Word: coupes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When the veil of secrecy was finally lifted from Angola after the April 1974 coup d'etat in Portugal, only one of the three liberation movements actually controlled liberated areas within Angola and only one had opted to direct its operations from inside the country--UNITA. It was only after the April coup that MPLA rebuilt its base in Luanda. Having been an urban, primarily intellectual movement ever since its inception in 1956, MPLA had been forced underground by the early '60s, and was only recently able to re-activate its urban cells...
Flags hung limply at half-mast in the oppressive heat of Lagos. Throughout Nigeria public meetings and other events were canceled. For seven days Africa's most populous nation (estimated at 60 million) officially mourned Head of State Murtala Mohammed, who was killed during an attempted coup on Friday...
Nigeria, black Africa's richest and potentially most powerful state, has been unable to live up to its promise. Only six years ago the country pulled itself out of the devastating Biafran civil war. Murtala himself had come to power only seven months ago, after a successful coup deposed former Head of State General Yakubu...
Champagne Party. Clearly a penny-ante putsch, the coup was the work of a small coterie of disaffected officers, who apparently made their move after an all-night champagne party. The regime claims that the plotters wanted to restore Gowon to power, and had consulted him in advance. The former leader, now studying political science at Britain's Warwick University, convincingly denied those charges...
...conspirators' one grim success came when they caught Murtala's black Mercedes limousine in a morning rush-hour traffic jam in Lagos. Raking the car with machine-gun fire, the plotters killed Murtala, his chauffeur and an aide. Shortly thereafter, Coup Leader Lieut. Colonel B.S. Dimka and six associates seized the Lagos radio station and announced that they were taking over the government. But there was no support for the action in the army and outlying states, and Dimka soon realized that he was finished. Hands in pockets, he jauntily said, "Excuse me," walked out of the Lagos...