Major-General Adeyinka Adebayo

The London-based Times newspaper writes on Governor of the Western Region of Nigeria, Adeyinka Adebayo, whose attempts to prevent the Biafran war failed, with devastating consequences

In 1966, six years after independence, Nigeria stood on a precipice. Adeyinka Adebayo had been the first indigenous Chief of Staff of the army as political unrest swirled around the country and the military was beset with revolutionary rumblings. Nigeria had been seen in some quarters as the “great black hope” of Africa, but it had just suffered two bloody and tribally motivated coups.

Adebayo had been fortunate to survive that period, during which several senior officers had been assassinated. Had he not been on a course at the Imperial Defence College in London at the time of the first coup, in January 1966, and staying at his cousin’s house rather than army quarters during that year’s counter-coup, or “July Rematch”, he would almost certainly have been among the fatalities.

The two insurrections unleashed the tribal discord between the Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba peoples that had simmered in the six years since the British had departed. This unresolved discord led to tribal massacres on a large scale, which culminated in the country’s eastern region deciding to secede and form the independent state of Biafra in May 1967.

As governor of the Western Region, Adebayo did his utmost to try to prevent Nigeria from using force against Biafra. In a broadcast shortly before the war began, he said: “I need not tell you what horror, what devastation, and what extreme human suffering will attend the use of force. When it is all over and the smoke and dust have lifted, and the dead are buried, we shall find, as other people have found, that it has all been futile, entirely futile in solving the problem we set out to solve.”

His words went unheeded. The Biafran war, which lasted for two and a half years, was at the centre of world attention. When war broke out Adebayo ordered all bridges into the west of the country to be destroyed to prevent the Biafran rebels reaching Lagos.

Britain, as the former colonial power, backed Nigeria, alongside the Soviet Union. The two countries’ weaponry would prove decisive in the conflict. France, which saw the struggle as the right of a people to self-determination, supported the Biafran underdogs. According to independent estimates, up to two million people, most of them children, starved to death.

Robert Adeyinka Adebayo was born in Iyin-Ekiti in the former Western Region of Nigeria (now Ekiti State) in 1928, the son of a public works employee. He joined the Royal West African Frontier Force, a forerunner of the Nigerian army, when he was 20, undergoing training in Ghana. He also studied in Britain at the Staff College in Camberley.

He rose through the ranks during the 1950s as Nigeria negotiated with Britain for independence, and he was appointed aide-de-camp to Sir James Robertson, Nigeria’s last British governor-general. The interview process was unusual: Robertson invited Adebayo to spend the weekend with his family, quietly observed him, and at the end of the weekend told him the job was his.

He also served as a staff officer of the UN peacekeeping force during Congo’s post-independence crisis of 1961-63 and worked at the Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union). He was straight-talking. Ayedole Fayose, the present governor of Ekiti State, said: “He would always call a spade a spade and not mind whose ox was gored.”

After the civil war Adebayo became chairman of the Committee for the Reconciliation and Integration of Biafra; in 1972 he returned to military duties. He retired in 1975 and was a founder of the National Party of Nigeria.

He is survived by his wife, Dupe, and 16 children. They include his sons Adedayo, who played rugby union for Bath and eight times on the wing for England in the 1990s; Niyi, who became governor of Ekiti state; Adesola, who served as Nigeria’s commissioner for works and transport; and Leke, an actor, writer and producer based in London.

In 1998 a biography of Adebayo was published, Onward Soldier Marches On. Three years later he apologised for his role in the 1966-71 military government. In later years he served on the Yoruba Council of Elders. Goodluck Jonathan, the president of Nigeria, appointed him pro-chancellor of the University of Ibadan in 2013, only to sack him two years later. “My prayer for you is that you imbibe the culture of civility in your future endeavours,” Adebayo responded.

Major-General Adeyinka Adebayo, Nigerian soldier, was born on March 9, 1928. He died on March 8, 2017, aged 88.