Gen. T.Y. Danjuma has gone mad again

Retired General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma has gone mad again.

Last week, at the convocation of Taraba State University in Jalingo, the retired general excreted bees unto Nigeria’s political space. In an angry speech, he urged Nigerians to rise up and defend themselves from marauding herdsmen in some parts of Nigeria or risk perishing due to inaction.

“You must rise to protect yourselves from these people; if you depend on the armed forces to protect you, you will all die…,” Danjuma said. “This ethnic cleansing must stop in Taraba, and it must stop in Nigeria. These killers have been protected by the military; they cover them and you must be watchful to guide and protect yourselves because you have no other place to go.”

This is not the Theophilus Danjuma that Nigerian history remembers.

Captain Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma came into prominence when he led a group of soldiers to abduct the former head of state, Gen. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and his host, the military governor of Western region, Lieutenant Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, from government house Ibadan on the night of July 29, 1966.

Under Danjuma’s orders, Gen. Aguiyi-Ironsi was spat on, slapped, kicked and punched. With Ironsi’s hands tied behind his back with telephone cord, Danjuma’s soldiers crushed his testicles with their military boots. Ironsi was then dragged on the ground from a moving military Range Rover, skin torn by gravels on the road, blood oozed from his mouth, face swelled, bones…