He’s Yoruba. He Fought On Biafra’s Side In The Civil War. Then Ojukwu Executed Him. The Story Of Victor Banjo

He’s been dead for over 50 years now. Victor Banjo, the widely-admired military charmer who made friends easily, got into trouble often, went to jail repeatedly, and fought against his country in a decisive civil war.

And he wasn’t killed in the war. The Nigerian troops did not get him. He did not succumb to the ambush of the enemies. It was his own friend, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu that signed his death warrant.

This is the story of how, and why it happened. And what Nigerians can learn from it 54 years after.

Lt. Col Victor Adebukunola Banjo was the 16th Nigerian to be commissioned as an officer in the Nigerian Army (NA 16) when he joined the Army in 1953 as Warrant Officer 52.

Born April 1, 1930, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, United Kingdom-trained soldier and Mechanical Engineering graduate was the first Nigerian Director of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Corps of the Nigerian Army.

Banjo and Ojukwu were some of the first few degree holders to join the Army. They became close allies, united by their academic qualification and, according to some historians, their exceptional individual brilliance.

Banjo. Young, dark, and handsome. A man of letters, and a model for many who wanted a career in the military. He was admired by many. And he was very well worth the hype. But he was not without his devils.

Banjo’s youngest child, Prof Omigbodun said lives were never the same again for the family after her father’s arrest in 1966. Photo: Nairaland. Designer: Oludare Ogunbowale

He got into trouble with the Nigerian military government shortly after the first coup of January 15, 1966. He had only been in the army for 13 years, but his travails would quickly begin, leading to a troubled reputation and career that led to a shocking end.

According to Banjo’s first son and second child, Ayodele Victor-Banjo, who was just five years old when his father was arrested two days after the coup that made Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi Head of State, Banjo, accused of being one of the masterminds of the coup, was summoned to the office of the Supreme Military Commander where he was arrested.

“Lt Col Banjo was arrested on the 17th of January, 1966 at the police headquarters by Lt Colonel George Kurubo and Major Patrick Anwunah in the ante-room of the Inspector General of Police’s office for no ostensible reason while he waited to see Major General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, the Supreme Commander of Nigeria’s Armed Forces,” Ayodele wrote in a 2017 tribute to commemorate Banjo’s 50 years remembrance.

“Two weeks after Banjo’s arrest, he was informed by Major C. Ude at Kirikiri prisons that a signal had been sent out to all units that he (Banjo) had been arrested for making an attempt on the life of the Supreme Commander (Ironsi) which was a blatant falsehood. Another reason given for Banjo’s arrest was that he carried a gun, obtained from Major Aghanya, while waiting for a scheduled visit with Ironsi,” he added.

Some historians in their account of the coup that marked a watershed in Nigeria’s history have, however, noted that Banjo also had a hand in the coup

“But everybody knows that is not true because those who participated in the coup came out to say he was not among them,” Banjo’s daughter – Prof Olayinka Omigbodun told Nigerian newspaper The Punch in a 2019 interview.

After Banjo’s arrest on January 17, 1966, Prof Omigbodun said their “lives were never the same again, so we left for Sierra Leone; we suffered a drop in our socioeconomic status and it was quite difficult, especially for my mother.”

Between January 1966 and May 1967, Banjo was incarcerated in Kirikiri Prison, transferred to a prison in Ikot Ekpene (Akwa Ibom State), from where he was later transferred to another prison in Enugu. He never returned home to his young family of four children – Funto Banjo-Oyeleye, Ayodele Banjo, Prof Olayinka Banjo-Omigbodun and Adeyemi Banjo, and his young Sierra Leonean wife. And they did not set eyes on him until March 1967 when they visited him in Enugu before the civil war.

After his arrest in 1966, his wife only heard from him through his letters. Photo: OduaVoice. Designer: Oludare Ogunbowale

“Our last family reunion took place in March 1967. We visited my father in Enugu. Mother stayed at the statehouse with father while my siblings and I stayed with a family friend in the town. Mother pleaded with father to leave the country together with us but he responded, ‘I would rather die than run away’,” Ayodele Victor-Banjo wrote.

