He also allowed a team of international observers to monitor the conduct of his troops. Gowon directed government forces to remember that they were essentially fighting Nigerians, who were to be encouraged to rejoin the country. Three days later the Eastern region declared itself the independent state of Biafra, with Odumegwu Ojukwu as its leader, and armed conflict between it and the Nigerian government began in July. In a final attempt to resolve the conflict, on May 27, 1967, Gowon declared a state of emergency and divided Nigeria’s four regions into 12 states. Although he was eventually successful in ending attacks against Igbo in the north, he was unable to effect a more lasting peace. Gowon tried to resolve the ethnic tensions that threatened to fatally divide Nigeria. Northern officers staged a countercoup in July 1966, and Gowon emerged as the compromise head of the new government. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, the country’s new leader. In Nigeria, after the coup of January 1966, he was appointed chief of staff to Maj. He was trained in Ghana and in England at Sandhurst and twice served in the Congo region as part of Nigeria’s peacekeeping force there in the early 1960s. Gowon was educated in Zaria (now in Kaduna state) and later became a career army officer. Gowon was born in what is now Plateau state, in the middle belt of Nigeria his father was an early convert to Christianity. Yakubu Gowon, also called Jack Gowon, (born October 19, 1934, Pankshin, Nigeria), Nigerian military leader who served as head of state (1966–75).
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