A renowned political scientist and eyewitness to Nigeria’s first military coup, Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, has warned that the January 15, 1966 coup did lasting damage to the country by eroding citizens’ belief that democracy could be repaired, a crisis he says is repeating itself today as democratic values are steadily hollowed out.
In an interview with ARISE News on Thursday,Professor Ibrahim, Chair of the Editorial Board of Premium Times newspaper, said the coup was “really a cry-out that democracy was crumbling,” adding that six decades later, Nigerians are once again confronted with a system “being emptied of its rules, its principles and its institutions.”
The political scientist and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Democracy and Development reflected on the personal trauma, political consequences and unresolved national questions surrounding January 15, a date that marks both Nigeria’s first coup and Armed Forces Remembrance Day.
“I think what the coup did was erode the belief that we could fix a democracy,” Ibrahim said. “There was a sense in which the political class had real problems, but those problems were structural. When the military intervened, rather than help us repair democracy, it deepened the trauma and set us on a different, damaging path.”
Recounting his childhood memories, Ibrahim said he was 11 years old and living in Lagos when the coup occurred, before being sent back to Kano shortly afterwards.
“I was living in Lagos because my sister picked me up from primary school in Kano to finish my schooling there. Her husband was a prison officer, so every evening we had running narratives of who had been arrested, who had been killed and who had been detained,” he said.
Although he did not fully understand events at the time, he said the violence left a deep psychological mark.
“When I returned to Kano, we lived in an area populated largely by Igbo families. When the pogrom started, our houses were attacked. The next morning, I foolishly came out and saw that all my neighbours’ children I played with had been killed. Their bodies were on the streets,” he said.
“That trauma has stayed with me all my life. That is why so many Nigerians have lived through episode after episode of trauma since the 1960s.”
According to Ibrahim, public reaction to the coup varied sharply across the country, largely because of its ethnic pattern.
“It depended on which part of the country you came from,” he said. “The pattern of those who were killed and those who were not killed gave the episode an ethnic agenda, and that coloured how people understood it.”
However, he noted that many Nigerians initially welcomed the coup because of widespread frustration with corruption and political manipulation.
“Corruption was eating deeply into the system, and many people praised the young majors because they believed corruption would now be dealt with decisively,” he said, citing early celebratory commentaries, including those by respected intellectuals of the time.
“That optimism did not last. Eight years later, many concluded that the soldiers were even more corrupt than the politicians they replaced.”
Ibrahim argued that the coup exposed long-standing structural problems inherited from colonial rule, particularly an imbalanced federation.
“The North alone had about 70 per cent of the territory and over half of the population, making it a perpetually dominant force,” he said. “The British were asked to resolve this before independence, but they refused.”
While the military attempted to address this imbalance through state creation, he said corruption ultimately defeated them.
“Rather than stop corruption, it grew throughout the 30 years of military rule,” he said. “Today, soldiers can even argue that politicians who came after them have not beaten all their corruption records. In that sense, corruption has been the real winner in Nigeria’s political economy.”
Ibrahim rejected the idea that the coup created ethnic divisions from scratch, saying it merely exposed and deepened existing tensions.
“There were already serious grievances, especially over the 1962 census and the deeply flawed 1964 elections,” he said. “That sense of political cheating mobilised the young officers who carried out the coup.”
He added that even the counter-coup and the end of the civil war failed to fully heal the nation.
“There was hope after the civil war, especially with General Gowon’s ‘no victor, no vanquished’ stance,” he said. “But the military became politicised, started enjoying power and manipulating transition processes. Nigerians realised we were not out of the woods.”
Ibrahim said Nigeria has never honestly confronted the legacy of the coup or the civil war.
“The Oputa Commission under President Obasanjo heard powerful testimonies, but nothing was done with them,” he said. “It became a talk shop. Today, most young Nigerians don’t even know it existed.”
He contrasted this with Rwanda, where truth-telling was used as a foundation for rebuilding.
“We missed an opportunity to learn from our past and build confidence in our future,” he said.
Drawing parallels between 1966 and the present, Ibrahim warned that the same warning signs are visible again.
“Everybody today is saying democracy is crumbling,” he said. “We’ve had 26 years of civilian rule, but manipulation continues, institutions are weakened, and Nigerians are worried that we’ve lost our foundational principles of federalism.”
Asked what enduring lesson January 15 should teach Nigerians, he said the answer lies in revisiting history honestly.
“It would be good for Nigerians to read the message of Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu,” he said. “It was a political analysis of domination, abuse of power, electoral manipulation and corruption. When people read it today, they will start making comparisons with what is happening now.”
“We should have learned that lesson,” Ibrahim added. “We haven’t.”
Boluwatife Enome
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