Patrick Anwunah and Yakubu Gowon at Sandhurst belonged to a small but important group of Nigerian officer cadets whose careers emerged during the final years of British colonial rule. Alongside Alexander Madiebo, Arthur Unegbe and Michael Okwechime, they were being prepared for professional military service at a time when the commissioned ranks of Nigeria’s colonial army were gradually being Nigerianised.
A photograph associated with Patrick Anwunah’s memoir evokes this formative period in the lives of young Nigerian officers undergoing military training in Britain. Its larger significance lies in the shared professional world these men inhabited before Nigeria became independent and before the crises of the 1960s fractured the army in which they had begun their careers.
Their story is a striking example of how rapidly decolonisation, political instability and war transformed Nigeria’s emerging officer corps.
From Teshie to Britain
Yakubu Gowon entered military training after completing his education at Barewa College. In May 1954, he proceeded to the Regular Officers Special Training School at Teshie in the Gold Coast, now Ghana.
Four other Nigerians were in his batch: Arthur Unegbe, Patrick Anwunah, Alexander Madiebo and Michael Okwechime.
The school at Teshie formed part of the system used to prepare West African officer candidates for further military education in Britain. At the end of their training, the Nigerian cadets underwent additional selection procedures before proceeding into the British officer training system.
Gowon passed the Regular Commission Board before the other Nigerians and moved on to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The remaining members of the Nigerian group subsequently completed their requirements and joined him at Sandhurst in September 1955.
For these young cadets, the process represented something larger than personal advancement. Nigeria was approaching independence, and the colonial military establishment was expanding opportunities for Nigerians to enter the commissioned ranks and assume positions previously dominated by British officers.
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The Annual Report on Nigeria for the Year 1955 described efforts to increase the number of Nigerian officers and identified Sandhurst, officer cadet schools in the United Kingdom and the officers’ training establishment in the Gold Coast among the institutions used for their preparation.
Patrick Anwunah and Yakubu Gowon at Sandhurst
The Sandhurst phase placed Patrick Anwunah and Yakubu Gowon within one of Britain’s principal institutions for professional officer training.
Gowon’s Sandhurst course ran from September 1955 until 21 December 1956. During his time at the academy, he became a cadet sergeant. At the conclusion of the course, he participated in the passing out parade and became a second lieutenant on 21 December 1956.
His military seniority in the rank was dated from 19 October 1955, his twenty first birthday. The distinction between seniority and the completion of his Sandhurst course helps explain why both 1955 and 1956 appear in accounts of the beginning of his commissioned military career.
Anwunah followed a comparable route. Born in Awka, he attended Government College, Umuahia, between 1948 and 1954 before entering officer training. He trained at Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School near Chester before proceeding to Sandhurst and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Nigerian Army in 1956.
Alexander Madiebo also attended Government College, Umuahia, before entering the army as an officer cadet in 1954. His training included Teshie, Eaton Hall and Sandhurst. He too received his commission as a second lieutenant in 1956.
Arthur Unegbe and Michael Okwechime formed part of the same Teshie and Sandhurst training generation.
They were not the first Nigerians to receive military commissions. Nigerian officers had already begun entering the commissioned ranks before this group. Their cohort nevertheless became historically remarkable because several members later occupied important positions during the political and military upheavals that followed independence.
Building a Nigerian Officer Corps
Nigeria achieved independence from Britain on 1 October 1960. By then, Nigerianisation of the armed forces was accelerating.
During much of the colonial period, British officers had dominated the commissioned ranks. Preparing Nigerian officers was therefore an essential part of transferring military responsibility as constitutional independence approached.
The transformation gathered pace during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Nigerian officers increasingly replaced expatriate personnel, while the army expanded its responsibilities both at home and overseas.
Many officers of this generation also gained operational experience through United Nations peacekeeping deployments in the Congo during the early 1960s. Gowon served with Nigerian contingents there and later rose through increasingly senior army appointments.
By the middle of the 1960s, Nigerians occupied the key command positions of their national army. Yet professional Nigerianisation could not insulate the institution from the severe political tensions developing within the federation.
Those pressures would soon engulf the army itself.
The January 1966 Coup Changes Everything
On 15 January 1966, a group of mainly junior army officers launched Nigeria’s first military coup.
Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Northern Premier Sir Ahmadu Bello, Western Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola and Federal Finance Minister Festus Okotie-Eboh were among the political leaders killed. Several senior military officers also died.
One of them was Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Unegbe.
By then, Unegbe was Quartermaster General at Army Headquarters in Lagos. The young cadet who had trained alongside Gowon, Anwunah, Madiebo and Okwechime had risen into the senior ranks of the Nigerian Army. His death during the coup illustrated how profoundly circumstances had changed since the days of their shared military training.
Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi emerged as Head of the Federal Military Government after the coup failed to secure control of the country as originally intended by its organisers.
The January coup intensified existing political, regional and ethnic tensions within Nigeria and particularly within the armed forces.
A counter coup followed in July 1966. Ironsi was killed, together with Lieutenant Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, the Military Governor of the Western Region.
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On 1 August 1966, Yakubu Gowon assumed office as Head of the Federal Military Government.
The former Sandhurst cadet was suddenly responsible for a country moving rapidly towards its gravest post independence crisis.
