BiafraHeroesDay: Remember Colonel Dibia Nwawo

Colonel Conrad Dibia Nwawo (1924-2016) Nwawo started his career in 1946 after he graduated from the School of Agriculture in Ibadan in that same year. 

He worked as a civil servant first in the Moore Plantation in Ibadan, Nigeria and then the Cameroons until 1950 when he joined the Nige­rian Army as a foot soldier. He re­ceived officer training at the prestig­ious Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot, the United Kingdom.

 A colonel in the Nigerian Army, but later Joined the Biafran struggle as a Brigadier-General in Biafran Army, Nwawo was function­ally the third in command in the Bi­afran Military High Command, al­though he was senior to both Ojukwu and General Philip Effiong, Ojukwu’s deputy. Nwawo was Commissioned in 1954, Effiong in 1956, and Ojuk­wu in 1957.

Colonel Nwawo, whose number was the Number 10 in the Nigerian Army, was, therefore, the tenth offic­er to be commissioned in the Nigeri­an Army having joined the Army on the 1st December, 1950 and commis­sioned on the 28th of May, 1954 as a 2nd Lieutenant in the then Queen’s Own Regiment, as the colonial Nige­rian Army was then called.

 Nwawo, born in 1924, died at his home in Onicha-Olona, Aniocha North L.G.A. of Delta State, at the ripe age of 92, after a brief illness as­sociated with old age.