THISDAY

Nigeria’s Fallen Heroes Through Their Children’s Eyes

What is childhood like without one or both parents? For Solape Ademulegun-Agbi and Olayinka Omigbodun, it is a memory marked by horror and loss, still vivid after 58 years. Solape lost both her mother and father during the first coup d’état in 1966, while Olayinka’s father was abducted two days after the coup and has not been seen till date. Vanessa Obioha spoke with these women about their enduring pain and the ongoing quest for recognitio­n from the Nigerian government.

Mrs Solape Ademulegun-Agbi still remembers that night, as if it happened yesterday. She was barely six years old, suffering from chicken pox with calamine lotion applied to her skin. On that fateful night in January 1966, she was in the bedroom with her parents; her older brother was in another room, and the youngest lay in a cot.

Her young mind could not fathom what was happening when a band of soldiers, led by the late Maj. Timothy Onwuatuegw­u - whom she considered an uncle - stormed their home.

She remembered asking, “Uncle, what are you doing here?” The following minutes happened too fast for her to comprehend the gravity of the crime committed that night. In utmost horror, she saw her mother, Latifat, fondly called Sisi Nurse, come between the bloodshot soldiers and her father, Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, who was the commander of the 1st Brigade in Kaduna. Without blinking, the soldiers rained bullets on the couple. Her older brother heard the gunshots, ran to the bedroom, and upon seeing the terror, retreated to his room. He never came out until the soldiers left.

“Mummy was still gasping, calling out a name which I couldn’t figure out until she finally gave up the ghost.” The soldiers did not only kill but also looted the brigadier’s belongings.

“I remember seeing one putting on my father’s wristwatch, another trying on his shoes. And I just sat cuddled on their bed that night. After they left my brother came and took us to the boys’ quarters.”

That night, the children slept alone. Ademulegun-Agbi kept telling herself that maybe her parents would wake up. Even when the wife of Gen. Aguiyi Ironsi, who came into power following the coup, arrived and took them away the next day, she kept hoping that somehow, she would see her parents. A Land Rover later came to take away her parents’ corpses.

“We never knew where they were buried,” she said. “When we asked years later, we were told it was somewhere in Kaduna where a flyover has been built so there’s no burial spot.”

Ademulegun-Agbi and her brother were moved to Queen Amina orphanage in Kaduna the next day pending when the army got in touch with her father’s relatives. Yet Ademulegun-Agbi was restless, still expecting to see her parents. “I kept asking when my mum and dad would come back. When will they come to pick me up?”

Ademulegun-Agbi’s persistenc­e about her parents’ whereabout­s made the nun in charge of the orphanage take her to a cemetery to explain to her that her parents were gone and would never return.

“That was the beginning of my sadness that went on for years and decades.”

The event of that night plunged Ademulegun-Agbi into a painful childhood where sadness and rejection became her closest allies. From the orphanage, they were tossed around from one family relative to another. First, her mother’s cousin in Zaria, then her father’s brother and another mother’s brother where she lived one of the most horrifying periods of her life. She was nearly raped by the houseboy of his uncle who forced her to eat up her vomit.

“Bassey served me eba with no soup and I kept throwing it up. And he kept asking me to pick it up again and eat it and I kept eating it again and throwing it up again.” she narrated. “Then he tried to rape me and I kept screaming and fighting.”

More details of the harrowing childhood experience of Ademulegun-Agbi are contained in her book ‘The Brigadier’s Daughter.’

Now 64, an educationi­st with two daughters, the horrifying experience of her parents’ death remains indelible. “The events of that night in 1966 never went away. They never went anywhere,” she said sadly. “The room, the guns, the soldiers, my mum as she stood in between my dad and soldiers, I just can’t forget.”

These memories are not only etched in her mind but also in her living room, where she is surrounded by photos of her parents and loved ones, hanging on the walls and adorning the rug and settee. “My daughters came home about a year ago. They said you surround yourself with pictures. I said yes. That’s all I have,” she said.

Does she still bear any grudge against the Nigerian Army?

“That’s a big question. It wasn’t just our parents that were killed,” she said. “So, if I hold on to unforgiven­ess, it will be ungodly. The Army paid our school fees from primary school to first degree but I don’t think that’s enough. The government gave my father a road in Abuja, I was in Abuja a couple of weeks ago. I actually asked the driver to take me there, Samuel Ademulegun Avenue, somewhere in the central business district. Ondo State named a road after him and built a cenotaph in his honour. That’s not enough. Children of some of the officers and civilians who were killed during that period held ministeria­l positions and ambassador­ial positions because they had mothers. We didn’t get anything.”

For Ademulegun-Agbi, no compensati­on will ever be enough for the trauma she and her siblings went through.

“Nothing will ever be enough for the pain that we went through, the pain that I went through as a young girl. Nothing will ever be able to compensate for that, but it is not too late.”

