‘We were told he was dead’: Victor Banjo’s daughter recounts how Ojukwu executed her father

Professor Olayinka Omigbodun, daughter of the late Nigerian Army officer Lt. Col. Victor Adebukunola Banjo, has given a harrowing account of how her family learned of her father’s execution during the Nigerian Civil War, an order issued by Biafran leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.

In a candid interview on the State of Affairs podcast with Edmund Obilo, Professor Omigbodun recalled the moment her family in Kenema, Sierra Leone, first received the news.

“We were in Sierra Leone when we heard that Ojukwu had executed our father. It was when we were in Kenema that we were told that my daddy had been killed. 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 said.

Professor Omigbodun described her father as an “unusual man”, noting that he had provided so well for the family that he did not even want their mother to take up any jobs, relying instead on his savings. “This was the kind of person he was when he was alive,” she said. Despite his financial provision, the family’s mother had to pull herself together and fend for the children after his death, highlighting the long-term personal cost of the conflict.

She also recalled the emotional toll on her mother, who “was not sleeping at night. She was always praying, asking, ‘Lord, what am I going to do? Four children…’”

Lt. Col. Victor Banjo, a Sandhurst-trained officer and one of Nigeria’s early military leaders, served in the Nigerian Army before joining the Biafran side during the 1967 secession.

Despite his early successes, including leading Biafran troops in the Midwest invasion, he fell out of favour with Ojukwu. Alongside other officers, Banjo was accused of plotting a coup, convicted of treason by a military tribunal, and executed by firing squad on September 22, 1967.