Professor Olayinka Omigbodun, daughter of the late Nigerian Army officer Lt. Col. Victor Banjo, has spoken about how her family learned of her father’s execution during the Nigerian Civil War.
She said the execution was ordered by Biafran leader Odumegwu Ojukwu.
Mrs Omigbodun spoke in an interview on the State of Affairs podcast with Edmund Obilo. She said the family was in Kenema, Sierra Leone, when they 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.
She said her mother later took care of the children after his death.
She also spoke about her mother’s struggle at the time.
“She was not sleeping at night. She was always praying, asking, ‘Lord, what am I going to do? Four children…’” she said.
Banjo was a trained officer of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and served in the Nigerian Army.
During the civil war in 1967, he joined the Biafran side.
He later fell out with the Biafran leadership. He and other officers were accused of plotting a coup. A military tribunal convicted him of treason.
Banjo was executed by firing squad on September 22, 1967.
Olayinka Omigbodun is a professor of psychiatry.
She is the first female professor of psychiatry in Nigeria and has served as provost of the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan. She joined the University of Ibadan as a lecturer in 1997 and became a professor in 2008.
