1949: Mr M. A Nnadozie and four of his pupils from Umulogho School Nsu. Okigwi District.

They were demonstrating an initiative adopted by many schools at the time to introduce various "uncommon handiworks"  like bag weaving, basket making and carving.

In Umulogho school Mr Nnadozie said "The making of long floor mats might well be developed into a village industry to replace the indian and other imported fibre mats now on sale in many of the large stores"

The twine used was made from the bark of a plant botanically called Firmiana Barteri ( Ufuku in Igbo)

On This Day 49 Years Ago: 13th September 1966 - The death of Sir L.P Odumegwu Ojukwu: A sons account by Lotanna P Ojukwu.

"My father died after trying to encourage and convince the would be Eastern Nigerian emissaries to Lagos to seek for a peaceful resolution to the conflict crisis that had already developed, which led to the massacre of Igbos in many parts of the country.

I was home on holidays from the United Kingdom when my father died. Sir Odumegwu had travelled to Nkalagu to see into the affairs of his baby, The Nigerian Cement Company.

Massacres of people from Eastern Nigeria were quite rampant at the time, and there were talks of possible secession. High ranking Eastern Nigerian government personnel and dignitaries were being assembled to go and negotiate with the Federal government of Nigeria for some form of reconciliation.

My understanding of the situation at the time was that the appointed emissaries were all quite reluctant and didn't want to embark on the mission.

Sir Odumegwu took it upon himself to see these emissaries individually and speak with them, encourage and convince them that they had to go and negotiate.

Sir Odumegwu and myself drove to Enugu from Nkalagu to see the emissaries and finally my brother ( Emeka Ojukwu) the then military governor. For a fourteen year old like me at the time, I observed that in most of the places and homes we visited, there was a lot of difficult discussions among the people. Finally, a very unusual and most surprising difficulty was when we visited my brother.

Our attempt to gain entry at the military governors state house gate was hopelessly halted. We were searched and delayed. Normally, Sir Odumegwu was expected and should have passed through when he came to the gate, but there we were. I left the car after a while and was busy running around the gardens of the state house while we waited for whatever difficulty to be cleared up.

One whole hour after we got to the state house,not even a call was put through to the military governor; neither did my brother even call. My father eventually became agitated and started wondering what was going on himself. We were all very anxious as to why the delay and why the military governor would not come down to see us and our father. That night, the delay continued and we did not start our drive back to Nkalagu until about 9pm or 10pm.

With all of that, one would begin to think about it that Sir Odumegwu, who had suffered two previous heart attacks in the last three years, still went around at that difficult time engaging the emissaries to convince them to go and negotiate . This agitated him enough, and the event at the state house capped it all. Through out our drive back to Nkalagu from Enugu, my father was very quiet and by the time we got to Nkalagu, somehow things were not so well anymore with him.

We all went to bed, but by 3 am my step mother woke me up to say that my father was ill and that we needed to call a doctor to come and help him. Apparently he had suffered another heart attack. It wasn't till 6 am that we got into a hospital with the limited medical facilities at the Nkalagu factory complex. My father lived only for a further day and died the next morning of 13th September 1966

So really he died trying to save Nigeria, trying to convince some high ranking civil servants to go for peace negotiations in Lagos

My father was completely detribalised . And for a man who made all his money and had all his properties in Lagos, it must have been a very anxious time for him. I can imagine what he would have suffered thinking that Nigeria would be torn asunder by the developments and seeing things get worse by the minute. It must have been a very anxious time for him"

Culled from the book In Quest of Perpetuity - Bio Sketches of Sir Odumegwu Ojukwu. Written by Ifeze

The Burial of Major General Aguiyi Ironsi 49 years

July 29, 1966.

As part of a nationwide tour. Major General Aguiyi Ironsi visited Ibadan and had earlier hosted traditional rulers from all parts of the country in Ibadan Government House.

His plan was to spend the night at the Government House then continue on his tour, but at 4am his host, Lieutenant Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, Military Governor of Western Nigeria, alerted him to a possible mutiny within the army.

In the early hours of the morning, Government House, Ibadan, was surrounded by soldiers led by Theophilus Danjuma.

Theophilus Danjuma

Danjuma arrested Fajuyi, Ironsi and his ADC and questioned Ironsi about his alleged complicity in the January coup of the same year.

Here is an account from Senator Andrew Nwankwo Ironsi’s Aide-De-Camp in an interview given to Sun News.

“After we were informed that there was a coup, my close friend Lieutenant Sanni Bello assured me that if it was his own people he will protect me, because, there was tension in the land and we knew a coup was imminent. So, we agreed to protect each other depending on where it would be coming from.

The road to the valley of death

After our arrest they marched myself and Ironsi down to where Fajuyi was.

They used telephone cables to tie our hands behind our legs, leaving us with a little space to walk. Ironsi was put in a Land Rover, Fajuyi in a mini bus and myself in another bus. They drove us towards Iwo Road, 10 km from Ibadan, where we stopped by a small forest.
Fajuyi was leading and as he tried to cross a small stream, he fell down, the soldiers were unruly, it appeared some of them had for the first time taken Indian hemp, so when he fell down some of them started beating him.

