Ojukwu's place in Nigeria's history is assured, says President Jonathan - Saying that Ojukwu's place in Nigeria's history is assured, President Goodluck Jonathan said on Saturday that he received, with sadness and a deep feeling of great national loss, the news of the death of Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in the United Kingdom. According to a presidency press statement, signed by Dr. Reuben Abati, the president's Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Jonathan joins Chief Ojukwu’s family, the government and people of his home state, Anambra, the entire Igbo people of Nigeria and his friends, associates and followers across the country, in mourning him.

The President urged them to be comforted by the knowledge that Chief Ojukwu lived a most fulfilled life, and has in death left behind a record of very notable contributions to the evolution of modern Nigeria which will assure his place in the history of the country.

President Jonathan believes that Chief Ojukwu’s immense love for his people, justice, equity and fairness which forced him into the leading role he played in the Nigerian civil war, as well as his commitment to reconciliation and the full reintegration of his people into a united and progressive Nigeria in the aftermath of the war, would ensure that he is remembered forever as one of the great personalities of his time who stood out easily as a brave, courageous, fearless, erudite and charismatic leader.

He called on Chief Ojukwu’s family, his associates and followers to make his rites of passage a celebration of his most worthy and memorable life spent in the service of his people and the nation.

He prays that God Almighty would grant Chief Ojukwu’s soul eternal rest from his earthly labours.

Ojukwu was born on 4 November, 1933, at Zungeru in northern Nigeria,  died in London in the early hours of Saturday after a long illness at Royal Berkshire Hospital in the UK. Ojukwu, aged 78, died from a serious stroke he suffered late last year.

His father was Sir Louis Phillippe Odumegwu Ojukwu, a businessman from Nnewi in south-eastern Nigeria.

Ojukwu, who was imprisoned for assaulting a white British colonial teacher, who was humiliating a black woman, at King’s College in Lagos, began his educational career in Lagos.

At 13, his father sent him overseas to study in Britain, first at Epsom College, in Surrey. He later earned a Master's degree in history at Lincoln College, Oxford University and returned to colonial Nigeria in 1956.

In 1957, he joined  the Nigerian Army as one of the first and few university graduates the Nigerian Military Forces had then.

After serving in the UN peacekeeping force in the then Congo under Maj.-Gen. Johnson Thomas Aguiyi Ironsi, Ojukwu was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel in 1964 and was posted to Kano, where he was in charge of the 5 Battalion of the Nigerian Army.

As the Head of State, Ironsi appointed Ojukwu military governor of the defunct Easter Region on 17 January, 1966.

After the first military coup of 1966 and the counter coup that followed, Ojukwu declared the defunct Eastern Region a sovereign state to be known as Biafra.

On 6 July, 1967, the then military Head of State, Col. Yakubu Gowon, declared war and attacked Biafra in a bid to stop Ojukwu’s secessionist attempt. That war lasted 30 months and ended on 15 January, 1970.

As the war was wearing out, Ojukwu went on exile and stayed away for 13 years. He was granted state pardon by President Shehu Shagari, a decision which was trailed by the deceased’s triumphant return in 1982.

Ojukwu was married to the 1989 Miss Intercontinental, Bianca Onoh. They have many children.