Martin Luther Agwai (born 8 November 1948) is a retired Nigerian army officer who served as Chief of Defence Staff and Chief of Army Staff. He is the Pro-Chancellor of the University of Calabar Early life and education Agwai was born on November 8, 1948 in Kaduna, a city in Northern Nigeria, to the family of Agwai Gidan Mana, a Police Constable and Shera Agwai, a housewife. He hailed from Gidan Mana in Kachia Local Government Area of present day Kaduna state. He hails from a Christian home and later became the President of Fellowship of Christian Students at Government Secondary School, Zaria in 1967. He started out his primary education at the Native Authority School in Jaban Kogo where he was living with his maternal grandmother. He was soon moved to the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) School, in Kurmin Musa, due to his insistence on changing schools. According to his friend and classmate, Stephen Haruna Makeri, 'we liked each other because we were the smallest in the class. Martin was very lively and sociable and that was what drew me close to him' He graduated from the Nigerian Command and Staff College, British Army Staff College, Camberley and United States Army Armor School amongst others. He holds a Post Graduate diploma in Public Administration with distinctions from the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON) and National Defence University, Washington DC, where he obtained a Master of Science in National Resource Strategy. While at NDU, he won the Ambassadors Award for excellence in research and writing, making him the first foreigner to win the award. Career He was commissioned into the Nigerian Armed Forces in 1972 and has held several positions including Chief of Training and Operations of the Nigerian Armed Forces and Director of Military Training at the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna. He was the Nigerian Military Adviser at Harare, covering the whole of Southern Africa between 1993 - 1996. He was a Directing Staff and Chief Instructor at the Command and Staff College Jaji - Kaduna, Nigeria. Before becoming the Chief of Army Staff he was the Deputy Military Adviser at United Nations Headquarters, New York. He was the Chief of Defence Staff of the Nigerian Armed Forces since 1 June 2006. Before that, he held several senior positions in the Nigerian Army, including being Chief of Army Staff. He served as the commander of the combined United