Former Coursemates on Opposing Sides
The collapse of relations between the Federal Military Government and the Eastern Region eventually led Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu to declare the Republic of Biafra on 30 May 1967.
War began in July.
The conflict placed men who had emerged from the same professional military environment on different sides.
Gowon became the wartime Head of the Federal Military Government and Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
Patrick Anwunah, who had served as a General Staff Officer in the Nigerian Army, returned to the Eastern Region during the political and military upheavals of 1966. During the Nigerian Civil War, he became Quartermaster General and Chief of Logistics in the Biafran military establishment.
Alexander Madiebo rose even further within Biafra’s command structure. He became General Officer Commanding of the Biafran Army and later wrote about the conflict in The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War.
The contrast was extraordinary.
Men whose careers had once intersected at Teshie, Eaton Hall and Sandhurst were now associated with opposing military establishments fighting a devastating war over the future of Nigeria.
Their shared training had created a professional bond, but it could not prevent the political crises of the 1960s from dividing the officer corps.
Sandhurst Before Military Rule
The later careers of these officers give the Sandhurst years a significance that none of the young cadets could have anticipated.
In the 1950s, they were being trained as professional soldiers for an army undergoing Nigerianisation as independence approached. Military government was not the purpose of their education.
Nigeria’s movement towards army rule emerged from circumstances that developed later: disputed elections, regional competition, political violence, constitutional paralysis, military factionalism and the coups of January and July 1966.
Sandhurst provided military education and professional discipline. The circumstances of post independence Nigeria determined the political roles some of its graduates later assumed.
The distinction is important because it places the careers of these officers within the wider transformation of Nigeria rather than portraying military rule as an inevitable outcome of their training.
Anwunah’s Memoir and the Memory of War
Patrick Anwunah later recorded his experiences in The Nigeria-Biafra War (1967–1970): My Memoirs, published by Spectrum Books Limited in Ibadan in 2007.
The substantial volume recounts his experiences of the civil war and provides the perspective of a senior officer who had served within the Biafran military establishment.
Anwunah died on 16 September 2022 at the age of 87. His military career had spanned the final colonial years, the early independence period, the collapse of the First Republic and the civil war.
Alexander Madiebo had died only months earlier, on 3 June 2022, aged 90.
Their deaths closed further chapters in the lives of a generation whose careers had begun during the transition from colonial military command to Nigerian leadership.
Gowon’s 2026 Memoir Returns Attention to the Era
The history of this generation gained renewed public attention on 19 May 2026 when Yakubu Gowon presented his autobiography, My Life of Duty and Allegiance, at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre in Abuja.
Vice President Kashim Shettima represented President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the presentation, which brought together political leaders, retired military officers, traditional rulers and other public figures.
The autobiography revisits Gowon’s life and public service, including the years surrounding the coups of 1966 and the Nigerian Civil War.
Its publication more than half a century after the conflict illustrates the continuing importance of personal military testimony to Nigeria’s understanding of its twentieth century history.
For the Sandhurst generation, memory is particularly complex. Their early careers belonged to a period of shared professional preparation, while their later lives became inseparable from division, military government and war.
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Conclusion
Patrick Anwunah and Yakubu Gowon at Sandhurst represent more than a historical photograph or an unusual connection between famous military figures.
Together with Alexander Madiebo, Arthur Unegbe and Michael Okwechime, they belonged to an early cohort of Nigerian officers trained as Britain prepared to relinquish colonial control and Nigerians assumed greater responsibility for their own armed forces.
Their shared journey began at a moment of institutional transition. They trained together before independence, before the army entered politics and before Nigeria descended into civil war.
Within little more than a decade, Unegbe had been killed during the January 1966 coup, Gowon had become Head of State, while Anwunah and Madiebo had entered senior positions in the Biafran military establishment.
The story of their generation is therefore not one of predetermined political destiny. It is the story of a professional officer corps overtaken by the extraordinary political pressures of a young nation.
Sandhurst brought several of these men together. Nigeria’s crises ultimately placed them on very different paths.
Author’s Note
The story of Gowon, Anwunah and their fellow officer cadets reveals one of the great tragedies of Nigeria’s early independence era: men who shared classrooms, training grounds and a professional military culture could still be divided by political collapse and war. Their experience shows that institutions are shaped not only by the people trained within them, but also by the political environment in which those people are later required to serve. The Sandhurst generation deserves to be remembered as young officers whose common beginnings were transformed by some of the most consequential events in Nigerian history.
References
J. Isawa Elaigwu, Gowon: The Biography of a Soldier-Statesman. Ibadan: West Books Publisher Limited, 1986; revised second edition, Adonis & Abbey, 2009.
Patrick A. Anwunah, The Nigeria-Biafra War (1967–1970): My Memoirs. Ibadan: Spectrum Books Limited, 2007.
Alexander A. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1980.
N. J. Miners, The Nigerian Army, 1956–1966. London: Methuen, 1971.
Great Britain, Colonial Office, Annual Report on Nigeria for the Year 1955. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Anwunah family statement on the life and military career of Colonel Patrick Anwunah, released following his death in September 2022.
State House, Abuja, record of the public presentation of General Yakubu Gowon’s autobiography, My Life of Duty and Allegiance, 19 May 2026.
State House, Abuja, official record of Nigeria’s past Heads of State and Presidents.