My escape

As Fajuyi fell down and they were beating him, Sanni Bello (the friend Nwankwo had made a pact with) came to me and tapped me and said, we could do something now.

It was providence, maybe I was not destined to die. I took a few steps from them and jumped into a nearby ditch, all in a split of a second. Bello came and stood by the ditch and was shouting that I had escaped pointing at another direction. So the soldiers ran around that direction shooting into the bush and when they felt they must have killed me, they shot Fajuyi and Ironsi by the side of the stream.

Bello made sure that he was the last to leave the place”.

Major general Ironsi’s body and that of Lieutenant Colonel Fajuyi were later discovered in a nearby forest.

The Video

The funeral of Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, the Nigerian Head of State assassinated during the counter coup in 1966.

Music : Harcourt Whyte Nna Chebe Nwa Gi 

Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki

In 1979 Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki was elected a Senator of the Second Republic and became Senate Leader (1979 - 1983) 

He is the father of the current Senate President Bukola Saraki.

Dr Victor Allen's Arrest in Lagos, Nigeria 1964

Dr Victor Allen in disguise when he was arrested in 1964. Source: Times 

June 1964: Dr. V. L. Allen, British sociologist, historian, economist and Professor at the University of Leeds, whilst on a visit to Nigeria, was arrested and formally charged at the Lagos Chief Magistrate's Court under Section 63 of the Nigerian Criminal Code, with the offence of managing / assisting in the management of an unlawful society.

In 1999 the left-wing academic, was formally unmasked as a spy in the unfolding Cold War scandal, but denied acting illegally or betraying his country as he considered what he did was perfectly legitimate because he belonged to a pro-Soviet, pro-East German faction of the group.

He told BBC Two's The Spying Game: "I have no shame. I feel no regrets about that at all. My only regret is that we didn't succeed."

Dr Allen died on 26 October 2014, aged 91.

The Video

The Video is of scenes from outside a Lagos, Nigerian court. 

He had also been accused of being involved in a coup that tried, but failed, to take over the Nigerian government.

Background 

There was on going strikes between 1963 and 1964 regarding The national minimum wage and as admitted by some members there was a deliberate  attempt to overthrow the government and transform the strike into a full scale revolution. (article from Vanguard August 12 2012)

For this, two radical trade unionists Jonas Abam of the Dockworkers Union  and Sidi Khayam of the Seamen Union, along with Comrade Adebayo, a teacher and Victor Lenard Allen an Irish and lecturer from Oxford University were arrested and tried. 

While out on bail, an elaborate plan was hatched to smuggle Allen out of the country.

He was disguised and went all the way to Idi-Iroko, a border area with neighbouring Benin Republic. Unknown to the revolutionaries, the state security agents were involved in the ‘plan’. They simply picked him up at the border.

The unionists were tried and convicted. 

The Labour Movement distanced itself from the conspirators who during their trial got assistance mainly from outside Labour. This was to affect the unity of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, in later years when Abam became the Genral Secretary of the powerfull Dock Workers Union, DUN.

The two men in the video (00:08) are Sidi Khayam and Comrade Adebayo. Khayam later fell sick and died while Comrade Adebayo left home for a walk and was never seen again.

Chukwuma Bamidele Azikiwe ( February 1940 - May 2015)

Chukwuma Bamidele Azikiwe was the first son of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria's first President. He was born in February 1940 and attended Harvard University Cambridge U.S.A

He was the Owelle of Onitsha a traditional position inherited from his father.

He died over the weekend at 75 years old 

Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips 1884 - 1969 The 'Father of Nigerian Church Music'

                            

Ekundayo Phillips was born in 1884, in Ondo state to Marian and Bishop Charles Samuel Phillips. He was educated at St Stephen's school,Ondo; St John's School Aroloya, Lagos; C.M.S Grammar School, the school of Pharmacy and Trinity College of Music, London. England in 1911.

On return to Nigeria in 1913, he went into private Practice as a professional chemist but also set about through lectures and publications, to enlighten the public about music. 

In 1914 he was appointed Organist and Choirmaster of the then Pro- Cathedral Church of Christ. He held the post till 1962 when he retired and was awarded the title of Organist Emeritus. 

He travelled all over the country and collected indigenous music which he developed into piano and organ compositions, especially choral music.

His compositions included chant settings for canticles and psalms, Yoruba choruses and native tones, a Yoruba cantata entitled 'Mesia' ( Messiah) and an English cantata entitled 'Samuel' incorporating a 'Coronation Cantata' specially composed for and rendered on the occasion of the coronation of King George VI.

Other achievements include the production of some important oratorios and cantatas including Elijah, Messiah, Hymn of Praise, Hiawatha and Ode to St. Cecilia.

Another significant accomplishment was the fact he trained some of Africa's finest composers like Fela Sowande, Ayo Bankole, Lazarous Ekweme, Christopher Oyesiku and his son, Charles Oluwole Obayomi Phillips

After his retirement from Pro Cathedral Church of Christ he continued to practice as a pharmacist.

Dr Phillips was a Licentiate and a Fellow of Trinity College of Music, London. He was decorated with an M.B.E, for his contribution to the progress of music and honoured with a doctorate by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1963.