Professor Olayinka Omigbodun, daughter of late Nigerian Army officer Lt. Col. Victor Adebukunola Banjo, has shared the painful story of how her family learned of her father’s execution during the Nigerian Civil War.
Speaking during an interview on the State of Affairs podcast hosted by Edmund Obilo, she revealed that the tragic news reached them while they were living in Sierra Leone.
“We were in Sierra Leone when we heard that Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu had executed our father. It was when we were in Kenema that we were told that my daddy had been killed.”
Omigbodun explained that the news was initially uncertain, coming through a letter sent by one of her father’s brothers to their mother.
“Although it wasn’t certain, it was one of his brothers who wrote a letter to my mother, and then my mother called us together and told us, ‘Oh daddy has gone to be with Jesus.’”
She described her father as an “unusual man,” noting that he had made strong financial provisions for the family and preferred that their mother did not have to work.
“This was the kind of person he was when he was alive.”
Despite this, his sudden death left the family in a difficult situation, forcing their mother to take on the responsibility of raising the children alone while coping with grief.
“She was not sleeping at night. She was always praying, asking, ‘Lord, what am I going to do? Four children…’”
Lt. Col. Banjo, a Sandhurst-trained officer and one of Nigeria’s early military figures, initially served in the Nigerian Army before joining the Biafran side after the 1967 secession. He later fell out with Ojukwu after early military successes, including leading operations in the Midwest.
He was accused of plotting a coup, tried by a Biafran military tribunal, and executed by firing squad on September 22, 1967, an event that remains one of the most debated episodes of the war.
