Word: ibos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...latest uprising was the work of Northern Moslems, acting to avenge the Southern-led January coup that had thrown them out of power and killed many of their leaders. It was also designed to forestall another coup, which dissatisfied Southern Ibos had reportedly been plotting against the regime they had put in power. The Southern gripe was simple: Major General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi, an Ibo himself, had proved too soft on the Northerners...
...chiefs and emirs, Northern officers kidnaped him from the governor's palace and ordered him at gunpoint into a military Land Rover; his body was reportedly discovered last week outside a nearby village. At the army barracks at Ikeja, near the Lagos international airport, Northerners shot down every Ibo officer they could find, pursued others through Lagos itself, causing widespread panic in the capital; after one shooting incident, dozens of motorists abandoned their cars to flee on foot, and many foreign residents deserted their homes and took shelter in the swank Federal Palace Hotel...
...central administration. All the while, he was gaining enemies and losing friends. The Moslem North resented its sudden loss of power - not to mention the assassination of Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and the Sardauna of Sokoto, the two most powerful Northern leaders. In the South, the young Ibo officers who had led the military coup accused Ironsi of appeasement when he refused to allow drastic retaliation after an abortive Northern uprising in June...
...very little else has been settled. Nigeria is too big a country to be governed against its will by an insubordinate army of 8000 men drawn from several quarrelsome tribes. Had the hot-headed young Ibo officers who staged the assassinations won out, they would have soon discovered this. Now the less messianic, older men who have regained control of the army must quickly submit to the laws of Nigerian politics or else be faced with widespread local rioting...
...placated: the Muslim part of the North must still be ruled by a Muslim Northerner--and in that part of Nigeria, there are always spare emirs and wazirs eager to take the place of an assassinated Premier; the West must have a popular Yoruba and the East a popular Ibo Premier; in the Midwest a balance of power among several tribes must the kept. Each region, each major tribe must be given a sufficient stake in the Federation to make the idea of secession unthinkable...