Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, the mostly unseen ‘Vice President’ to Aguiyi-Ironsi, refused to take the seat of power after his supreme leader was taken out in 1966.
Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi’s name rings a strong bell as a head of State in 1966, but many do not know that he had a close ally who was a Yoruba man. Brigadier Ogundipe, was Aguiyi-Ironsi’s Chief of Staff, but more closely, he was the defacto ‘Vice President’ in that administration that lasted only between January and July 1966.
Born on September 6, 1924 to Yoruba parents from Ago-Iwoye, in present-day Ogun State in western Nigeria, he joined the Royal West African Frontier Force in 1941, serving in Burma between 1942 and 1945.
He re-enlisted after the second World War, and rose to the rank of Brigadier in May 1964.
He survived the coup that led the Aguiyi-Ironsi’s demise and still served till August 1966. Following an agreement with the new military government led by Yakubu Gowon, Ogundipe travelled to the United Kingdom, where he attended the 1966 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting as Nigeria’s representative in September that year.
He later took up appointment as Nigeria’s High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, a post he held until August 1970, when he left public service.
While alive, he was criticized in some quarters for his refusal to take up the position of his supreme commander, who had been unalived in the August 1966 coup, with the critics saying this inaction on his part aggravated the pogroms that eventually followed.
He was the most senior military officer after the death of Ironsi, and the thinking was that he ought to have taken power himself, but the fact is that this was not a viable thing for him to have done. It was certain that he would have been taken out too. He had no troops and was unable to rely on the few individuals available to him, many of whom were northerners and were unwilling to take orders from a Christian southerner.
Furthermore, he was basically a soldier and had no personal political ambitions. He understood that the preservation of Nigeria as one country meant that a southern Christian would be unable to hold the country together, and he took himself out of the power equation by accepting Yakubu Gowon, who was several years his junior, as the head of the new military government.
He passed away in London on November 20, 1971. Yesterday, September 6, was his posthumous birthday (101 years old since he was born).
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