THE plot that led to the assassination of former Head of State, Major General Murtala Muhammed on February 13, 1976, started from the day he took over in 1975 because he refused to accept a triumvirate power-sharing arrangement, according to former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.
After the coup that ousted General Yakubu Gowon, he said Murtala Muhammed shunned expectations of younger officers to run a 'collective' administration and this led to plots to remove him.
IBB said this in his autobiography: A Journey in Service," which was launched last Thursday.
He also recounted how Murtala Muhammed won the hearts of Nigerians through popular actions but regretted that the country was yet to recover from the mass sack of top civil servants in 1975.
He wrote: The day after the coup, 37-year-old Brigadier Murtala Ramat Muhammed emerged as the new head of state. But, contrary to the general perception, his emergence as Head of State didn't come about smoothly. On the evening after the coup, a meeting of senior officers, including Brigade Commanders and GOCs, was convened at the Dodan Barracks at the instance of one of the top military officers, possibly Lt-Col. Yar'Adua (or was it Colonel M. I. Wushishi?).
One of the accusations against General Gowon (which, in retrospect, seemed unfair) was that he ran the business of governance 'like a one-man show'! So, we, the 'younger' senior officers who had played a role in the coup, decided that the new post-Gowon government's leadership must be overtly collective. So, while we concluded that Brigadier Murtala Muhammed should be the head of state, our preference was for him to operate only as first among equals, especially in his dealings with the two other prominent senior officers, Brigadiers Olusegun Obasanjo and Theophilus Danjuma.
Rough beginning
But we knew Muhammed enough to know he would need to be persuaded to accept such an arrangement.
So, while the rest of us 'younger' senior officers waited in an adjacent room, Colonel Wushishi, Lieutenant-Colonels Joe Garba, Abdullahi Mohammed and Yar'Adua took Brigadiers Muhammed, Obasanjo and Danjuma to another room to negotiate the terms of our proposal for a triumvirate-type leadership where Muhammed will be required to share power with Obasanjo and Danjuma.
I couldn't describe the mood since we were absent from that meeting.
But we were close enough to pick up Muhammed's thundering voice, rejecting such proposals outrightly. As far as I remember, the meeting lasted for hours past midnight. Finally, Murtala Muhammed agreed to be head of state while insisting that he would not be beholden to anyone as head of state!
In a prompt style that typified his leadership, he quickly announced several retirements the next day, just as he made new appointments. All officers above the rank of Major-General or senior to any new government member were compulsorily retired.
Mass retirements
Those retired included such persons as the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Vice-Admiral Joseph Wey; the Deputy Chief of Staff,(Army), Major-General David Ejoor; the Chief of Naval Salem; the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, T. A. Fagbola and Major-General Adeyinka Adebayo.
These retirements were followed simultaneously with new appointments. While the Commissioner for Works and Housing from the old SMC, Brigadier Olusegun Obasanjo, replaced Vice- Admiral Wey as the new Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Brigadier Theophilus Danjuma replaced Major-General Ejoor as the Chief of Staff (Army). Danjuma would change the designation of that position upon resumption of office to 'Chief of Army Staff,' which has remained the designation ever since.
The only surviving senior army officer from Gowon's SMC, Brigadier Iliya Bisalla, also the NDA's Commandant, became Minister of Defence. Alhaji Mohammed Dikko Yusuf became the Inspector-General of Police.
Colonel John Yisa-Doko took over from Brigadier Emmanuel Ikwue as Chief of Air Staff, while Commodore Michael Adelanwa replaced Rear Admiral Nelson Soroh as Chief of Naval Staff.
Sack of governors
While all the military state governors and the Administrator of the East Central state were 'relieved of their appointments and retired with immediate effect,' the SMC wore a new look with the appointment of four new GOCs: Brigadier Julius Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, GOC 1 Division, Kaduna; Brigadier Martin Adamu, GOC 2 Division, Ibadan; Brigadier Emmanuel Abisoye, GOC 3 Division, Jos, and Brigadier John Obada, GOC, Lagos Garrison Organisation. Except for Lt-Col. Alfred Aduloju, who was in the SMC as the Commander of the Signals Corps, and I, who was there in my capacity as Commander of the Armoured Corps, other members of the 20-man strong SMC were senior military officers who held critical political appointments as Commissioners. These were Brigadier James Oluleye (Establishments), Colonel Joseph Nanven Garba (External Affairs), Colonel Dan Suleiman (Health), Lt-Col. Shehu Musa Yar'Adua (Transport), and Navy Captain Olufemi Olumide (Works & Housing).
The remaining two other members of the SMC, Lt-Commander Godwin Ndubuisi Kanu (Navy) and Lt- Col. Muktar Mohammed (Army), held no political appointments.
The early days of the Muhammed administration witnessed an unprecedented wave of retirements in Nigeria's public service that had never been seen before. After the twelve military governors from the Gowon era were compulsorily retired, the government ordered a probe of their conduct in office.
Ten of the twelve governors were found guilty of illegal enrichment and 'dismissed with ignominy.'
Brigadiers Oluwole Rotimi and Mobolaji Johnson were the only two.
Some civilian members of the Gowon cabinet were also found to have enriched themselves illegally. Apart from Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the Finance Commissioner and Alhaji Ali Monguno, who affected thousands of civil servants, many top civil servants were also caught in the web of asset forfeiture of ill-gotten assets.
Looking back now and writing as a member of the SMC, I realise we probably overdid the retirement exercise.
The idea of retiring corrupt and incompetent public officers was appropriate. But in the surge of events, some civil servants may have been victims of an unfair witch-hunt. Goaded on by a seemingly over-exuberant mass media, we didn't look deeply at the implications of the mass some of those affected).
Return to civil rule programme
With the retirements saga behind him, Murtala Muhammed hit the road running. Convinced that a critical priority for his administration was the quick return of the country to civilian democratic rule. He promptly announced the return date as October 1, 1979. Then, with speed and decisiveness that would endear him to many Nigerians, Muhammed quickly accepted Justice Aguda's recommendation for a Federal capital in the present location and Justice Ayo Irikefe's panel's recommendation for the creation of more states.
Accordingly, he promptly created seven new states, bringing the number of states from twelve to nineteen.The new states were: Ogun and Ondo (created out of the old West); Anambra and Imo (from the old East-Central State); Niger (created from the old North-Western State); Benue (from the old Benue-Plateau State); and from the old North-Eastern State, Bauchi was created.
A footnote to the creation of the new states saga should be mentioned here, even if only in passing. When Justice Irikefe's panel on the creation of states recommended the creation of Niger State, among others, the panel also recommended Bida as capital, inadvertently ignoring the fact that Minna was the provincial capital of the old Niger Province and should, in my view, be picked as the capital of the new state. A simple fact of history inspired my position on the matter. As two of the three old emirates of the old Niger Province with first-class Emirs, Kontagora and Bida, cancel an unusually smiling Murtala Muhammed put his thumbs up for Minna over Bida.
Murtala Muhammed could be impulsive, but as head of state, he was, surprisingly, not brash. Those of us younger officers who got closer to him, usually during SMC meetings, saw a softer, more has stuck with me ever since.
Equally, in foreign policy matters, Muhammed earned the admiration, especially that of his fellow stance concerning the cold-war politics of the era, but he boldly supported the Marxist-oriented People's Movement for the Gerald Ford of the United States. When it became clear that the opposition movements in Angola (FNLA and UNITA), under providing adequate resources to MPLA for its liberation struggles.
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