He came as a unifying force, defying all known luxury to settle for career he was in love it – military. His name was Dim Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu; a Nigerian soldier turned Biafran Warlord as a result of exigencies that ‘cannot be ignored’.If Ojukwu had lived till date, he would have been celebrating 92 years on November 4, the day he was born. But Ojukwu died on November 26, 2011 after a brief illness in London. He legacy has remained evergreen, especially among the Igbo speaking tribe of Nigeria, residing in the south-east region of the country; a people, he gave his utmost best to liberate from the shackles of mass murder, supervising a bloody war with little or no arms and ammunition for 30 months.
Ojukwu is the toast of the average Igboman, his shortcomings notwithstanding.
Born with the shinniest of silver spoons in the Zungeru area of colonial Nigeria, on November 4, 1933, to one of the wealthiest individuals of his time, Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, the young had the best of everything life could offer, growing up. He was educated at obe of the most prestigious institutions in the country then, King’s College, Lagos, and later at Epsom College in Surrey, England.
He proceeded afterwards to Lincoln College, Oxford University where he obtained a master’s degree in Modern History in 1955. He returned to Nigeria to serve as an administrative officer and suddenly, contrary to expectation, he joined the Nigerian army, and grew by the ranks. He was the first of a kind, joining the military with a retinue of academic successes and certificates.
It would be noted that Ojukwu joined the army in protest. He was protesting the termination of his appointment in civil service when he was posted to Calabar, by the Sir John Macpherson at the instant of his father.
A breakdown of Ojukwu’s sojourn in the field of academics has it that at the outbreak of World War II when he was seven, his father sent him to St. Patrick’s School and CMS Grammar School both in Lagos. In 1944 at the age of 10, Ojukwu started studying at King’s College, Lagos. In 1945 when Ojukwu has stayed for two years in Kings College, his father, who want him to be educated in England, made consultations from his English friend. Epsom College in Surrey was recommended and by 1946, he was sent there for an advanced education.
Ojukwu stayed at Epsom for six years. During that time, he excelled in academics as well as in sports and athletics. He played rugby for the college winning the spring javelin throwing and discus. At 18 he entered Lincoln College, Oxford and studied briefly in 1952. Loius wanted his son to be a lawyer as it was the most common in Nigeria but Ojukwu wants to read modern history. Between 1952 and 1955 he studied law and later switched to history. He also joined the West African Students’ Union in Oxford. During his final years, he joined Oxford Rugby Union as wing three quarter in Lincoln College’s team. Ojukwu graduated with a B.A in arts in 1955 and travelled back to Lagos. He would later return to Oxford to obtain his M.A.
His destiny was beginning to get shaped when six years after Nigeria’s independence in 1960, a group of military officers overthrew the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa-led civilian government. The failure of the coup brought General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi to power, and he appointed Ojukwu as the Military Governor of the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region.
Following a pogrom against the Igbo in several parts of Nigeria, especially in the north after the coup that claimed Aguiyi-Ironsi’s life, Ojukwu, as the governor of Eastern Region, engaged the government in several diplomatic discussions on the road to peace. An accord was reached during some of the parley, one of which is the popular Aburi Accord.The failure of the Accord and continuous pogrom led Ojukwu into seceding from Nigeria, declaring the Republic of Biafra, and becoming its first Head of State. The action led to a civil war, which has been argued in many quarters as a genocide against the Igbos of the then-Eastern region.
Ojukwu did not have what it takes to fight the war as regards weapons. He only had the determination and willpower of his people. But that did not take them far as the Nigerian military, with support from the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, came out victorious, using the weapon of hunger and alleged genocide.
Ojukwu’s effort to use the foreign media to highlight the plight of Biafran civilians and depict the war as genocide against Igbos went unheard, receiving recognition only from France, Haiti and Cote d’ Ivoire among one other two others. He lost the war after superlatively standing off the Nigerian military with its massive oversea’s support, and with it, the young Biafran nation and about three million Biafrans.
Ojukwu subsequently fled to Ivory Coast in exile, where President Félix Houphouët-Boigny granted him political asylum. He returned to Nigeria 1981,when President Shehu Shagari granted him total amnesty.
Though he tried unsuccessfully to grab political power, he made his mark for himself and his people. He began by fighting to reclaim all his property across the country, and married the 21-year-old Bianca Onoh, daughter of a one time governor of Anambra State, C. C. Onoh.
He died in 2011 at the age of 78 in London, England. His body was returned to Nigeria, where Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan gave him a state funeral, a funeral suitable for a general, which he was. He was buried with full military honours, including a 21-gun salute from the Nigerian Army, and thousands of people attended his funeral.
To some, Ojukwu is a contentious figure in the history of Nigeria, but to many, especially the Igbo, he is a hero and wears a messianic cloak. They believe that though the war was lost, a statement was made in the loudest of voices.
Today, however, the voice of Biafra has re-echoed, first from MASSOB, and presently from Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous People of Biafra (IBOP).