Word: nigerian
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...came while Nkrumah was flying toward Peking on a self-appointed, self-inflated peace mission. Like the Nigerian coup six weeks earlier, it was led by Sandhurst-trained officers who knew precisely what they were doing. At 4:30 a.m. in the predawn darkness of Accra, two brigades of Ghanaian troops quietly took over the airport, the cable office, all government ministries and the government radio station. While early-morning market mammies stared, Jeeploads of soldiers moved into the suburban gardens of government Ministers and tanks deployed around Nkrumah's presidential compound itself...
Finally came the announcement the nation had been waiting for. An exuberant voice proclaimed: "I, J.T.U. Aguiyi Ironsi, general officer commanding the Nigerian army, have formally been invested with authority as head of the Nigerian armed forces." So saying, Major General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi (pronounced Agwee-yee Ironsee) abolished the constitution of Africa's most populous nation, eliminated the offices of President and Prime Minister, fired the Premiers of Nigeria's four semi-autonomous regions, and announced that military governors would take their places. Democracy, for the time being at least, was dead in Nigeria...
...mark"). In the dusty northern capital of Kaduna, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, 29, had been holding night maneuvers for six straight weeks, once even led his troops through a mock invasion of the sprawling white palace of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna (Emir) of Sokoto, religious leader of 12.5 million Nigerian Moslems, boss of the nation's ruling political party, and the real power behind the Balewa government. So accustomed had the city become to the sound of night gunfire during the maneuvers that not even the police bothered to investigate when Nzeogwu threw a hand grenade through the palace...
...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...
...Nigerian Government, like the New York City Council, must contain a balance of ethnic elements to guard against the charge of domination by a single clique. And as the coup has demonstrated, any tribe with a large representation in the army itself (or in the Federal police force) must not be allowed to think that it has been encircled or unscrupulously outmaneuvered. As for the minor tribes, one may expect some of them to rebel occasionally and to be pacified, as under the British, by a combination of administrative reform and armed force...