Chief Mrs. Victoria Nwanyiocha Aguiyi-Ironsi, is dead.
The decedeased was the wife of Major-General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe (J.T.U.) Aguiyi-Ironsi, Nigeria’s first military head of state,
She reportedly died in the early hours of Monday, aged 97.
She would have been 98 on November 21, 2021.
Born on November 21, 1923, she was the second First Lady of Nigeria from January 16, 1966, to July 29, 1996, when her husband was assassinated in a counter military coup carried out by Nigerian military officers of Northern extraction.
Aguiyi-Ironsi was killed in Ibadan in the countercoup led by Murtala Muhammed and which led to the installation of then Colonel Yakubu Gowon as head of state.
Victoria’s husband Aguiyi-Ironsi was the supreme commander of the National Military Government for six months before being overthrown and assassinated in the 1966 Nigerian counter-coup.