28th July, 1966: The Night Ironsi Was Killed: Inside Nigeria’s 1966 Counter-Coup.

28th, July 1966: The Night Ironsi Was Killed: Inside Nigeria’s 1966 Counter-Coup.

Barely six months after Nigeria’s first military coup in January 1966, a group of mostly Northern army officers staged a violent counter-coup on the night of July 28–29, 1966, in response to the killings of Northern leaders in the earlier coup.

The first coup, led by Major Nzeogwu and other mostly Igbo officers, had targeted and killed top Northern and Western leaders — including Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and Samuel Akintola — but spared top Igbo officers like General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, who then became Head of State.

His rule was unpopular in the North, especially after he introduced Decree No. 34 which scrapped the federal system for a unitary one — a move seen as Igbo domination. His failure to punish the January coup plotters further enraged Northern soldiers.

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The Night of the Counter-Coup

On the night of July 28, 1966, Northern officers led by:
• Lt. Colonel Murtala Mohammed
• Major Theophilus Danjuma
• Major Martin Adamu
• Lt. Colonel Shehu Musa Yar’Adua
• Major Ibrahim Taiwo
organized a well-coordinated plot to take revenge and reclaim Northern influence in the army.
In Ibadan, where General Ironsi was visiting the Western Region governor, Lt. Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, both men were arrested by Major Danjuma and other soldiers, brutally tortured, and executed in the early hours of July 29.
At the same time, Igbo officers and soldiers were massacred in barracks across the North. It became a bloodbath, with hundreds of Eastern soldiers killed in cold blood by their Northern counterparts.

Aftermath
• The chain of command was broken, and there was panic nationwide.
• Brigadier Ogundipe, the next in line, couldn’t assert control due to lack of support from soldiers.
• The coup plotters installed Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon, a Christian Northerner, as the new Head of State on August 1, 1966.

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Significance

The July 1966 counter-coup wasn’t just a change in leadership — it was revenge, a power grab, and an ethnic purge. It triggered:
• A deepening ethnic divide,
• Pogroms against Igbos in Northern Nigeria,
• And set the stage for the Biafran secession and civil war in 1967.

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