It’s stories like that of Victor Banjo that remind me of the great truism: “History is written by the victors.” I often wonder how many people have been drained through the gutters of history along with their reputations with no opportunity granted to them for a rebuttal. We’re told of who they were and what they did, and we accept them because there are no counterargument to consider. Victor Banjo might have been one of those people, but we may never be sure. What I do know is that the official accounts of who he was, relayed by the authorities at the time, and over time leave enough room for genuine skepticism.

During the heat of the Nigerian civil war in 1967, Victor Banjo was recruited to fight on behalf of the Biafrans but was later sentenced to death and killed by firing squad in the Biafran city of Enugu for allegedly conspiring to overthrow and kill the Biafran leader, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. But was this a just execution? There are no conclusive answers, but some are certainly worth exploring.

Victor Banjo and the Coup of January, 1966

Born in Ogun state in 1930, Banjo graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst where he obtained a B Sc. in Mechanical Engineering. He joined the Nigerian army in 1953 as a Warrant officer,. By 1966 he had become a lieutenant colonel in the Nigerian army and was married to a young wife, with whom he had four children. 1966 was a significant year in Nigerian history since it bore witness to the execution of two bloody coups. The first was in January, and the second, an apparent counter-coup, occurred in July.

The January 1966 coup was one of the first major cascading events that led to the civil war in ’67. The coup was organized mainly, but not exclusively, by Biafrans (Igbos) including: Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Chukwuma Nzeogwu, and Timothy Onwuatuegwu, to name a few. I won’t go into the the coups of ‘66 since the details, implications, and controversy surrounding them are enough to demand a separate essay. But understand that this coup was carried out by key players in the North, West and South to eliminate what they considered to be the corrupt ruling class in Nigeria. This included the Sadaurna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello; the Prime Minister, Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa; Finance minister, Festus Okotie-Eboh, and many others. The coup was only partially successful since a great number of the targeted politicians were killed, but the coup conspirators fell short of achieving the ultimate plan of replacing the fallen politicians with handpicked civilians, the most prominent of whom was to be Obafemi Awolowo. Terminally, the coup was intercepted by loyalists to the federation, and most of the conspirators were arrested and imprisoned.

This may have been the first of several injustices levied against Victor Banjo. Along with the other established organizers of the coup, he was arrested for his role in January ’66 on little to no evidence and imprisoned in Ikot Ekpene where he continued to plead his innocence. It’s important to note that while the other imprisoned participants in the coup never denied their involvement, Banjo continued to plead his innocence throughout his imprisonment. Some commentators have tried to identify the motive for his arrest as Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi’s attempt at giving the coup a veneer of tribal diversity, and not an attempt by one tribe, the Igbos, to take over the country. After all Ironsi, who had become the Head of State following the coup was, himself, an Igbo man. However, we know for a fact that there were non-Igbos also involved in the coup. In fact, the battalion that Nzeogwu enrolled in carrying out his attack against the Sardauna was made up of mainly Northerners. Secondly, at least one of the 5 established leaders of the coup was a Yoruba man: Adewale Ademoyega. So it would have been unnecessary to pretend that the coup was not carried out by one tribe. As it were, the actual makeup of the coup conspirators was all that was needed to disprove that claim.

So why exactly was Victor Banjo arrested for the 1966 coup? The most popular account is that he made an unauthorized entry into Ironsi’s office with a gun while the coup was still ongoing with the reasonably perceived goal of killing the Head of state, Ironsi. But if you’re tempted to accept this charge against Banjo wholesale, consider this: given the general confusion during the early hours of January 16th 1966, is it wholly inconceivable that even if Banjo did walk into Ironsi’s office unauthorized and fully armed, that his intentions were anything but nefarious? In fact, on the morning of January 16th, one of the Regimental sergeant majors tasked with stifling the ongoing mutiny ended up accidentally shooting and killing a friendly soldier who had forgotten the password provided for identifying himself as loyal to the federal army, and was; therefore, wrongly assumed to be an enemy combatant. As one would expect, the hours during the coup led to a few mistakes, most of which weren’t as severely punished as that of Victor Banjo. To complicate things even further, Victor Banjo may have been one of the army officers who actually fought to counter the mutiny on January 15th and 16th, and urged Ironsi to preside over a temporary military government since the major political parties at the time were at an impasse regarding who would become the new prime minister. For his efforts, Victor Banjo would spend almost a year in prison until he was released by Colonel Odumegwu-Ojukwu to fight on behalf of the Biafrans at the start of the Nigerian civil war in 1967.

