Nigeria: Preserving Unity By Staying Apart

With full military honors, Major General Aguiyi Ironsi was buried last week —for the third time. Though it had never been confirmed by the government, everyone in Nigeria knew that Ironsi, an Ibo tribesman and an Easterner, was shot to death six months ago by Northern army officers who toppled him in a coup. Ironsi's executioners first buried him in a shallow roadside grave, and then in a cemetery in the Western city of Ibadan. The decision to exhume Ironsi's remains and fly them East for burial in his home town of Imuahia Ibeku was a symbolic gesture in...

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