Friends, colleagues and family were destabilised by his prolonged incarceration and they waited endlessly for his return. Before visiting him in Enugu, Banjo’s family only heard from him through his letters. Banjo’s letters revealed a lot about his anger, and disappointment in his ordeal.

Respite came when Ojukwu proclaimed Biafra Republic on May 30, 1967. Banjo, who at that time was in Enugu, got a pardon from Ojukwu who had declared himself President of the new Republic.

After 17 months in prison, Banjo was back as a military commander, fighting against Nigeria on the side of the Igbo people. He led the 101st Division of the Biafran troops to invade Nigeria from the Midwest.

In the words of British journalist Frederick Forsyth, who reported the civil war from the Biafran war front, “Ojukwu never revealed why he chose Victor Banjo to command the forces destined to march into Western Nigeria, but they were close friends, they shared things in common.”

For a man who had been in prison for 17 months before the war, he did not do a shabby job. In less than 24 hours, Banjo’s troops captured Benin City, headquarters of the Midwestern Region in present day Edo and Delta State. After capturing the Midwest, in what became famous as the ‘Battle of Ore’, Banjo-led troops took a break at Ore in present day Ondo State about 300 kilometers away from the Nigerian capital – Lagos.

Their expected next line of action was to march on and invade Lagos, through Ijebu-Ode, his hometown but Banjo decided not to proceed. He wanted to broker a ceasefire deal with the Nigerian government. At Ore, he reportedly convinced other like-minded soldiers, who appeared not to believe in the war, to stage a coup against Ojukwu who would not yield to a request for cease fire at the early stage of the war. Aside from the junior officers, one of the top officers he convinced was Emmanuel Ifeajuna, one of the January 1966 coup plotters who escaped to Ghana and returned to fight in the Biafran war.

According to the accounts of Forsyth in his book ‘The Biafra Story’, “Banjo planned to stage a coup against Ojukwu and handover the rebel to the Nigerian government. He recruited Ifeajuna, a Moscow-trained Communist officer Major Philip Alele, a Biafran Foreign Service official Sam Agbam and several other junior officers into the scheme.”

Forsyth’s accounts of the civil war have, however, been subjected to scrutiny in the last five decades as there are no other records to back his claim that Banjo confessed to planning a coup against Ojukwu.

Lt. Col. Fola Oyewole, one of the Yoruba soldiers who fought on the Biafran side, told The News Magazine in a 2016 interview that the disagreement between Banjo and Ojukwu was over the takeover of the West by Biafran forces led by Banjo who feared that if he proceeded, the West will be under the authority of Biafra.

“Banjo and Ojukwu decided to quarrel to the extent that if you capture the west, it is going to be under Biafra. It won’t be a separate entity of itself,” Oyewole said. “Banjo was [also] accused of hobnobbing with the British deputy commissioner in Benin.”

It was Ifeajuna and Alale who were first arrested, then Banjo was later summoned, his troops disarmed and he was arrested at Ojukwu’s home.

The four ringleaders – Banjo, Ifeajuna, Alele and Agbam were tried by a special tribunal, they denied charges of treason and claimed they were trying to save lives and their country by negotiating an early ceasefire with the federal government and reuniting Nigeria. They were sentenced to death for high treason and shot at dawn on September 22, 1967.

Their plan failed and they paid the wages of failure: death by the bullets. Pundits said the plan could have saved the lives of the estimated three million people who later died in the war in the next two and a half years after their execution.

Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian professor and Nobel Laureate believes Banjo, as the military leader of the Third Movement, tried to find a more ideological basis for reconstructing the entire society and obliterating the tribalistic lines which formed the original context of the Biafran War.

“While it [the Third Movement] accepted the moral justification of Biafran secession, it felt that this was the wrong political action, but at the same time it could not accept or condone the moral basis, that is, the immoral basis or the non-ideological basis of the government in Lagos. So this was the third force, and Victor Banjo lost his life with a number of others,” Soyinka wrote in his book – ‘Conversations with Wole Soyinka’.

