(Continued from yesterday)

For 40 years, she bore the brutal assassination of her husband and late Head of State, General G.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, with stoic silence. Despite varying, sometimes provocative accounts of the July 29, 1966 coup, by witnesses to the tragedy, she kept silent but held firmly to her unshakable faith in the power of the Almighty to help her ride the storms and conquer the vicissitudes that usually attend the demise of a family’s breadwinner. And as Chief Mrs. Victoria Aguiyi-Ironsi, widow of the assassinated Head of State, told SUNDAY SUN, in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, last Wednesday, “God has been faithful.”

“God has really shamed all the enemies of Johnny, (her late husband),” Mrs. Aguiyi-Ironsi, who is Commissioner 1 in the Abia State Local Government Service Commission, said in the exclusive interview. “I was very young when they took him away from me. But with God on my side, and with practically no assistance from anybody, especially the federal government of Nigeria, I was able to train all our eight children (six girls, two boys) to an enviable standard in life.”

Although she said the struggle was hellish, she took everything in her stride, resolutely determined to give her children the best she could afford. And the fact that all the children turned out well has dug a bottomless spring of joy in her heart, so much so that she almost completely forgot the pains induced by the gruesome assassination of her husband in Ibadan, capital of the old Western Region on July 29, 1966.
That was until last Sunday, when The Guardian published an exclusive interview with former Defence Minister, General Theophilus Danjuma, who defied the age-long African tradition of showing utmost respect for the dead, by abusing the late Head of State in a most vitriolic manner, describing him as “useless” and a “desk-clerk” Head of State.

Apart from desecreating the memory of her late husband, dishing out what she called “absolute lies”, Mrs. Aguiyi-Ironsi was miffed by the fact that an officer far junior to her late husband could have the temerity to lambast the dead Head of State the way he did.
In this concluding part of the interview, the woman said only cowards could speak ill of the dead the way General Danjuma did of her husband. Not only that, she also described the former Defence Minister as a terrible “Igbo Hater”.

In the Guardian interview, Danjuma also said something like they, northern officers, had to wait for the right time to strike back, perhaps at the Igbo officers, after the coup of January 15, 1966. He even used the word “draw” as to even scores in a football match. How do you see this?
It only buttresses my earlier point that he is a terrible Igbo hater. He is a man who loves killing. He loves blood, and once it goes to his head, he starts planning.
He also said the reason he hated your husband so much was that after the masterminds of the January 1966 coup had been arrested, that your husband never did anything. That he just kept them there, no trial, nothing; that maybe he was just waiting to free them. Danjuma was even angry that some journalists were already writing and describing them as heroes.

You see, he is a foolish man. What he didn’t know is that Johnny was not a dictator. He never took any decision single-handedly. What he did or did not do was collective decision. He never single-handedly took any decision. He believed two heads are better than one. Even when they did Decree 34, was it not a collective decision? When that one was not good, they said it was only Aguiyi-Ironsi who gave Decree 34. How can that be possible? When you hate somebody, there is nothing that person can do that would do be good in your sight.

Do you really believe he pulled the trigger that killed your husband?
I am not interested in the garbage he is saying now. It is 40 years now that they murdered my Johnny and Danjuma’s name has been repeatedly mentioned as the person who killed my husband in a most brutal, most wicked manner. He killed Johnny.
In trying to extricate himself from General Ironsi’s assassination, Danjuma said he lost control when an officer came up and said soldiers should first of all seize his crocodile swagger, or else your husband will disappear. That he disagreed with the officer, and that was the point he lost control and the boys took over.

At least you can see from this disjointed statement the face of a pathetic liar. Why can’t this coward own up to his evil deed or shut his mouth forever? How can a mere disagreement over a mere swagger make him lose control, when he was already in military fatigue, which he said he borrowed for the operation, and when he was fully armed? Why can’t this man show a little intelligence? So, because of that minor disagreement over a mere stick, he backed out of a coup he was a ringleader? He backed out after shooting him. He lost control and fired him?

No, he gave the impression that he lost control and left the place while the soldiers took General Ironsi and Colonel Fajuyi away.
That is his pack of lies. Was I there? Is my Johnny alive to tell me what happened? Those who were there, who saw everything, he waited until they are dead before opening his mouth wide and try to poison my family. It’s only God that will pay him back. God will pay him back in his own coins.

The way you are talking, it’s like you can never forgive Danjuma.
Danjuma? Me forgive Danjuma? Look at Gowon. Gowon has shown that he is a man, he is not a coward. Gowon has shown that he is also a good Christian, a God-fearing man.

How did he show that?
Even if he had hands in killing my husband, he has come to the family and apologised. He said, please, forgive. And I said I don’t hold anything against anybody. I said vengeance is for the Lord. Those who killed him, I leave them to God. I myself, I don’t bear grudges against anybody. Even though Mrs. Aguiyi-Ironsi is still in this country, alive, do they want to know whether I’m alive or dead? Do they remember me?

Do they remember my late husband? Do they remember my children? Have they said that when we killed this man, he hadn’t a penny, let’s do something for his family? Let us go and put a little shelter upon their head? Do they care whether we live in an open market or under a bridge? They don’t know. They don’t care. Yet, these are people who we used our youth and all our strength to work for. But we have become a sacrificial lamb but I know the God of heaven is alive and He is seeing everything.
Okay, what if Danjuma changes his mind tomorrow and walks up to your house and say, ‘Ma, I’m sorry for everything. Forgive us’. Would you forgive him?

I’m a child of God.
I know, but would you forgive him straight from your heart?
Me? Who am I not to forgive? I’m a Knight of Saint John; so, I will always forgive people so that God in Heaven can forgive me of my own sins too.