ABSTRACT
For the entire period from Independence to the 1966 coup ministerial responsibility for defence was kept firmly in Northern hands. Immediately after 1 October 1960 Sir Abubakar handed over the Defence Ministry to Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu, who remained at this post until his sudden death in April 1965. Muhammadu Ribadu was the man who made the Nigerian Army what it became in the first five years of Independence. Like the premier of the North, Ribadu was a Fulani and came from one of the leading families of Adamawa province. He had been a district head at the early age of twenty-six and was a member of the first Northern House of Assembly in 1946. Demands for expansion were frequently made in the press and in parliament, along with suggestions that the government should introduce compulsory military service and that cadet units should be set up in all secondary schools.
