Ohanaeze drops bombshell, says 'Igbo has no hand in 1966 brutal coup'

Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, the president-general of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has claimed that the Igbo had no hand in the brutal 1966 coup led by Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and Emmanuel Ifeajuna, according to several reports.

The Igbo leader made the comment in an exclusive interview with The Punch on Sunday, July 2.

Iwuanyanwu also claimed that "the problem Igbo have is that we are very faithful to the constitution of Nigeria" while bragging that the southeastern people naturally prosper wherever they are in any part of the country.

The Ohanaeze Ndigbo president general stated that the first military coup was bloody and "a very brutal one", adding that the Igbo were very sad about the move led by Nzeogwu, which truncated Nigeria's democracy in the sixth year of its birth.

Multiple accounts attested to it that the coup, which Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna carried out, led to the demise of the first republic and the emergence of Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, as the first Nigeria military head of state, who hailed Umuahia.

But Iwuanyanwu on Sunday said Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo man, only came to stop the ensuing chaos when he took over the decapitated leadership of Nigeria after January 15, 1966, the bloody coup against an existing democratic system.

The Igbo leader said:

"The Igbo didn’t have any hand in the military coup, which was a very brutal. The Igbo were very sad about it, and if you remember, it was an Igbo who actually stopped it. It was Aguiyi Ironsi who mobilised forces across the coast, which nobody talks about today."