People · 1914 to 1999 · Fact, with a disputed handover
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When soldiers seized Nigeria in January 1966, the man holding the president's powers was a Nnewi prince most Nigerians have never heard of. He went on radio and handed the country over.
Nwafor Orizu was born on 17 July 1914 into the royal house of Nnewi, in what is now Anambra State. His full name was Abyssinia Akweke Nwafor Orizu, and his father was Eze Ugbonyamba, Igwe Orizu I. Today his nephew, Kenneth Onyeneke Orizu III, is the traditional king of Nnewi.
In 1939 the young prince went to the United States. He earned a degree in government at Ohio State University, then a master's at Columbia. America made a big impression on him, and he came back with one idea he wouldn't stop talking about. He said British education in Nigeria was narrow and "perpendicular", and that Nigeria needed the broad, "horizontal" American kind. He talked about it so much that people started calling him "Orizontal", a play on his name. He laid the case out in a 1944 book, Without Bitterness. He also started a body called the American Council on African Education, which won a lot of tuition scholarships from American sources for African students.
Around 1949 he bought Enitona High School and its printing press from a supporter for just £500, money he had borrowed. Another supporter sold him a luxury bus on instalments. He started a newspaper, The West Africa Examiner, and ran it as managing director.
That same year, on 18 November 1949, colonial police shot 21 coal miners dead in Enugu. Orizu went to Enugu to comfort the striking miners and gave a fiery speech there. Not long after, he was in serious trouble. In September 1953 a magistrate convicted him on seven counts of fraud and theft involving money meant for student scholarships in America, said to be about £32,000, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison. Some saw the case as revenge for his speech. Later, Roy Wilkins, who chaired the council in the US, wrote to Nnamdi Azikiwe clearing Orizu of any financial wrongdoing. So the record is messy, and both versions survive side by side.
The conviction didn't end his politics. He won a seat as an independent representing Onitsha Division and became chief whip in the Eastern House of Assembly. He then joined the NCNC, and he helped Azikiwe, known as Zik, become premier of the Eastern Region. He did it by using his influence in the party to persuade the sitting premier, Professor Eyo Ita, to step down. Zik made him minister of local government.
By 1963 Orizu was President of the Senate. Then in late 1965, President Azikiwe left the country, first for Europe and then on a cruise in the Caribbean. Under the law, the Senate President stood in. So from about October 1965, Nwafor Orizu was acting president of Nigeria, with all the powers of the office. It looked like a caretaking job for a few weeks. It turned out to be one of the most important seats in the country's history.
In January 1966, a group of young army officers led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu launched a coup. The army put down the revolt quickly. But by then key politicians had been killed, among them the Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the Northern Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and the Western Premier, Samuel Ladoke Akintola. The country's government was in pieces, and the man left holding the president's powers was Orizu.
Orizu briefed Azikiwe on the phone about what the cabinet had decided. Then he went on air to the whole nation. He announced that the cabinet had made a "voluntary" decision to hand power to the armed forces. Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi followed with his own broadcast, accepting the "invitation". The next day, Ironsi set up the Supreme Military Council in Lagos and the constitution was effectively suspended. Nigeria's first military government had arrived, and on paper a civilian had invited it in.
That word "voluntary" has always been the sticking point. Was it a calm decision, or a choice made with soldiers standing in the room? Whatever the truth, it was Orizu's voice that carried the handover. His time as acting president lasted about three months.
After that he slipped out of politics almost completely. He went back to what he had cared about since his student days, which was education. In 1950 he had set up the Nigerian Secondary School in Nnewi, and he stayed its proprietor until the state government took over all schools after Biafra lost the war. He kept teaching and writing books. Between 1974 and 1975, the government of the East Central State under Ukpabi Asika made him chairman of its Teachers' Service Commission in Enugu. His books include a collection of poems, Man's Unconquerable Mind, and an autobiography with a title that sums up his early fire: Liberty or Chains, Africa Must Be.
He died in Germany in 1999. A college of education at Nsugbe in Anambra State carries his name. But ask most Nigerians to list the people who have held the country's highest office, and the prince from Nnewi who held it on the night it all changed rarely comes up.
