True, the Igbo story is Nigeria’s story because it’s every citizen’s story. Part lesson for the Igbos though – reduce the volume in self-praise and adulation, think your best son, Achebe put it best in his last epic – There was a country.

Yeah, the coup was unnecessary to start with, and primitively atavistic and bloody – it was a dumb coup.

This injustice appears premeditated. Not that the coup was foreseen, but that there was a deep resentment of Igbos which the proponents of the pogrom and war nursed long before the coup. The failed coup provided them an opportunity to carry out their savagery.

The young officers meant well for the nation and acted to install the person they believed was best suited to lead their dream Nigeria. It was a revolution. While I applaud their motive but they went about it the wrong way. Coups, especially bloody ones, are not the right way to effect leadership change in a democracy.

That said, the Gowon junta that succeeded Ironsi mismanaged a golden opportunity to build on the budding economy it inherited. The oil boom increased our wealth;, the explosion of world population raised global demand for food, which played into our hands because agriculture was the mainstay of our economy; the AIDS epidemic exploded demand for rubber-based protective products – Nigeria was a major producer of rubber. Our rapid population growth would have made Nigeria a blue-collar manpower hub like India and China. Our academic standard was good enough to achieve that. There was no need to punish merit and discourage hard work. What Nigerians got, instead, was the opposite. With a new set of backward policies, mostly meant to punish Igbos, the government put the entire nation in the reverse mode that brought us to the bottom position we occupy now.

Add this leadership failure to the coup lies and the atrocities the regime committed against Igbos based on those lies, especially the animosity the propaganda generated outside Igboland, it becomes difficult to articulate the full damage Igbos suffered and continue to suffer. They might be the primary victims, but Nigeria is the ultimate victim.

The brutes are incapable of healing the wounds. What they can do, however, is revisit the Aburi Accord or come up with something similar – using the existing geopolitical zones. The status quo cannot produce quality national leaderships able to deliver dividends. Devolution of power will make the grassroots stakeholders and make for greater accountability across the board..

The most shameful of all is the illegitimate PBAT that wasted his scare presidential time and resources that could have been devoted to solving the many challenges of the country to be at such event and laughing from molar to molar during the ceremony where a man that truncated democracy twice ( Shagari government and Abiola's mandate) was reliving his daring exploits !

What IBB succeeded in exposing to Nigerians is that our elite and political leadership class know little, and careless for history, are unscrupulous , gullible and basically transactional. They have no soul and they feel no empathy . It is all about what they want and how they profit from situation .

Surely IBB is entitled to render account of his misdeeds and deeds from his participation in the second coup in Nigeria to his last coup against democracy and consequent unleashing of his most vicious and brutal alter ego -Gen Sani Abacha – on Nigerians. What IBB however is not entitled to is the presence, honor and adulation he got on that day. For goodness sake IBB and his junta completely destroyed notion of military rule as interventionist and the prospect of Democracy in Nigeria with thousands of needless loss of lives Sadly, the Illegitimate PBAT and the cohort that gathered at the event know less and are just like IBB himself – criminal minded, highly ambitious and self serving .

It is good to ask : what really is IBB presenting in a book that deserve so much attendance , and what warrants IBB to launch a Presidential Library when he was never elected president ?

One can only feel for MKO and all others that loss their lives through the machination of the "evil genius" now supported and glorified by the Nigerian elite including PBAT !

Right. The late 1960s was a tough time for Igbo.

