Neusroom Untold: Victor Banjo, Isaac Boro and Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu listed among soldiers who shaped Nigeria’s history

In celebration of Nigeria’s 60th independence anniversary, ID Africa, a Lagos-based Marketing, Media and Technology company, has released a collection of untold stories of Nigerians whose actions and lives shaped the country’s history before and after independence on October 1, 1960.

Named ‘Neusroom Untold’, the project featured 78 stories of people, places and events that have had remarkable impact on the nation and was unveiled on Thursday October 1, 2020.

Prominent among personalities featured in the project are Lt. Col. Victor Banjo, Isaac Adaka Boro, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, and Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, some Nigerian soldiers whose actions in the 1960s, shortly after Nigeria gained independence, left indelible marks on the nation’s landscape till this day.

As documented in the ‘Neusroom Untold’ collection, Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, the acclaimed mastermind of Nigeria’s first military coup in January 1966, was just 29 when he led the coup that marked a watershed in Nigeria’s history and eventually snowballed into a 30-month civil war. 

Also in the collection is the story of how the coup led to the proclamation of Niger Delta Republic by Isaac Adaka Boro, a radical Ijaw freedom fighter who was later enlisted into the Nigerian Army to fight in the civil war in 1967.

When Boro led the Niger Delta Republic to the chagrin of the Nigerian Government, Chukwuemeka Ojukwu who was Governor of the Eastern region, supervised the suppression of the Republic and Boro’s arrest in his Eastern region backyard. Ironically, Ojukwu made the same move a year later, declaring the secession of the Eastern Region from Nigeria. Millions of lives were lost in the war that followed the proclamation, and the nation is still recovering from the havoc.

Also part of the collection is the story of Lt. Col. Victor Banjo, the 16th Nigerian to be commissioned as an officer in the Nigerian Army, and one of the Yoruba soldiers who fought against Nigeria on the side of the Igbo people in the civil war. According to the report, Banjo was eventually executed by Ojukwu, his friend and leader of the Biafra Republic.

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In the words of the CEO of ID Africa, Femi Falodun, the collection, with 78 published stories when it was unveiled on Thursday, will be updated quarterly to serve as a source of entertainment, knowledge and insight, in easily digestible formats, for today’s youth and future generation of Nigerians.

“Our ultimate goal for the Neusroom Untold Project is to document obscure parts of Nigeria’s past and recent history in short multimedia formats that are interesting, easy to read and readily accessible to anyone on the internet,” said Falodun.