the Congo. From 1961 to 1962, Aguiyi-Ironsi served as the military attaché to the Nigeria High Commission in London, United Kingdom. During that period he was promoted to the rank of brigadier. During his tenure as military attaché, he attended courses at the Imperial Defence college (renamed Royal College of Defence Studies in 1961), Seaford House, Belgrave Square. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, Military Division (MBE) in the 1962 New Year Honours list. In 1964, he was appointed as the commandant of the entire United Nations peace keeping force in the Congo. In 1965, Aguiyi-Ironsi was promoted to the rank of major general. The same year, Major General C.B. Welby-Everard handed over his position as the general officer Commanding, GOC of the entire Nigerian Army to Major General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, which made him the first Nigeria indigenous officer to head the entire Nigerian Army. In January 1966, a group of army officers, led by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, overthrew the central and regional governments of Nigeria, killed the prime minister and tried to take control of the government in a failed coup d'état. Nzeogwu was countered, captured and imprisoned by Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi. Aguiyi-Ironsi was named military head of state on 17 January 1966, a position he held until 29 July 1966, when a group of Northern army officers revolted against the government and killed Aguiyi-Ironsi. Fall of the Republic On 15 January 1966, soldiers of mostly Igbo extraction, led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, an Igbo from Okpanam near Asaba, Noé in Delta State, eradicated the uppermost echelon of politicians from the Northern and the Western Provinces. That and other factors effectively led to the fall of the Republican Government. Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, was purportedly slated for assassination but effectively took control of Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory. Also an Igbo, President Nnamdi Azikiwe refusing to intervene to ensure the continuity of civilian rule, Aguiyi-Ironsi effectively compelled the remaining members of Balewa's government to resign. Seeing that the government was in disarray, Aguiya-Ironsi then allowed Senate President Nwafor Orizu, another Igbo who was serving as acting president in Azikiwe's absence, to surrender power to him officially, which ended the First Nigerian Republic. Head of state Aguiyi-Ironsi inherited a Nigeria that was deeply fractured by its ethnic and religious cleavages. None of the high-profile victims of the 1966 coup was of Igbo