This is the story of how Tafawa Balewa was killed in the January 1966 coup, which was executed in Nigeria. Tafawa Balewa was Nigeria's first Prime Minister. He was from present-day Bauchi State. He was one of the very important persons killed in Nigeria's first military coup. Senior politicians and senior military officers were also killed. It was a terrible moment in the history of Nigeria as a young nation of barely five years at the time,

Tafawa Balewa was buried in his home state of Bauchi 58 years ago today. It is beyond disputation that Tafawa Balewa was indeed killed in the course of the first military coup. But the question is, how was he killed, by who and at what location?

There are many theories about how he was killed or how he died. A part of the theories says that he was not shot, that he was only arrested in his house with the collaboration of soldiers who were his close aides, and that they drove him to a section of the road leading to Abeokuta from Lagos and abandoned him at the edge of a gutter, leaving him exhausted, and that while he was on the ground, he had an asthma attack and died.

There is another theory that he was shot by the coup plotters, but the theory is not specific about who exactly shot him. There were seven majors of the Nigerian army that planned and executed the January 1966 coup. They were Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Major Christian Anuforo, Major Timothy Nwachuegwu, Major Donatus Okafor, Major Humphrey Chukwuka, and Major Adewale Ademoyega. Major Adewale Ademoyega has given an account of the cool in his book titled Why We Struck. The book was first published in 1981 and is made up of a total of 272 pages pages.

Page 101 of the book narrates as follows:

"Officers were located to their various duties, Major Emmanuel lfeajuna and two junior soldiers were to arrest Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and the Federal Minister of Finance, Chief Okotie Ebo. Major Christian Anuforo and one junior soldier were to arrest Colonel Ko Mohammed. Major Donatus Okafor and one captain went to arrest Major General Agui Ironsi and Brigadier Mai Malari. Major Humphrey Chukwuka and a junior soldier were to arrest Lieutenant Pam. Major Ademoyega, one captain and three junior soldiers were to occupy and control all strategic locations of the federal capital in Lagos, including the control room of the police headquarters parliament building under the Nigerian external telecommunications operations room and the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. Ademoyega was also the one to make the early morning broadcast of the success of the coup over the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation."

"As soon as the duties were allocated, we all moved to the second brigade headquarters, where troops were called out and ordered to get into their combat suits and bear their arms for internal security operations. At the same time, Abeokuta was contacted by telephone, and Captain Nwabusi was ordered to go ahead with the arrest of Ladoke Akintola and Chief Remy Fani-Kayode, Premier and Deputy Premier of the western region, respectively.

"A signal was sent to EnuguoOrdering lieutenant Ogbuchi also to go ahead with the arrest of the premier of the Eastern Region, Doctor Michael Okpara. Arms and ammunition were issued to officers and men from the brigade headquarters armoury. At 0200 hours we dispensed to carry out our various duties. We were to reassemble after our initial task had been completed at the federal guards officers' mess Dodan Barracks to review our successes and reallocate duties for the second phase. We all carried out our assignment and then regrouped at the federal guards officers' mess. Close to my heels came major Christian Anuforo's group. They had accomplished their task, having arrested Colonel Ko Mohammed, Lieutenant Colonel Enunegbe had resisted arrest and got shot. Next came Major Humphrey Chukwuka's group. They had accomplished their task also having arrested Lieutenant Colonel Pam. After that came by Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna's group. They too had accomplished their task, having arrested the Prime Minister and the Federal Minister of Finance. In addition, as they were returning to base, they saw Brigadier Mai Malari escaping from the attempt of the Okafor group to arrest him. They, Ifeajuna's group wanted to arrest him, but in the scuffle, he was shot."

"Major Donatus Okafor's group was a complete disappointment. They failed to arrest Ironsi. Ironsi then had the opportunity to raise troops against us. I asked Okafor, why is it that your own group did not achieve anything? Okafor gave me no answer. I returned to the main group at the officers' mess. Okafor came along with his bad news that General Ironsi had not been found at home when he went there. At this time, Ironsi was busy raising troops in military barracks against us. The news of Ironsi's escape came as a shock to all of us. If the federal guards commanded by Okafor were already made hostile, then the officers' mess was no longer tenable to us. It could no longer be used as our tactical headquarters.

"At this juncture, it became totally unpractical to keep carrying the arrested military officers with us. The situation had become somewhat slippery, and we needed to be on our toes. It was at this moment that those officers who were arrested from their homes and brought to the mess were taken away and shot. After all this, Ifeajuna, Okafor and a few young officers left the officers' mess to meet at our rendezvous, they still had the arrested Prime Minister with them. Ifeajuna and his group drove straight from the Federal guards officers' mess towards Abeokuta without waiting at the scheduled rendezvous. Having passed Ota, he stopped somewhere along the road, took the arrested Prime Minister into the bush and had him shot. After that, he drove straight to Enugu, where he parked his Mercedes Benz car and bade farewell to Donatus Okafor, then a personal friend of his and poet Christopher Okigbo, was said to have driven him to the Nigerian Dahomey border, which is close to Lagos, from where he escaped to Ghana. He was later forced out of Ghana and detained in Nigeria, along with the other revolutionary colleagues."

This is the graphic story of how the first prime minister of independent Nigeria, Tafawa Balewa, was taken from his home in the cover of darkness, driven around to destinations that may not have been disclosed to him, and later pulled out and shot. It was such a tragic moment in Nigeria's history. A dark cloud had engulfed the nation, and Nigeria was never going to be the same again. Several other persons were also killed. Tafawa Balewa's corpse was not seen immediately. Family members still felt that he would return unhurt. They kept expecting his return. Intense concentration was in Lagos, which was the epicentre of the coup. No one gave a thought to the possibility of the Prime Minister being taken out of Lagos. But lo and behold, the Prime Minister's body lay cold on the ground just by the roadside on the border between Lagos and Abeokuta, where he was shot and his life was taken out of him. Every day, people in the environment passed by the corpse without noticing that the lifeless body lying casually on the ground was the body of the prime minister of Africa's most populous nation. It was a young journalist working with the Daily Times, a newspaper at the time, that took a closer look at the corpse to discover, to his chagrin, that the court was that of the prime minister. The nation and the world then became aware of the cold reality through the journalist. The journalist is still alive at the time of filing this report, and his name is Olusegun Oshoba, who later became the Executive Governor of Ogun State and served from 1999 to 2003 at the dawn of democracy in Nigeria. The Prime Minister's corpse was then recovered and flown to his home state of Bauchi, where he was committed to Mother Earth. A mausoleum has been built around his tomb, and today the tomb has become a tourist site for Nigerian citizens and people in the diaspora.