Introducing Emmanuel Ifeajuna, He is most popular for being the The first Black African Commonwealth gold medalist. He was the pride not just of Nigeria but of a whole continent.
Ifeajuna, a military officer, had co-led a military coup in January 1966 in which, according to an official but disputed police report, he shot and killed Nigeria’s first prime minister. The Olympic Book was designed in honour of Emmanuel Ifeajuna, 1st African to win a Commonwealth Gold,he was executed in Enugu,1967. The next time Ifeajuna appeared before a crowd of thousands he was bare-chested and tied to a stake, facing execution before a seething mob
The coup failed but Ifeajuna escaped to safety in Ghana, dressed as a woman and was driven to freedom by a famous poet. Twenty months later, he was back, fighting for the persecuted Igbo people of eastern Nigeria in a brutal civil war that broke out as a consequence of the coup.
Ifeajuna and three fellow officers were accused by their own leader, General Emeka Ojukwu, of plotting against him and the breakaway Republic of Biafra. They denied charges of treason: they were trying to save lives and their country, they said, by negotiating an early ceasefire with the federal government and reuniting Nigeria. They failed, they died and, in the next two and a half years, so did more than a million Igbo
SOURCE: http://www.lagoslately.com/meet-the-man-who-triggered-the-bullet-that-killed-tafawa-balewa/
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