Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Adebukunola Banjo, the first Nigerian Director of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Corps of the Nigerian Army, joined the Army in 1953 as Warrant Officer 52 and was the 16th Nigerian to be commissioned an officer.
Banjo was killed by a firing squad of Biafran soldiers acting on Biafra's Head-of-State Chukwuemeka Ojukwu's orders on September 22, 1967. He was alleged to have staged a coup plot against Ojukwu. It took a second military tribunal judge to sentence Banjo because Ojukwu's first military judge stated that there wasn't enough evidence to convict Victor Banjo of coup charges.
As he was being hit, Banjo yelled and screamed, "I'm not dead yet!" with four more shots fired to ensure his death.
He left behind his Sierra Leonean wife, Taiwo and four children. He was 37.
Victor Banjo's sister, 96-year-old Felicia Adetowun Ogunsheye is Nigeria's first female professor and consequently the first female professor of Library and Information Science in Nigeria.
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