12 hours Ago By New Telegraph-Admin
Something does not add up about the passage of Brigadier Samuel Adesujo Ademulegun in the January 15, 1966 coup d’etat. He was the only officer who was killed with his wife; but sadly their final resting place remains unknown, at least, to the family. Ademulegun, commissioned on June 12, 1949, with Service Number N/3, was Commander, 1 Brigade Kaduna.
His wife, Feyisitan, died with him at their No. 1 Kashim Ibrahim Road, official residence. Both were shot in their bedroom, before their two youngest children, Solape and Goke.
Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa also lost his life in the coup alongside Premier of the Western Region, Chief Ladoke Akintola, Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie Eboh, and top military officers, Brig. Zakari Maimalari, Cols Kuru Mohammed, Yakubu Pam, Arthur Unegbe and Abogo Largema. Victims in Kaduna included the Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello and Col.
Ralph Shodeinde. Most of the bodies of those assassinated in Lagos were recovered in the bush on the Lagos – Abeokuta Highway. Balewa’s corpse was flown to Bauchi for burial.
At least the children know where his remains lie. In the counter coup that followed on July 29, 1966, the Head of State, Gen. Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi, was killed with the Governor of Western Region, Adekunle Fajuyi, in Olodo Village, near Ibadan, along Iwo Road.
They were buried in Idi Ito. Their remains were later exhumed by soldiers and taken to Umuahia and Ado Ekiti, respectively for burial. Gen.
Murtala Mohammed, who led the July 1966 coup, was shot dead in Lagos on February 13, 1976. His body was flown to Kano, for burial. Governor of Kwara State, Col.
Ibrahim Taiwo, was taken from Ilorin to Amberi on the Ajase Ipo/ Offa Road where he was murdered. His remains were transported to Ogbomosho and buried. Chukwuma Nzeogwu, who led the Kaduna Operations of the January 1966 coup, lost his life in an ambush around Nsukka.
The Nigeria Army did not treat his corpse as that of a Biafran Lt. Col. Full military honours followed the funeral in Kaduna.
Usman Kakanda Bello, Aide de Camp to Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, did not survive the April 22, 1990 coup led by Gideon Orkar. However, his wife, Zainab, accompanied the corpse to Minna, Niger State, for burial.
Today, Ademulegun’s children want to know where their parents were laid to rest. It is painful to watch your parents gunned down before your infant eyes. Then the burden of not knowing what happened to them after their deaths is undoubtedly tormenting to them.
Solape, then six years and now Mrs Ademulegun-Agbi, orphaned for 59 years running, is asking questions. “Some of us don’t know where our parents were buried. There has been no closure, no Death Certificates, no burial sites,” she said pensively recently.
Solape is asking for a presidential intervention. “As a president of the people, Commanderin-Chief, Bola Tinubu, should please step into the matter so that we can get closure and not just feel that our parents died in vain. It is important.
” This is not too much to ask, especially from a president who is connected to the Ademuleguns through their mother, Feyisitan, who hailed from Lagos. Dr. Raheem Ekemode was Olori Ebi (Head) of the Tinubu Family before he died in 2024.
Solape’s maternal grandmother and Ekemode were siblings. On a positive note, the Federal Government did not completely abandon the Ademulegun orphans as they enjoyed scholarships right up to university level. And that was after they lived through the shame of moving from the highbrow part of Kaduna, to Mushin – a part of inner city Lagos.
As the nation continues to celebrate January 15 as Armed Forces Remembrance Day, the government should look beyond the ceremonial parades and political promises. Many widows were thrown out of the barracks with their children after they lost their husbands in the incident. Ibrahim Taiwo’s children became homeless after the twobedroom flat at Queen’s Drive Ikoyi, assigned to the family by Gen.
Olusegun Obasanjo was forcibly taken by the Military Police. From Government House, Ilorin, their address changed to Ajegunle, the Lagos slum. Promises made to the widows of officers who died in the September 1992 Ejigbo plane crash have not been fully met.
Some of them were asked to develop plots of land given them in remote parts of their respective states. Whereas what the government announced was fully completed houses for them. The children of our fallen heroes are full of expectations.
Solape has kept in touch with the Akintolas and Pams. “We have come a long way,” she says. “Fifty nine years is no joke.
I salute us all for our courage. For those who had mothers, they don’t know how lucky they were.” Unfortunately, the question still hangs in the air – where were the Ademuleguns buried?.