The War

The Nigerian civil war started in earnest on July 6, 1967 when shells were hurled by the Nigerians South eastward at Biafra’s northern border. This happened shortly after Ojukwu had declared the South eastern region of Nigeria (Biafra) an independent and sovereign state, and various peace efforts with Nigeria had failed. To the Nigerians, the war was to be a quick and surgical affair given the obvious imbalance in resources both in human capital and in weaponry. However, the war lasted three grueling years mostly fought in the South where the Biafrans resided. The Biafrans suffered most of the casualties during the war. There were about 2 million Biafrans (Igbos) who died, a significant number of whom were children who starved to death. But in the first few months of the war, the Biafrans were served a bouquet of hope. Led by Victor Banjo, the Biafrans advanced beyond the River Niger and into Nigerian territory. By August they had won most of their encounters with the Nigerian army and progressed as far as the town of Ore, which put them tantalizingly close to the capital, Lagos.

Here there was pause in advancement, which according to Fredrick Forsyth, author of The Biafra story, was counter to Ojuwku’s commands. Ostensibly, the plan was to surge through the heart of Yoruba land, and into Lagos as swiftly as possible where the collapse of the capital would result in a Nigerian surrender. Other personal accounts of the war insist that this would have been a successful strategy. In fact, accounts of this period of the war have noted that the British government, frightened by the Biafran advancement opted for a peace intervention before any further escalation. But they were deterred by David Hunt, the British ambassador to Nigeria, who encouraged continued support for the Nigerian Federal government instead. This would turn the tides of the war, but the British panic at that point indicated that as far as the Biafrans were concerned, the war was going according to plan. Forsyth even goes as far as suggesting that the Nigerian Head of state, Yakubu Gowon, had ordered his private plane to be prepared for his escape from the country until he was persuaded to remain by David Hunt.

Unfortunately, the month long pause in Ore gave the Nigerians an opportunity to regroup, and by the end of September, they had taken back the Midwest. The blame for this failure was put squarely at Banjo’s feet. Firstly, he was accused of defying Ojukwu’s orders to march onward to Lagos and capture the capital. But even worse, he was also accused of leading a conspiracy to overthrow Ojukwu in order to appease the Nigerians, and re-gain the adulation of his fellow westerners. Forsyth explains:

According to Banjo’s own confession when he was later unmasked, he decided soon after 9 August he wished to enter into talks with the leaders in the West, notably Chief Awolowo.. […] Banjo said later he relayed messages using the sideband radio of the British Deputy High Commission in Benin. A British official communicated the messages in German to another official in the High Commission in Lagos. The message was passed on to Chief Awolowo. The plot Banjo later revealed was typically Yoruba in its complexity. In conjunction with two other senior Biafran officers with political ambitions he was to cause the ruin of Biafra by withdrawing the troops from the Midwest on a variety of pretexts, arrest and assassinate Ojukwu, and proclaim the “revolt” at an end. As a Nigerian hero, he would then re-enter his home Western region with all his past forgiven and forgotten. He added that the second part of the plot, which was to come later, was that he and Awolowo were to rally the newly-recruited Yoruba Army to his standard, and depose Gowon, leaving the presidency of Nigeria for himself and permitting Awolowo his long-desired premiership.

This is damning if true; but there is no record at all of a confession from Victor Banjo, so Forsyth’s narration of events is at best questionable, and at worst willfully malicious. Furthermore, we have at least one example of a high profile case during the war, when a “confession” was entirely fabricated to justify the continued incarceration of Nigerian author and poet, Wole Soyinka (Noble Laureate) by the Nigerian federal government for allegedly helping the Biafrans to acquire warplanes. One mustn’t be shocked to learn that moral rectitude tends to take a backseat during times of war.

