Word: ojukwu
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Ironsi's reinterment was only one of the delicate matters that have lately been agreed on by his successor, Lieut. Colonel Yakubu Gowon, and Eastern Military Governor Odumegwu Ojukwu, an Ibo and the second most powerful man in Nigeria. At a retreat near Accra in Ghana-it was their first meeting since Gowon's July 29 coup-the Nigerian chiefs earlier this month agreed to start mending the broken fabric of national unity with a week of mourning. For two days, the whole nation flew its flags half-mast for Ironsi. For the next three-in the North...
...federal government on its feet. Then, suddenly, Gowon and the four regional heads dropped everything and took off for Accra, Ghana. After two whirlwind days of secret negotiations at one of Kwama Nkrumah's old villas, the five men, gushing optimism, emerged from the conference table. Lt. Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of the Eastern Ibos whose threatened secession precipitated the present crisis, called the negotiations "a very big success." Gowon said simply, "Nigeria will definitely remain united." The entire episode seemed nothing short of a miracle, but it soon became clear that many of Nigeria's most crucial problems...
...October, the bubble burst. In the North, rioting Hausas slaughtered 3000 Ibos and injured 10,000 more. The Eastern Region accepted the more than one million refugees who fled the North in the wake of the rioting and then closed its doors, cutting off communications with its Nigerian neighbors. Ojukwu declared that unless the federal government compensated the displaced Ibos for death of relatives, property damage, and injury, the East would secede from the Nigerian federation. During November, he refused to attend a constitutional conference in Lagos, the federal capital, claiming that large contingents of Hausa troops made the city...
Bedrock opposition to Gowon's plans came from Eastern Regional Leader Odumegwu Ojukwu, like Gowon an army lieutenant colonel, who has resisted every attempt to slice the East into tribal minorities and favors a loose confederation of regions with considerable political autonomy for each. Ojukwu's Ibos dominate the oil-rich East, and they want to keep things that way. Gowon, commanding 7,000 troops who are armed with sophisticated weapons and stirred by a stern Moslem faith, could easily put intense-perhaps fatal -pressure on Ojukwu's single battalion of 2,500 men. If he decides...
...Push Has Started." The Kano massacre was a critical blow to the at tempts of the Nigerian government to hold the country together. In the Ibo East, Military Governor Odumegwu Ojukwu ordered all members of outside tribes to leave the region immediately, announcing curtly that "I have lost confidence in my ability to continue restraining the violently injured feelings of the people of this region." Ojukwu also repeated his past threats to lead the East out of the Nigerian Federation entirely. "I have said before that the East would not secede unless she is forced out," he told the Ibos...