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Former Chiefs of Air Staffs
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Brigadier General GT Kurubo (1966-1967) |
Brigadier General Kurubo was born in Bonny, Rivers State, on 27 July 1934. He had
his primary and secondary education at Government School, Bonny and Government College,
Umuahia between 1946 and 1952. He joined the Nigerian Army as a regular officer
on 27 May 1953, after his secondary school.
By December 1953 after some rudimentary military training in Nigeria, he was sent
to Germany for further training. Before then, he had attended the Regular Officers
Special Training School in Accra, Ghana and the Officer Cadets Training School,
Eaton, England. He later attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the Young
Officers School and the Command and Staff College, Quetta, Pakistan. |
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He was subsequently appointed the first indigenous Commander of the NAF on 19 January 1966. He relinquished this post on 4 August 1967 and 8 days later, precisely on
12 August 1967, he was appointed Nigeria’s Ambassador to the Soviet Union. From
the Soviet Union, Brigadier Kurubo went to Quetta, Pakistan where he enrolled in
the Joint Staff College. He attained the rank of Brigadier on 1 April 1970.
It will
be recalled that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) had in 1964 seconded some Officers
of the Nigerian Army to understudy the German leadership of the NAF. Thus, when
the Germans withdrew in early 1966, the MOD fell back on its own crop of officers
to appoint the next Commander for the NAF. This was in the person of Lieutenant
Colonel George Tamunosyowunam Kurubo. According to Brigadier EE Ikwe (rtd), although
Lieutenant Colonel Kurubo was among the 10 Nigerian Army officers that were initially
interviewed for secondment to the NAF, he was not among the 6 officers that were
eventually selected for reorientation training. He was therefore appointed as the
third Commander of the NAF following the 1966 coup, as a pure bred Nigerian Army
officer without any form of reorientation before taking
over command of the NAF.
Brigadier Kurubo was in charge of the affairs of the NAF when the Civil War broke
out. He was, therefore, faced with the difficult task of launching an unprepared
NAF into the war without a full knowledge of how air forces operate. He died in
the Year 2000 after a brief illness. |
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