One million of them were displaced from their homes and 30,000 of them were killed on account of Nzeogwu's coup that they knew nothing about. The rejection and grieve that they felt must have been palpable. So, they said to themselves "enough is enough" and fled to Eastern Nigeria, to establish a refuge for their mothers, sisters, wives and children. But it ended up being like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. About two million more of them were killed — like flies — in their own region. Eastern Nigeria

But you have to give it to Igbo. After the war ended in 1970, they did not establish refugee camps in the East and beg the United Nations, and other foreign aid organizations, to come and help them. They got up, wiped the tears from their eyes, dusted off their trousers, and carried on with life

In fact, thousands of them, took the 20 pounds that they were given, and hiked back to Northern Nigeria. The same place where they were slaughtered, in their thousands, less than 5 years previously. When they arrived there, they were scotched with thirst, mocked, and derisively called "Yamiri", because having trekked hundreds of miles to their destination, they asked for water — "Nyem Nmiri" — to quench their thirst

Igbo story is a Nigerian story. It should be told by Pastors and Imams alike, to minister to thousands of people in Nigeria, who still live in refugee camps. On account of being displaced from their homes by violence, terrorism, insurgency, and carnage

Every right-thinking person is persuaded that there was no ''Igbo coup'' on Jan. 15. 1965 – OBJ said it, Lt. Col Ademulegun, an active participant, said it, Mr. Ofeimum, Baba Awo's confidant said it, and host of others. But what is new and news worthy is that this is the first time, a Northerner, a participant soldier, IBB no less, is publicly admitting and saying it, perhaps more convincingly than the South Westerners that said so before him. He mentions a major Obienu, an Igbo, that finally thwarted the coup. But, even this admission by perhaps, the most prominent Northern General, is not as crucial to the Igbos in Nigeria's history as IBB's other admission in his book – that it wasn't Ojukwu's personal ambition as touted by Gen. Gowon and his cabinet that led to the very costly civil war – it was rather Gowon's own failure in his responsibility to protect Igbo lives and property across the country that led to war. This sounds quite credible, even though it could, and has been argued, that there was no way Gowon could rely on an enraged Northern-dominated army to defend and protect the Igbos against whom they bore a huge grudge. Yet, Gowon did renege on his duty for failing to give that order, insisting on it, and if necessary seeking external aid to enforce it. Was some heinous wrong done to the Igbos, even now and presently as they keep claiming victimization, marginalization and exclusion for reasons of the Jan. 1966 coup and the civil war that followed. True or false, like it or not, IBB has brought that to the fore of our national conscience and consciousness. Well, one good thing IBB's book has done is throw the ball out there in the court of his peers who are still alive – from Gen. Gowon to Buhari – to publish their own memoires before they return to their maker. Whatever they say, true or false, would still be useful for memories to endure, and historians stich extracts of truth together for the sake of posterity.

– Paragraph 1 “…the assassination of Newswatch journalist, Dele Giwa in October 1996”…I guess you mean October 1986 (not 1996).

– Paragraph 3: “When Babangida turned 65 on August 17, 2026” …I guess you mean when he turned 65 in 2006 (not 2026).

Regarding Nzeogwu's coup not being a Igbo coup. OBJ clarified that point as far back as 1987.
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"Chukwuma was by nature, and upbringing, incapable of planning, let alone executing a coup d'etat designed to deliberately suppress one tribe politically and elevate another. But the execution of their plans in the south were susceptible to such an interpretation. He was unhappy about it. He felt disappointed, almost betrayed. There was no intention on Chukwuma's part to collude, and conspire, with Igbo officers in the army, or with Igbo politicians and academics, to lead a coup for the purpose of ensuring the political leadership of Nigeria by Igbo. No doubt, Igbo and non-Igbo gave a sigh of relief when the coup took place. However, some sections of the Nigerian society saw the coup as a monumental and wholesale Igbo plot to establish Igbo political ascendancy, supremacy, and domination" — Nzeogwu, by OBJ, Page 107
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Some people have argued that even if Nzeogwu's coup was not an Igbo coup, Igbo were killed, during the pogrom of 1966, because they celebrated Nzeogwu's coup. But according to OBJ's account, it was not only Igbo that celebrated Nzeogwu's coup. All Nigerians celebrated it. The same way all Nigerians initially celebrated PMB and IBB's coups

So, it was patently unfair for over 1 million Igbo to be displaced from their homes, and over 30,000 Igbo to be killed like chicken, in the North, between May and September, 1966, on account of Nzeogwu's coup.