Background
OJUKWU, Chukwuemeka was born on November 4, 1933.
OJUKWU, Chukwuemeka was born on November 4, 1933.
Educated in Lagos, finishing at King’s College, Nigeria’s Eton, before going abroad to Epsom College, Surrey and Lincoln, Oxford, where he read history.
In 1955 he returned to Eastern Nigeria and became an administrative officer, before joining the army in 1957. He did a two-year officer training at
Eaton Hall, Chester, and returned to join the 5th Battalion in 1958. Promoted major in 1961. He was with the Nigerian Peace Korrc in Zaire and selected to attend the Joint Services Staff College in Britain in 1962. He became lieutenant-colonel in 1963, a few months ahead ot General Gowon. In command of the 5th Battalion in Kano, he led the loyalists in the North in the January 1966 coup and was rewarded by being promoted by General Ironsi, to be Military Governor of the Eastern Region. In the second coup on July 28, 1966, he managed to keep control of his own region and accepted Gowon’s de facto leadership though considering him junior in rank.
A violent massacre of the Ibos in the North took place in October, sending the remainder back to their homeland.
Ojukwu persuaded Gowon to remove Northern soldiers from the East and began training and arming his own men, but he was still not a convinced secessionist.
He met Gowon at Aburi in Ghana on January 4, 1967, in a last attempt to prevent secession. Ojukwu came well prepared, tape recorded all the talks and gained some concessions towards con- federalism. Later the Federal government had second thoughts and Ojukwu claimed they had broken their promises.
Gowon made further concessions, but the Ibo elite was hell bent on secession and Ojukwu was swept along as leader of the movement. On May 29, he formally declared secession. A month later the Federal troops invaded. The Biafrans counter-attacked in August, taking the Mid-west and advancing into the West to within 70 miles of Lagos.
The Ibo initiative ran out of steam and by October they were falling back across the Niger bridge with Calabar. Bonny and Enugu, the Biafran capital, taken. From that point onwards, Biafra was encircled and gradually squeezed.
Ojukwu, committed to secession and fighting for his life, became increasingly ruthless and autocratic internally. Outside, at peace conferences, he played for time, while he raised world sympathy and waited for arms supplies. He made a marathon address to the OAU at Addis Ababa in August 1968.
Ojukwu remained defiant as hunger mounted and morale decayed inside Biafra. Despite brief Biafran counterattacks in the autumn of 1968, Nigerian superior fire power began to tell. The Biafran collapse came with startling speed in the first ten days of 1970.
On January 8, Ojukwu held an emergency meeting of his cabinet, told them to face the facts, and said he would leave, to give them the chance to sue for peace.
At 2 a.m. on Sunday, January 11, he scrambled aboard a Super Constellation and was taken to the Ivory Coast, where he has remained in exile ever since, in Houphouet Boigny’s private estate at Yamossoukro.
In October 1970, the Swiss refused political asylum on the grounds that he already had an Ivory Coast passport.