Born in Kano on November 8, 1938, Murtala Rufai Mohammed later changed his name from Rufai to Ramat when he became Head of State. Like many northern elites, he attended Barewa College in Zaria. He began his military training in 1959 and was commissioned into the Nigerian army as a second lieutenant in 1961. Like so many Nigerian army officers of his generation, he trained at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England. Early in his career, Murtala was taught military tactics by an eloquent and intelligent Oxford University- educated officer named Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. Little did teacher and student realise that, one day, they would end up as protagonists on opposing sides of the battlefield. In 1962, Murtala served as a member of the Nigerian-led United Nations’ peace-keeping force in the Congo. Murtala specialised in the army’s signals corps and was stationed in Lagos where his uncle, Inuwa Wada, served as the Federal Government’s Defence Minister. He was very decisive with issues and this made his country men and women to be immensely happy with his administration, believing that, at long last, the country had got a strong, decisive and uncompromising leader; the one with the discipline and tenacity to take the nation to the Promised Land. These qualities, perhaps, were the defining tendencies that influenced a young Colonel, Muhammadu Buhari, who would also come to the rescue of the nation at a critical time in her history. On July 30, 1975, Murtala, now a general, came to power as head of state and, immediately, set out policies and programmes that defined his government. One of such was making Africa the centre- piece of his government’s foreign policy – a policy which was to add more bite to the struggle for independence, especially, in Southern Africa. Within a short time, Murtala’s policies won him broad and popular support. His decisiveness elevated him to the status of a folk hero. Sadly, his tenure was short-lived. The nation woke up on the morning of Friday, February 13, 1976, to the news that he had been killed in a coup d’état led by Colonel Buka Suka Dimka on February 13, 1976.