Let’s dissect the charges:

The charge that Banjo sought to plan Ojukwu’s assignation with Awolowo once he arrived in Benin is without any real evidence. What we do know based on accounts by Wole Soyinka, and Olusegun Obasanjo (commanding officer of the Western area headquartered in Ibadan, and future Head of state) is that before Banjo left the East on his quest for the West, he had asked Soyinka during one of his visits to the East, to take a message back to Obasanjo asking him to allow a safe passage for Banjo and his men through Ibadan to Lagos once they arrived in the West. Banjo was a Yoruba man, and was fully aware of the resistance he might face from his fellow tribesmen once he took over the West with an army of mainly Igbos, so his aim was one of towing the path of least resistance. If he could attain the cooperation of the army commanders in the West on his way to Lagos, he would execute the surrender of the Federal government with as little bloodshed as possible, while also retaining the goodwill of the Yorubas. If interpreted unkindly, his commitment to appeasing the Yorubas may serve as evidence enough of his disloyalty to the Biafrans, and provide fodder for the suspicion of his plot to assassinate their leader. However; the line drawn from his actions in Ore to the charge of a conspiracy to assassinate Ojukwu is a long and tortuous one that relies on a few assumptions to withstand breakage.

Firstly, one mustn’t assume that the obviously successful strategy at the time would have been to bulldoze his way through Yorubaland and into Lagos to conquer the Federal government in one fell swoop. What if this was to be tactically suicidal? John de St Jorre, a journalist with the Observer described the state of the Biafran force that invaded Benin as follows:

The Biafrans stormed through the mid-west not in the usual massive impedimenta of modern warfare but in a bizarre collection of private cars, ‘mammy’ wagons, cattle and vegetable trucks. The command vehicle was a Peugeot 404 estate care. The whole operation was not carried out by an ‘army’ or even a brigade but by at most 1,000 men, the majority poorly trained and armed, and many wearing civilian clothes because they had not been issued with uniforms

In other words, the Biafran incursion into Benin was not the result of a series of tactical victories on the battlefield, but the failure of the Federal government to mount any defense in the mid-west. It’s highly presumptive of historians to conclude that a continued surge into Lagos would have led inevitably to the collapse of the Federal government. If St Jorre’s description of the Biafran invading force is to be granted the credibility I think it deserves, then Banjo’s reluctance to advance blindly into what would have been the Biafran army’s first real resistance mounted by Obasanjo’s men in Ibadan, wasn’t unpardonable. Remember that the Biafrans went into the war hoping for the solidarity of other nearby tribes; and since the Yorubas pledged to remain neutral, a brutal fight on their soil which would have inevitably led to the death of the natives, would certainly have turned the Yorubas against the Biafrans. Furthermore, from a PR perspective, the advancement into the mid-west was already being construed as the manifestation of the imperialistic intentions of the Biafrans, especially of Ojukwu. Therefore, Banjo’s priority during the invasion was to reassure the locals that the army was a liberating one, and not an occupying one. This is an excerpt from a radio broadcast he made upon invading Benin:

It is not at all an invasion, and it is not intended to promote the domination of any group of the Nigerian people by any other group through the presence of the Liberation Army. I wish to stress once again what I said during the press conference and previously on the radio, that the movement of this Army into the Mid-West is not a conquest. It is also not an invasion.

If we’re willing to consider the possibility that the proposed strategy of plunging through Ibadan and into Lagos by force was one fraught with peril, then I’d suggest we also consider the possibility that Victor Banjo, and the other men who were executed alongside him were only scapegoats slaughtered to save Ojukwu’s face at home. Following the countercoup in July ’66, and other subsequent pogroms, the Biafrans were understandably angry and uncertain about their place in the Nigeria. So by the time Ojukwu declared Biafra’s independence, he had at least a plurality of Biafrans on his side even if they may not have foreseen the real impact the ensuing conflict would have on them. However, after the failure at Ore, and the subsequent Nigerian advancement into Biafran territory, it’s hardly far-fetched to assume that there were murmurings in the Biafran camp that were uncharitable to the war cause, and Ojukwu’s judgment. Would it not have been, then, the perfect time to lay the blame for the failures squarely on somebody else? Especially on someone who after being (falsely) imprisoned for the coup in January ’66 would have been a suspicious character anyway? Victor Banjo’s execution may have been the perfect distraction from what was a strategic debacle by Ojukwu.

Finally, we must resist the temptation to assume that achieving the complete surrender of the Federal government in Lagos would have been a worthwhile goal in and of itself if in its wake a new country was formed on the foundation of disgruntled and highly sectarian tribes people. Since the charitable interpretations of Banjo’s actions are rarely considered, let me suggest the following: that during a time of very justifiable anger and acrimony on the Biafran side, Banjo was one of a few people thinking very rationally about the most successful path to victory. But let me also concede, on the other hand, that my defense of Banjo may well only withstand scrutiny if I’m granted one key presumption: that the definition of success in war must be slender enough to exclude all else but a swift end to the conflict, and the incurrence of minimal casualties. Considering the eventual outcome of the war; however, this might not be that lofty a concession.

