20120228
AFP
The body of Nigeria's secessionist leader Odumegwu Ojukwu, who proclaimed the Republic of Biafra in 1967, was flown back to full military honours Monday, three months after his death in London.

The Oxford-educated colonel died aged 78 on November 26 in London where he had been receiving treatment for an undisclosed ailment. Mourners in Christian Nigeria often delay burials several months to save up for the ceremony.

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu "stood up and fought for what he believed," said Vice President Namadi Sambo at a ceremony in the capital Abuja.

His body was handed over to army pall bearers at the presidential wing of Abuja's Nnamdi Azikwe international airport.

A ceremonial military cap and boots were placed atop the bronze-plated casket which was draped in the green-and-white Nigerian flag.

Ojukwu led the campaign for an independent state of Biafra in eastern Nigeria in the 1960s that included a two-and-a-half year civil war from 1967-1970 which left more than a million dead.

Images of starved children remained seared in the minds of many and Biafra became a by-word for famine.

But Ojukwu remains a revered figure in eastern Nigeria, where the Igbo people dominate. His 1967 declaration of independence for Biafra came largely in response to the killing of large numbers of Igbos in the country's north.

Sambo said Ojukwu "lived and served with all his might when the Igbos and Nigerians needed him most."

"He stood for justice. He refused to compromise. He challenged man's inhumanity to man. ... He stood his ground and fought and took the last plane, left Biafra," Sambo said.

Ojukwu went into exile in Ivory Coast after the Biafrans surrendered in 1970, and did not return until after a presidential pardon 13 years later. He ran for president several times following his return.