Sasa U.K Nwoke, author of Corporal Nwafor
Author of Corporal Nwafor

Sasa U.K Nwoke

Biafra war veteran, historian, and the man who answered the name Corporal Nwafor.

“What Corporal Nwafor did for Biafra was exactly what David did for the people of Israel.”

Sasa U.K Nwoke, speaking to Vanguard, October 2019

The Author

Sasa U.K Nwoke was born in Ohafia, Abia State. He was a class-three student of Government Secondary School, Afikpo, when the war broke out, and on 28 January 1968, at the age of sixteen, he forced his way into the Biafra Army after several attempts to enlist. Trained as a gunner, he was posted to the armoured car Corporal Nwafor and fought through some of the fiercest sectors of the war, including seven weeks of daily battles on the Uzuakoli front.

After the war he continued his education overseas. He lives in Umuahia, Abia State.

The Book

Cover of Corporal Nwafor by Sasa U.K Nwoke

Corporal Nwafor is his war memoir, the account of the name he answered during the Nigeria–Biafra war. The name, he told Vanguard in 2019, has three parts: the gunner from Umuoji who, on 30 June 1968, fired the only 73mm bazooka available to his brigade and knocked out an advancing Saladin armoured car at Ugwu Nwasike, Ogidi, before losing his life in the fight that followed; the captured Saladin itself, rebuilt and renamed in his honour; and the crew who fought in it - among them the author, a sixteen-year-old gunner.

The armoured car Corporal Nwafor fought from Uzuakoli to Ikot Ekpene, from Okigwe to Port Harcourt and back to Owerri. The Saladin survives today at the War Museum, Umuahia.

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