Born on New Year's Eve, 1952 in Malabare Mansion, Azam was first educated privately before being sent to Rajshahi Collegiate School and then to Jhenidah Cadet College, a military boarding school by his father. He was in the first graduating class of the academy in 1968. As a cadet he was interrogated by the occupying Pakistani Army during the Great Liberation War of 1971. He was initially set on attending College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering and being a cadet at Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul. On 7 March 1971, he viewed more than ten thousand Bengali demonstrators forcing their way into the Jhenidah Cadet College in demonstration. His school principal, Lt Col Monzurur Rahman (a Bengali), and three teachers were shot and killed. After graduating from the Bangladesh Military Academy and being commissioned into the Engineers Corps of the newly formed Bangladesh Army in 1976, he graduated from BUET in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering.