Source Cited

Adebanwi, Wale Death, national memory and the social construction of heroism.Cambridge University Press The Journal of African History November 2008
February 20 2008

http://infotrac.galegroup.com.sdplproxy.sandiego.gov/itw/infomark/1/1/1/purl=rc1_BRC_0_A193467761?sw_aep=san67255

Akintola was returned to office in disputed elections which were again marred by widespread violence in the Western Region. In the context of all this, some young soldiers, who were mostly of Igbo extraction, struck on 15 January 1966. In what was later described as a 'mutiny', they killed political leaders and military chiefs in Lagos, Ibadan and Kaduna. Those killed included the Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa; the Premiers of the Northern and Western Regions, Ahmadu Bello and the man regarded as Bello's lackey in the west, Ladoke Akintola; the Federal Minister of Finance, Festus Okotie-Eboh; and ranking soldiers, including Brigadier Z. Maimalari, Brigadier S. A. Ademulegun (and his wife), Cols. R. A. Shodeinde and Kur Mohammed, Lt-Cols. J. Y. Pam, A. C. Unegbe and A. Largema.

However, a few of the coup plotters of Igbo extraction who were expected to arrest and kill, upon resistance, the Igbo Premier of the Eastern Region, Michael Okpara, and the Premier of the Mid-West Region, Dennis Osadebey, put the former under house arrest and failed even to reach the latter. This provoked the description of the coup as a 'tribal uprising'. (17) This allegation, as one of the plotters, Adewale Ademoyega states, ignored the fact that not only did some northern officers and men take part in, and approve of, the coup, but also they were 'extremely jubilant and most vociferous that the revolution should continue'. (18)

The mutiny, although hailed in most quarters as a God-send, was eventually halted by the senior cadre of the military which took over the reins of power and detained the majors who executed the coup. The head of the Nigerian Army, Major General J. T. U. Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo, then took over power as the head of the new military government. After establishing himself securely in office, Ironsi stated that disunity was the major crisis faced by the recently independent country. Owing to this, he announced plans to abrogate the federal system in favour of a unitary system in which the civil service was to be unified and the regions were more or less to cease to be the semi-independent parts of a federating unit. On 24 May 1966, despite opposition in the Western and Northern Regions, Ironsi promulgated Decree No. 34, 1966, which abrogated federalism and turned the regions into 'groups of provinces'. According to Ironsi, the new decree intended to 'remove the last vestiges of intense regionalism of the recent past, and ... produce that cohesion in the government structure which is so necessary in achieving and maintaining the paramount objectives of the National Military Government ... national unity'. (19)

this source helped me in learn more of the reasons behind the actions of the civil war. Like why certain things happened and whether some things needed to be done or if people just did them because they wanted to.