Damola Awoyokun, a columnist and historian, wrote in The News magazine in 2013 that Ojukwu told American consul, Bob Barnard, in Enugu three days after executing Banjo that “The plotters intended to take Brigadier Hillary Njoku, the head of Biafran Army, into custody and bring him to the State House under heavy armed guard, ostensibly to demand of him that Njoku be relieved of the command on the grounds of incompetence.

“Once inside the State House, Njoku’s guards would be used against him. Ifeajuna would then declare himself acting Governor and offer ceasefire on Gowon’s terms. Banjo would go to the West and replace Brigadier Yinka Adebayo, the military governor of Western Region. Next, Gowon would be removed and Awolowo declared Prime Minister of the Reunited Federation.”

In his defence during his court martial alongside three other accused, as documented by Alexander Madiebo in his book – ‘The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War’, Banjo said: “My stay in Biafra, after having been released from prison, has been due to my friendship with Col. Ojukwu…I came into the war at a moment of temporary collapse of the Biafran fighting effort, when it became quite clear to me that the fighting effort of the Biafran Army was not only being incompetently handled, but also being sabotaged. Since then, it has been my fortune to command the Biafran troops on their successful exploits.

More than 50 years after his death, his children said they have no specific communication from Banjo’s employer about where he is and whether he was killed or not. Photo: Nairaland.

“On the whole, l had in private, told Col Ojukwu that l could never be made to stand charged for having plotted against his office and his person. There was no plot against him.”

Banjo’s family, however, believes he was arrested and killed unjustly and he became a victim of Nigeria. The family says they have no information about where he was buried.

“Up till now, we don’t have any specific communication from his employer about where he is and whether he was killed or not,” Omigbodun lamented. “The people who executed him appeared to have been made heroes; (Nigeria is) a very interesting country.”

By the time the war ended in January 1970, what Banjo and others tried to prevent had happened – an estimated three million people, including children and women, had died. Ojukwu himself fled to Cote d’Ivoire to live in exile, until 1982 when he was pardoned by President Shehu Shagari.

Banjo’s role in the civil war and his place in Nigerian history has been largely confusing “So many things have been said and written about Dad, many of them a distortion of what actually happened while a lot were without any foundation in facts,” his son Ayodele said.

However, in his words as documented by Alexander Madiebo, Banjo explained why he took the decision to support Biafra.

“My stay in Biafra, after having been released from prison, has been due to my friendship with Col. Ojukwu… He told me that he needed me here because he felt he needed someone who could talk to him without ceremony; someone in a position to give blame to him for his mistakes,” he said.

Banjo added: “I pointed out to him his declaration of Biafra at the time was not consistent with our plans and agreements. However, when l discovered the emerging trend that followed the declaration of Independence of Biafra, it became clear to me that a war with the North was imminent. I decided to stay behind and assist in the prosecution of the war, both for the sake of my friendship with Colonel Ojukwu and in the hope that having assisted to fight back the Northern threat to Biafra, he would assist me with troops to rid the Mid-West and Lagos of the same menace.”

Oyewole, who was also jailed like Banjo for alleged involvement in the January 15, 1966 coup, said the hostility of the Nigerian government towards him, Banjo and other Yoruba soldiers who fought on the side of Biafra forced them into joining the Biafran Army.

“When we were released from Prison, I was released in Enugu. I was brought from Owerri to Enugu where we declared to have been released, they looked for houses in Independence layout for us, Banjo lived in Government place,” Oyewole told The News Magazine in a 2006 interview.

“Look at it this way, you don’t have no choice, two the fact is that the people are not hostile to you, they were not, I was very well taken care of. Whereas if somebody as high as Chief Awolowo could tell me that he could not guarantee my safety, should I be foolhardy enough to insist by settling in Nigeria. Chief couldn’t and not just me – Banjo, Adeleke and others and papa said for now it is not possible to guarantee your safety.”