Michael Ojukwu, an officer with External Affairs, had to show his service identification card before being allowed in. A military guard who first caught sight of his name hollered for the others to come and see his catch.

“You are Ojukwu?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re under arrest!”

“I am a foreign service officer.”

Before the poor man could complete the sentence, he was beaten so badly that he had to be hospitalised. Some Ministry of External Affairs’ colleagues who tried to intervene told the soldiers that Michael was not a Biafran or any relation of the secessionist leader; that he was not even an easterner, but a mid-westerner and, above all, a staunch federalist. To all of which the soldiers replied: “But why should he have let himself be called OJUKWU!?”
The man did not wait to get out of hospital before changing his name to Damassus.

– Culled from First Call – An Account of the Gowon years; By Moses Ihonde; Published by Diamond Publications Ltd; Lagos; October 2004