Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu

Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, (1937–1967) was born in the Northern Region’s capital of Kaduna to Igbo immigrant parents from the Mid-Western Region-Okpanam Town, near Asaba in the present day Delta State. He was an infantry and intelligence officer of the Nigerian Army. Such was his family’s affinity to the city of Nzeogwu’s birth that they and his military colleagues called him “Kaduna”. Nzeogwu was a devout Roman Catholic and a teetotaler. He attended the military academy at Sandhurst in England, and was a promising, charismatic and rebellious military officer who eventually became the Chief Instructor at the Nigerian Military Training College in Kaduna. The forerunner of the Nigerian Army Intelligence Corps (NAIC) was the Field Security Section (FSS) of the Royal Nigerian Army, which was established on 1 November 1962 with Captain PG Harrington (BR) as General Staff Officer Grade Two (GSO2 Int). The FSS was essentially a security organization whose functions included vetting of Nigerian Army (NA) personnel, document security and counter intelligence. Major Nzeogwu was the first Nigerian Officer to hold that appointment from November 1962 to 1964.

1966 Coup

In the early hours of January 15, 1966, citing a laundry list of complaints against the political class, Nzeogwu led a group of majors mainly Igbos, but also including a Yoruba major (Ademoyega Adewale) in a military coup against the Nigerian First Republic. The Prime Minister, a federal minister, two regional premiers, along with top Army officers from the north and western regions of the nation were brutally murdered. The coup failed and he was arrested after arriving in Lagos on January 18, 1966 in the company of Lt. Col. Conrad Nwawo. The brutal murder of Brigadier Ademulegun's pregnant wife by Chukwuma Nzeogwu and his cadre of Igbo officers led to the suspicion among Yoruba and Hausa that the coupist were common criminals rather than Nationalistic patriots. Brigadier Ademulegun was a Yoruba officer. The story many Nigerian historians fail to tell is that the coupists intended to release Obafemi Awolowo and his sidekick Anthony Enahoro from prison and install Awolowo as the Prime Minister^{[citation needed]}. Additionally, the same historians decline to mention that the Jan 1966 coup was suppressed by the most senior officer in the army, the GOC, Major General Aguiyi Ironsi who was Igbo. Furthermore, a senior Igbo officer, Lt Col Arthur Unegbe was also murdered during the mutiny, a feat that renders the story of the coup being an Igbo coup one less plausible.

The dissatisfaction of northern officers with Ironsi's reluctance to courts-martial the coup plotters led to the counter-coup of July 29, 1966 which was led mainly by a group of junior Hausa-Fulani officers. Initially detained at Kirikiri maximum security prison but then transferred to the East, Nzeogwu and other January 15 mutiny detainees in the East were released from jail by Lt. Col. Emeka Ojukwu at the end of the first quarter of 1967, following demonstrations by students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Biafran War

After Ojukwu's May 30, 1967 Biafra secession declaration, Nzeogwu was released from close observation, and finding himself bored, asked to go into battle, albeit without the appropriate level of support for an officer of his calibre and rank. On July 29, 1967, Nzeogwu - who had been promoted to the rank of Biafran Lt. Colonel - was trapped in an ambush near Nsukka while conducting a night reconnaissance operation against federal troops of the 21st battalion under Captain Mohammed Inua Wushishi. He was killed in action and his corpse was subsequently identified. In order to speed up the national reconciliation effort, orders were given by Major General Yakubu Gowon for him to be buried with full military honours at the military cemetery in Kaduna. However, by the time the corpse arrived in Kaduna, it had been mutilated by unknown persons and his eyes gouged out. A photograph of Nzeogwu's corpse is available at the National Archives in Kaduna.

See also

• Nigerian First Republic

Persondata
Name	Nzeogwu, Chukwuma
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1937
Place of birth
Date of death	1967
Place of death