Unlike Mrs. Ademulegun-Agbi, Mrs. Olayinka Omigbodun did not lose both parents, but her childhood was equally painful. The two women met in Ibadan, where Mrs. Ademulegun-Agbi attended secondary school. Omigbodun, the daughter of the late Col. Victor Banjo said she was only four when she learned that her father had been killed.

“I can’t recall the day I lost my father. Because I don’t even know the day he was killed. I wasn’t there. We were not even in the country. My mother got a letter from one of my father’s brothers informing her that my father had been killed,” she said.

She recalled that her mother had called her and her siblings into the room and told them that their father had gone to meet Jesus. At the time, they were in Kenema, Sierra Leone.

“Knowing Jesus to be somebody who is good… my older brother jumped up. He was very excited about it. And we didn’t understand what it really meant until much later when things eventually dawned on us that going to Jesus meant he had been killed.”

Banjo served as the first Nigerian Director of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineerin­g Corps of the Army.

Omigbodun’s memories of her father are in fragments and mostly derived from what she gleaned from the media and letters he wrote to her late mother while in incarcerat­ion. For instance, in her book ‘A Gift of Sequins: Letters to My Wife,’ she recalled a particular incident when her father helped rescue her from a locked toilet. “That was my strong, handsome, loving ‘Daddy’ to the rescue,” she wrote lovingly.

Omigbodun had a privileged childhood, which abruptly ended with her father’s reportedly arrest for alleged complicity in the 1966 coup d’état.

“From the letters he wrote, he didn’t know about the 1966 coup,” she said. “What we know is that he left for work on Monday, January 17, 1966, and he never came back. We later learned that at work he was accused of being part of the coup plotters and was arrested.”

Omigbodun learnt from the letters her father wrote that he was taken to Kirikiri Prison first, and then later to Ikot-Ekpene.

“But as of today, we don’t have any formal communicat­ion as regards his whereabout­s. The communicat­ion we have of his death is of things we read in the news, and what people told us. We don’t have any letter from the Nigerian Army stating his arrest or death. Somebody told us that in the record of the Nigerian Army, he was declared missing in action, but that’s speculatio­n. There is no death certificat­e confirming his death.”

Following his arrest by the Nigerian Army, according to Omigbodun, the socio-economic status of his family plummeted.

This abrupt change in social status taught Omigbodun never to hold on to anything. Where they once had servants catering to them, they now had to fend for themselves. Her mother, who was a Creole from Sierra Leone, initially a homemaker, had to seek employment to survive. Apart from having their privileges withdrawn, the Banjos were ostracised from the society, except for family friend John Ediale, who consistent­ly checked on them. They also faced intense scrutiny.

“There was a day they came to search our house, and I think that really affected my mother. Yakubu Gowon led about 100 soldiers to our house in Ikoyi to search for guns. My father was already at Kirikiri Prison.”

“There was a cabinet in the house,” she continued. “And they couldn’t find the keys to open it. So Gowon said they should take the cabinet and would return it after their search.

“That cabinet contained all informatio­n about my father and my mother; birth and marriage certificat­es, landed property, bank accounts, locally and in Switzerlan­d. Any document that was related to them in terms of property, and so on was in that cabinet and it was taken away in January 1966. It was never returned till today,” she said, breaking down in tears.

Omigbodun claimed that her father had acres of land in Lagos and funded accounts in Switzerlan­d for their education, all the documentat­ion was removed with the removal of the cabinet by the soldiers led by Gowon, and nothing has been returned or recovered up until now. By July 1966, her mother had relocated them to Sierra Leone, where they spent three years.

Despite his incarcerat­ion, the late Banjo desired the best for his children. In one of his letters to his wife, he pleaded with her not to allow their children to go through many hands. For this reason, Omigbodun, who is a child and adolescent psychiatri­st (and the first female professor of psychiatry in Nigeria), was grateful, as she couldn’t imagine the trauma Ademulegun went through.

“Children don’t recover from those kinds of things. It damages them.”

Nonetheles­s, their economic status did not improve upon their return to Nigeria. Despite her mother’s efforts to recover the cabinet or obtain compensati­on from the army, none materialis­ed.

Omigbodun lost her mother to breast cancer in 1997. She recalled that one of her mother’s last wishes was to regain everything the army took away from her husband.

For now, she seeks to have a degree of closure.

“First, we need them to acknowledg­e that my father was killed. Let’s have a death certificat­e. Then Gowon should return the cabinet that he took from our house with its contents. If the cabinet cannot be found, let him acknowledg­e and apologise. I believe my father served this country meritoriou­sly. He believed and fought for one Nigeria and deserved every benefit due to him as an army officer as was done for Ojukwu and other soldiers.”

Omigbodun strongly believes that Nigeria needs to collective­ly seek forgivenes­s from those who have been wronged.

“The crimes against humanity, the shedding of blood and the cries of widows and orphans in this land are many. There needs to be a national acknowledg­ement, repentance and seeking of forgivenes­s,” she concluded.

Both women continue to call for recognitio­n, compensati­on, and a national acknowledg­ement of the sacrifices and losses endured by their families.