Rare Photograph of Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Sandhurst-educated Army Officer of Nigeria and later of Biafra

Timothy Onwuatuegwu in photograph taken some time after his appointment as second in command of the Biafran Western Front in October 1968. Photo credit: David Robison.

Sandhurst-educated Timothy Onwuatuegwu (d.1970) was a key participant in the bloody army coup of January 15th, 1966, and became a prominent commander on the Biafran side during the Nigerian Civil War.

As head of the 'S Division', he was viewed as one of the most effective field commanders of the Biafran Army.

A Nigerian Army major at the time of the coup of January 1966 and later a lieutenant colonel in the Biafran army, Onwuatuegwu's presumed death is still something of a mystery.

These are the following narratives:

. Onwuatuegwu was killed in an ambush conducted on the Cameroon border by Nigerian army soldiers of Northern origin as payback for the murder of the Sardauna of Sokoto as well as senior Northern military officers.

.  Onwuatuegwu was killed by Yoruba officers of the Nigerian army who lured him to a hotel in Owerri at the end of the war, this as revenge for the murders respectively of Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun and his wife, as well as that of Colonel Ralph Shodeinde.

. Onwuatuegwu was killed by Brigadier Hassan Katsina in Kirikiri Prison, Lagos. Katsina is supposed to have flown from Kaduna to put a bullet in Onwuatuegwu's forehead. A slightly different narrative puts the location of his execution as Enugu prison.

Onwuatuegwu was supposedly shot with two other captured Biafran army officers and had been betrayed by certain civilians from Nnewi, the home town of the Head of State of the secessionist state of Biafra.

In his memoir The Fall of Biafra, Ben Gbulie claimed that Onwuatuegwu's betrayers were part of a wider "Osu conspiracy" of sabotage which “caused" Biafra's eventual defeat. The Osu are the “untouchable” caste of Igbo society.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.