First Nigerian Head Of State-Major General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi was born in Abia State in 1924. On moving in with his sister and her husband a Sierra Leonean who served as a father figure to him he was given the name “Johnson.” On January 16th, 1966, Aguiyi Ironsi took control of Lagos Nigeria’s then capital after Nigeria’s first coup led by Lieutenant (Lt.) Colonel (Col.) Kaduna Nzeogwu; leading one of the shortest military tenures in Nigeria’s non-democratic history.
In this time, he devised the controversial Decree No. 34 that changed Nigeria’s government structure from a federation to a unitary state. Though a patriotic action on his part, this decree is said to have further cemented the distrust of the North against the Igbo after the so called “Igbo coup of 1966.” Northern elite saw the decree as an attempt to devolve regions of their power and impose a Southern dominated rule on them.
Aguiyi Ironsi’s regime was rife with tension and perceived to enhance ethnic divisions in the newly independent Nigeria. Major General Ironsi was later murdered alongside Major Adekunle Fajuyi in Ibadan by Northern army officers in the July 1966 counter coup. The rising fragmentation intensified during rule would later bubble into the Biafran War.
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