Solape Ademulegun-Agbi

My parents, Brigadier-General Samuel and Hajia Latifat Ademulegun were killed during the 1966 coup. That particular experience was quite traumatic and I have never been able to overcome it. At a point, I had phobia for anything military. My dad was the then General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1st Division, Kaduna and his army number was N3 which makes him the third highest-ranking officer in the Nigerian Army. Major Nzeogwu was a welcome guest in my parents’ home.
He will always come to our house for steaming hot meal of pounded yam. Being Ondo State indigenes, pounded yam was a regular meal in my mother’s kitchen. On the day of the coup, Nzeogwu came calling with some other soldiers in the wee hours of the day. I think they were about six soldiers. As an impressionable young girl of six, that was quite a number. There were guns everywhere.

I remember vividly that I was down with chicken pox, so I had the opportunity of sleeping in my parents’ room. My immediate younger brother was also sleeping soundly in a cot in the same room. But when Nzeogwu came in, there was little talking. I even called him uncle, but he was the one that shot my mother in the chest. She didn’t die immediately, but she was rolling on the floor, gasping and bleeding. With the last ounce of her breath, she was calling “Kole, Kole” (my immediate elder brother whose room was nearby). But my brother never heard because he hid under his bed when the gunshots were booming. I don’t know who killed my dad because he was dragged out of the bedroom. The batman, who was in the boys quarters polishing my dad’s shoes, and our housemaid, one Gbelle, shepherded us out of the bedroom. These memories are ever so green in my heart. A child remembers bad things more than the good.