Banjo’s real plan

If I’ve successfully convinced you to at least be skeptical of the veracity of the accusations against Victor Banjo, the next question must then be: do we have any indication of what Banjo actually had in mind during the war? Perhaps there might have been reasons to be suspicious of him even if we put aside the motives of his executioners.

The answer is complicated. Since there were no written documents from Banjo during the war that indicated his real intentions, we must depend on accounts made by others: friends and foe alike. I find that the most reliable source among many is Wole Soyinka. In The Biafra story, Fredrick Forsyth writes a very detailed retelling of the events of the war, which I’d recommend as necessary reading for anyone interested in learning about the Nigerian Civil war. However, like most personal accounts of history, a healthy level of skepticism would suffice. Due to his very close relationship with Ojukwu, and his emotional proximity to the events of the war, he was prone to certain unfortunate mistruths that betrayed his bias. Wole Soyinka, on the other hand, seems more level headed, but his book: You must set forth at dawn is a memoire, and not a chronological account of the war.

In any case, Wole Soyinka provided what was probably a paraphrased transcript of the message he was to relay to Obasanjo and the Yoruba people at large on behalf of Victor Banjo. It read:

Let them understand in the west that I am not leading a Biafran army, but an army of liberation made not only of Biafrans but other ethnic groups. Make the Governor of the West and other Western leaders understand this. Urge them not to be taken in by any propaganda by the Federal government about a Biafran plan to subjugate the nation, especially the west.

We’ve established so far that Banjo was not interested in conquering the West, which is borne out by the message above and his radio broadcast in Benin; but was more focused on a surrender of the federal government with as little casualty among the neutral tribes as possible. However there are a few things to note before we proceed: firstly, as conveyed by Wole Soyinka, one of the people who Banjo specifically requested that he relay his message to, was Obafemi Awolowo – the same man who he would subsequently be accused of conspiring with to sabotage the Biafran military efforts. Although Soyinka would also indicate in his memoir that he never actually delivered the message to Awolowo despite Banjo’s request because he never trusted him, this request to deliver to Awolowo is enough to raise an eye brow. Secondly, Banjo’s opinion of the War itself was a far cry from what Ojukwu would have wanted from the man he had appointed to lead the charge against the Nigerians. To make matters worse for Banjo, what Wole Solyinka recalls of his friend’s plan after the surrender of Lagos was enough to raise suspicion:

I was to detail how Banjo had persuaded Ojukwu to let him train an independent force ostensibly to promote that leader’s ambitions. The training had gone on secretly in the Midwest […]. Banjo had agreed to train and move an independent force through the Midwest, sack the center, and install a regime that would endorse Biafra’s secession. However, there Banjo’s and Ojukwu’s interests were supposed to part company. Banjo was solidly against the secession.

A key bit of context should suffice to paint the above excerpt in an even more complicated light. Victor Banjo, Wole Soyinka, Femi Johnson, and a few others, had become part of what would come to be known as the “Third Force”. This was a group of Nigerian men who opposed the civil war and were prepared to mobilize against it. The Third Force was neither loyal to the Nigerian side, nor the Biafran side, but believed that long term sustainability lay in the unity of Nigeria as one state, and not through the secession of one or more ethnic groups. This was not to say that they failed to understand the frustrations of the Biafrans following the pogroms in the North. While Banjo’s critics may make the claim that he was never fully committed to the Biafran mission, his own words during the radio broadcast (transcribed below) would indicate that while this charge might not have been entirely without justification, one thing is almost certain: he and the rest of the Third force were NOT enemies of the Biafran people:

The Federal Military Government cannot claim to be genuinely interested in the progress and welfare of the Nigerian people while at the same time inflicting the bloodiest warfare of the Nigerian people and employing unscrupulous foreign mercenaries in a total war that really destroys hundreds of our people and the economy of our nation… The people of Biafra have a right to fight a Government that has constantly treated its people to the most savage forms of brutality and persists in denying these people its most fundamental human rights while claiming to represent their interests.

It is said that Ojukwu was infuriated by Banjo’s broadcast in Benin because it did not “sufficiently demonstrate solidarity with his own secessionist aspirations to leave Nigeria”. To my mind, Banjo’s assessment of the situation at the time was very levelheaded, and unmistakable in its Biafran bent. So if Banjo had committed a crime at this point, it was failing to serve as a mindless mouthpiece for Ojukwu, and even the slightest deviation from the pro war rhetoric was ultimately punishable by death.

