtherOn 29 July 1966, Aguiyi Ironsi spent the night at the Government House in Ibadan, as part of a nationwide tour. His host, Lieutenant Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, military governor of Western Nigeria, alerted him to a possible mutiny within the army. Aguiyi-Ironsi desperately tried to contact his Army Chief of Staff, Yakubu Gowon, but he was unreachable. In the early hours of the morning, the Government House, Ibadan, was surrounded by soldiers led by Theophilus Danjuma.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Arrest and assassination

Danjuma arrested Aguiyi-Ironsi and questioned him about his alleged complicity in the coup, which saw the demise of the Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello. The circumstances leading to Aguiyi-Ironsi's death have remained a subject of much controversy in Nigeria until now people claimed it had something to do related on his nicknames and legend. His body and that of Fajuyi were later discovered in a nearby forest.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Legend

File:Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi with his stuffed crocodile mascot at Leopoldville, Congo.png

Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi waves "Charlie" as he boards an aircraft at Leopoldville on 1 July 1964. From January to June that year, he commanded the UN Peacekeeping force during the Congo Crisis.

The swagger stick with a stuffed crocodile mascot carried by Aguiyi-Ironsi was called "Charlie". Legend had it that the crocodile mascot made him invulnerable and that it was used to dodge or deflect bullets when he was on mission in the Congo. Despite the stories, the crocodile mascot probably had something to do with the fact that the name "Aguiyi" translates as "crocodile" in Igbo.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In the poem The Reign of the Crocodile by Nigerian poet John Pepper Clark, Aguiyi-Ironsi is symbolised by a crocodile, a reference to his swagger-stick.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Personal life

Aguiyi-Ironsi was married to Victoria Ironsi. His son, Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, was appointed to the position of Nigeria's Defence Minister on 30 August 2006, forty years after his father's death.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Award

The Gallantry Medal was awarded by the Austrian government to Lieutenant Colonel Aguiyi-Ironsi, Maj Njoku, two expatriates and twelve Nigerian soldiers for their role in the Congo in 1960 in freeing an Austrian ambulance unit, which had been arrested and imprisoned by the Congolese authorities because it claimed to be Belgian parachutists.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

References

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Works cited

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External links

Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi visiting Ibadan the day before his assassination, July 28th 1966

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Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi

Contents

Early life

Military career

Fall of the Republic

Head of state

The July counter coup

Arrest and assassination

Legend

Personal life

Award

See also

References

Works cited

External links

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Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi

Early life

Military career

Fall of the Republic

Head of state

The July counter coup

Arrest and assassination

Legend

Personal life

Award

See also

References

Works cited

External links

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