Good Words & Brave

With a barrage of decrees, Major General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi's regime last week began clearing away the rubble of black Africa's bloodiest military coup. "Firm, honest and disciplined leadership" was what he promised a nationwide radio audience. More important, if less certain, was his pledge that "the federal military government will preserve Nigeria as one strong nation."

National unity had been the question ever since the nation won independence in 1960, and it was no less a question after the rebels swept away the government of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Ironsi proposed to deal with the old bogy of tribal rivalry by demoting Nigeria's four semiautonomous regions to "provinces," and by banning the old regional parties. The new provisional military governors cracked down on "laziness" in the civil service, restricted the use of government vehicles, opened drives against bureaucratic corruption and bribery. One provincial governor even decreed that "everybody should love one another."

Intent on cutting down expenses, General Ironsi fired rafts of civil servants and sharply reduced official travel abroad. And no one would fault him for good intentions on the broader economic front: "We recognize the important role of private investment. To this end, the government is revising the legislation relating to incentives in order to assist private businessmen to establish projects of benefit to the economy."

Good words and brave. It remained to be seen whether the political reconstruction of a nation as large and complicated as Nigeria could be achieved by a soldier who, for all his good intentions, had never before grappled with problems of state.

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