However, I’m inclined to conclude that the fact of Banjo’s membership in the Third Force was intentionally kept secret from Ojukwu precisely because it meant their interests would not stay aligned throughout the conflict. In fact Soyinka notes that ultimately the plan of the Third Force was for the surrender of Lagos, at which point, Victor Banjo was to take over the nation, including Biafra. A key point of note here is that Wole Soyinka insists vehemently that Banjo never intended to oversee the takeover of Biafra by force once he was in power. In fact, he thought it would have been impossible to do so since the “Liberation force’ Banjo was leading had been made up mainly of Biafrans. However, this is only conjecture on Soyinka’s part, and might fail to take into account the rude exigencies of asking for the quiet and peaceful surrender of a betrayed Colonel.

There is no doubt that these facts (if true) make it more difficult to mount a case against the execution of Banjo. There are a few notes that might muddy an already complicated situation even further, the most prominent of which was Ojukwu’s ultimate plan for Nigeria. The Third Force strongly believed that in the event of Banjo’s victory in Lagos, and the surrender of the Federal Government, Ojukwu’s plan was to take power for himself. The suspicion was far from esoteric, and was widely spread at the time. But, its veracity may never truly be tested.

As much as we’ve striven as a society to maintain a level of civility and justice during times of war, the unfortunate reality we continue to grapple with is that when the chips are the down, the rules change in an instant. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but the harsh reality is that given the high emotions, the anger, and distrust during war, even the slightest indication of a disunion from established alliances will very commonly be punishable by death; however noble their motivations may be in retrospect. In the case of Banjo, his goal of a unified and peaceful Nigeria was diametrically opposed to the immediate goals of the man he had been recruited to fight for. In effect, Victor Banjo was playing a chess game in the middle of Jousting match, and was trampled for it.

Banjo was granted a hasty trial, where he stood in counsel on his behalf as well as the other three men in trial. He pled his innocence again, but the officers found them guilty of plotting to overthrow the government of Biafra. He along with the others (Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Philip Alele, and Samuel Agbam) were sentenced to death. On September 22, 1967, Banjo was marched into the city center in Enugu, tied to a pole, and shot at by a Biafan firing squad. It is said that after the first round of shots, Victor Banjo repeatedly yelled, “I’m not dead yet!” at which point he was shot again multiples times until he died.

Lessons learned

There’s a lesson to be learned here. I’ve always had a hard time reading the biographies of famous and influential people, and a harder time still, reading autobiographies. My impression of them is that they can be exercises in self-indulgence. The subject is to be the hero of the story, so the blatant exaggerations and artistic licenses taken with what are supposed to be real life events, can be concussing. But with a story like this, there is a real case to be made for the importance of writing down your own version of events whether in the form of a memoir, letters, or a personal journal. Seriously lacking in the narrative of Victor Banjo are his own transcriptions to either back up or debunk the charges against him. He wrote some letters to his wife while he was imprisoned for his alleged role in the January ’66 coup, but apart from the aforementioned radio broadcast he made shortly after the invasion of Benin, there is nothing from him regarding his decisions at that point. All we have are other people’s interpretations of his actions. The consequence of this is that after his execution by Ojukwu, the defense of his honor was left almost entirely to the altruism of those who condemned him to death, and some friends, of whom there were few.

Chinua Achebe remarked in his book before his death, There was a Country on his regret for not publishing an autobiographical manuscript that was provided to him by Emmanuel Ifeajuna describing the events of the January ’66 coup which he led. Achebe had refrained from publishing it for reasons aforementioned – the self-congratulatory nature of the text. But he regretted his decision later in his life because after Ifeajuna’s execution, the manuscript, now lost, was the only thing close enough to a firsthand account of what transpired during the coup. It was filled with exaggerations, and perhaps some outright lies, but it would have provided another anchor for debate. In the event that Victor Banjo had written his account of the Ore invasion and hesitation, I would have encouraged the same level of skepticism I’ve suggested for other personal accounts of history. But the existence of his record would have provided the basis for a counterargument to the established record and may have saved his reputation sooner.

Fortunately today, a quick search on the internet will show that suspicions regarding the circumstances around Banjo’s execution are legion. So if we have souls with the capacity to observe the physical world after our death, then this may serve as some consolation to the soul of Victor Banjo, however hollow it may seem.