29/09/2024
What Happened To The First Nigerians To Join The Army?
The gentlemen you see in this photo were the pioneers of the Nigerian Army. They are from right to left, Lieutenant Wellington Duke Bassey, Lieutenant Samuel Ademulegun, 2nd Lieutenant Zakariya Maimalari, 2nd Lieutenant Lawan Umar, and Lieutenant Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, at Hyde Park, London, in 1953.
Of the five men in this photograph, three of them were brutally murdered.
Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun was killed with his Mrs. Latifah Ademulegun. She was eight months pregnant when, on the night of January 15, 1966, Major Timothy Onwuatuegwu stormed into her matrimonial bedroom to kill her husband.
She got up from the bed stood in front of her husband, and refused to move. Major Onwuatuegwu then gunned down both her and her husband.
Their two underaged children, Solape and Kole, ran into the room and began to cry at the trauma of seeing both their parents' bloodstained bodies. They never recovered from the shock.
Brigadier Maimalari was killed on the same day by Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna. He was Nigeria's first Sandhurst educated officer. The thing about the death of Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari was that he had escaped from Major Okafor, whom Ifeajuna had sent to kill him. He was barely 100 meters to the safety of the Federal Guards Brigade when he saw Ifeajuna's Mercedes Benz car. He was so relieved at seeing Ifeajuna, whom he had just hosted some hours ago at his home, that he came out of the bushes.
He was Ifeajuna's direct boss and was like a father to him, so he never believed that Ifeajuna was one of the plotters. As his car approached, he stopped Ifeajuna, who greeted him with a hail of bullets, killing him on the spot.
Major General Ironsi was killed on July 29, 1966, in a forested location close to the Government House, Ibadan, by mutinous Northern NCOs, who first overpowered then Major Theophilus Danjuma, and seized Aguiyi-Ironsi and his host, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi.
Colonel Fajuyi paid a high price for loyalty. Everybody around Aguiyi Ironsi abandoned him. Everybody, except Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, who refused to abandon his guest.
What happened to the other two officers?
Well, Lieutenant Wellington Duke Bassey was actually senior to Ironsi. He is reputed to be the first Nigerian to join the Royal West Africa Frontier Force, which would later be known as the Nigerian Army. But for some reason, Ironsi was chosen over him as General Officer Commanding after the last British GOC, Major General C.B. Welby-Everard, left for the United Kingdom.
He became the first head of the Federal Guards, now known as the Presidential Guards Brigade and often shortened to the Brigade of Guards, in September 1962 and held that post until 1968.
He lived to a ripe old age and died in 1995.
Lawan Umar, who was a childhood friend of Zakariya Maimalari, resigned from the army under mysterious circumstances before the Nigerian Army came under Nigerian control. Had he not resigned, he would likely have perished like his friend.
Written by Mentor Reno Omokri
