Early Life and Education
Chukwuemeka "Emeka" Odumegwu-Ojukwu was born on 4 November 1933 at Zungeru in northern Nigeria to Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, a businessman from Nnewi, Anambra State in south-eastern Nigeria. Sir Louis was in the transport business; he took advantage of the business boom during the Second World War to become one of the richest men in Nigeria. He began his educational career in Lagos, southwestern Nigeria.
In 1944, he was briefly imprisoned for assaulting a white British colonial teacher who was humiliating a black woman at King's College in Lagos, an event which generated widespread coverage in local newspapers. At 13, his father sent him overseas to study in the UK, first at Epsom College and later at Lincoln College, Oxford University, where he earned a Masters degree in history. He returned to colonial Nigeria in 1956.
Read more about this topic: C. Odumegwu Ojukwu
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