Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu (1937-29 July 1967) was the Chief Instructor at the Nigerian Military Training College and the leader of the 1966 Nigerian coup d'etat, which led to the murder of eleven senior politicians and two soldiers and the kidnapping of three more.
Biography[]
Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was born in 1937 in Kaduna, Kaduna State to Catholic Ibo parents from the Delta State of Nigeria, and Nzeogwu served as an infantry and intelligence officer of the Nigerian Army; educated at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom, he once served as Chief Instructor at the Nigerian Military Training College. In 1966, Nzeogwu led a coup of northern soldiers against the government in what was supposed to be a training exercise, and he had eleven politicians and two soldiers killed in the 1966 Nigerian coup d'etat. Upon Biafra's declaration of independence in 1967, he became a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Biafran Army, and he was killed in action in an ambush on 29 July 1967 near Nsukka while taking part in a recon mission.