Historical person
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu
1933–2011
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was a Nigerian army officer and political leader who became the head of the breakaway Republic of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War. As military governor of the Eastern Region after the coups and communal violence of 1966, he argued that the region’s population could no longer rely on the federal state for protection and declared Biafran independence in 1967.
As military governor of the Eastern Region, Ojukwu declared Biafran independence in May 1967 and directed the secessionist state throughout the war. He became the principal political and military symbol of the Biafran cause.
Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country places Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu at the centre of the political sequence that led from the 1966 coups and anti-Igbo massacres to the declaration of Biafra and the Nigerian Civil War. Achebe combines personal memory with an account of Biafran diplomacy, blockade, starvation and defeat, so Ojukwu is encountered not as an isolated military figure but as the leader of a secessionist state whose decisions were bound up with the catastrophe experienced by civilians and writers such as Achebe himself.
Non Fiction
Non Fiction featuring Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1 book)
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.