Kenneth Keazor

Who is Kenneth Keazor?

Kenneth Kola Abiola Keazor is a Nigerian lawyer and jurist, was born in Lagos on the 12th of April 1935 to Eugene Akosa Keazor and Anne Abiola Keazor. His father, Eugene, was a senior police officer who retired as a Commissioner of Police in Colonial Nigeria in 1964 - one of the most senior African policemen of his time.

Kenneth Keazor studied Law at the University of London and was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1962. He met and married his wife Victoria in October 1960. He returned to Nigeria in 1963, where he joined the Ministry of Justice in the Eastern Region of Nigeria, until 1967 when the Nigerian Civil War broke out and he joined the Biafran Army, rising to the rank of major.

His frank and outspoken nature as well as his in-depth knowledge of military history and strategy did not go down well with the Biafran authorities, and neither did his mixed parentage. Alongside Majors Banjo and Ademoyega Keazor was dubiously charged with treason and put on trial. While Banjo was executed by the Biafran authorities, Keazor narrowly escaped execution after a kangaroo trial, after having been freed by a courageous Biafran Guard soldier- outraged by his treatment by the Biafran authorities- by walking over 80 miles in the bush, to locate his young family. He then crossed to the Nigerian side of the conflict and returned to Lagos, the capital, in 1969.