1966: ‘When I Met Late Maj. Gen. Hassan Usman, He Told Me That They All Supported The Coup’ -Ulasi

Peoples Democratic Party chieftain Chief Dan Ulasi has disclosed that the late Major General Hassan Usman Katsina personally told him that the Nigerian military collectively supported the January 1966 coup.

Speaking on Arise TV, Ulasi said, “When I met the late Major General Hassan Usman Katsina, he told me that they all supported the coup. The only thing was that after the coup, some elements in Kaduna after Ahmadu Bello was killed, someone else was killed in the west and M.I. Okpara was not killed in the east,” he said.

Chief Ulasi further explained that the survival of Eastern Premier M.I. Okpara was not by design but by circumstance. “M.I. Okpara couldn’t have been killed in the east because a Head of State was visiting the east and was with M.I. Okpara. It was the then Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus that was the only reason why that coup wasn’t complete. And so it was difficult to convince people that it wasn’t an Igbo coup,” he said.

Ulasi maintained that those directly involved in the coup have always known the truth that the military was acting collectively out of concern for Nigeria’s unity, and were alarmed by the growing divisions among the regional premiers, and genuinely believed that intervention was necessary to protect the country’s long-term interests rather than to serve any single ethnic group…....