However, Ifeajuna replied by kicking the doors open with his boots.
“You’re under arrest sir,” Ifeajuna said, pointing his gun at the Prime Minister, who looked startled.
“Get up sir, we don’t have a lot of time.”
“All right,” the Prime Minister replied gently, “allow me to get dressed.”
He put on a white flowing robe with white trousers, a pair of slippers, and his prayer beads. Without fear and a disciplined face, he trudged out of the room...
...and the residence gently as Ifeajuna and his soldiers accompanied him with pointed guns.
When they reached the parked vehicles, Ezedigbo had arrested the Finance Minister, Chief Okotie-Eboh, and had tossed him like a bag of groundnuts into the back of the 3-Ton truck while...
...the Prime Minister was assisted into the backseat of Ifeajuna’s luxurious car, a red Mercedes Benz, as the convoy drove off to the rendezvous.
Some few kilometers to their rendezvous, Balewa became restless and was muttering to himself as he rattled his prayer beads.
Okafor hinted Ifeajuna of the situation who quickly slammed the brakes and came out of the car.
“Are you all right, sir?” Ifeajuna asked the Prime Minister as he opened the side door. “Or would you like some fresh air?”
To Tafawa Balewa, it was a rhetorical question and the decision to answer or not rested with him. Without answering the Major, he gently alighted from the car and ambled towards the darkness as Ifeajuna watched anxiously, oblivious of what the Prime Minister was up to.
Then from a slow walk to a pace and a sprint, he dashed for the darkness. Ifeajuna did not bother to pursue. Quickly, he grabbed his gun from the car, cocked it, and aimed at the fleeing Prime Minister whose white outfit contrasted the darkness and conspicuously gave him away.
The “revolution” had failed and the Prime Minister had become a liability to their movement anyway. The Major shot sporadically at the fleeing figure sending the tranquility of the darkness to a bustle of gunfire like the crackle of burning dried leaves.
Balewa fell as Ifeajuna stared in horror at the darkness whether he got his target. The Golden Voice of Africa had been silenced.
Quickly, he moved towards the still body of the Prime Minister and after confirming he was dead, dragged him to a tree trunk, and rested the body in a seating position with his clothing still intact.
Then he and Okafor brought out Largema’s corpse from the boot of the car and laid it down beside Balewa’s body. Having realised the coup had failed on their part, they sped, en route Abeokuta-Sagamu, towards Enugu in the East, which was nearly 450 kilometres away. #HistoryVille
Source: A Carnage Before Dawn: A Historical Novel On Nigeria's First Coup D’état by @AmazingAyo.
“Akintola, come down; you are for lawful arrest by the army on orders from HQ 2 Brigade,” Nwobosi shouted.
“Under arrest, ke?” Akintola said to himself, “Oya, come and greet your mother’s husband,” as he cocked his gun.
When Nwobosi hit the door in an attempt to force it open, the Premier opened fire from inside his bedroom with a submachine gun, shooting contiguously and continuously through the closed door.
“Return fire,” Captain Nwobosi ordered his men, which they did, enormously.
“Please sir, surrender sir. Stop shooting, please. They only came to take us to Lagos,” Fani-Kayode pleaded and shouted from the landrover urging the Premier to cease firing and surrender. But the Premier kept on firing until he ran out of ammunition.
When the British slave ship, "Zong" sailed from Accra with 442 slaves on August 18, 1781, it had taken on more than twice the number of people that it could safely transport (in order to maximise profit), when it was discovered that the water supply would not be enough.
If the slaves died a natural death the loss would fall on the owners. But if they were cast into the sea to drown, the loss would be covered by insurance, £30 for each slave lost. And that's what they did.
On November 29, 1781, 54 women and children were thrown through cabin windows into the sea.
On December 1, 1781, 42 male enslaved people were thrown overboard, and 36 more followed in the next few days.
OPERATION DAMISA: THE ASSASSINATION OF SIR AHMADU BELLO, THE SARDAUNA OF SOKOTO, JANUARY 15, 1966
''Ina Sardauna? Where is the Sardauna?” Nzeogwu shouted, pointing his gun at him but the man kept shaking his head asserting no knowledge of the Sardauna’s location.
“If you won’t tell me where your master is, I’ll kill you,” Nzeogwu screamed at him in Hausa.
“Okay, okay,” the man replied fearfully and led Nzeogwu to the annex of the building. Three other soldiers followed Nzeogwu while Waribor and the rest returned to the staging area...
As Nzeogwu approached the adjoining rooms the man was leading them to, he heard screams and cries of women and children.
“Where’s the Sardauna?” Nzeogwu shouted. But the women would not allow Bello to move. Even the children were clinging to their mothers.
During the Civil War, when the Ministry of Defence shared the same building with the External Affairs, Michael Ojukwu, an officer with External Affairs, had to show his service identification card before being allowed in.
A military guard who first caught sight of his name hollered for the others to come and see his catch.
" You are Ojukwu?"
" Yes, I am."
" You're under arrest!"
" I am a foreign service officer."
Before the poor man could complete the sentence, he was beaten so badly that he had to be hospitalised.
Some Ministry of External Affairs colleagues who tried to intervene told the soldiers that Michael was not a Biafran or any relation of the secessionist leader...
On March 21, 2007, 30-year-old Christianah Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin was lynched and burnt to death by Muslim students for allegedly desecrating the Qur'an at a secondary school in Gandu, Gombe State, North-East Nigeria.
A mother of two, Oluwasesin was assigned to supervise an Islamic Religious Knowledge exam when one of the students wanted to enter the exam hall with books. Oluwasesin collected them and threw them outside.
The students, who claimed that one of the books was a copy of the Qur'an, started to chant "Allahu Akbar" (Allah is Great) and chased her to the school principal's office.
They dragged her out of the office, stripped her naked, and stabbed her to death.
Just before dawn on a Saturday morning, about 2:10 am, January 15, 1966, the Adjutant-General of the Nigerian Army, Lieutenant-Colonel James Pam (pictured), his wife Elizabeth, and all other members of his family in their...
...Nigerian Army residence at 8, Ikoyi Crescent, Ikoyi, Lagos, awoke to the sight of soldiers crouching decidedly towards their house.
Eventually, the fully-armed soldiers continued to make their way to Lt. Col. Pam's home. Those approaching the kitchen chose to make their...
...entrance by shooting through the door. A quick run up the stairs and the soldiers took over the bedrooms.
By this time, Elizabeth was no longer in doubt that something has badly gone wrong. As she ran to the children’s rooms in distress and confusion, she screamed for her...