He served a number of tours during the Congo Crisis, as part of the Nigerian Army's contingent to the United Nations peace keeping force - ONUC - between 1960 and 1963, including as the Commander ONUC, Kasai and Kbngolo Sector and Commander of the Nigerian Contingent, and as ONUC Chief of Staff. At the end of his service in the Congo, he returned to Nigeria as the commander of the second brigade of the Nigerian Army in Lagos, where he remained until September 1964, when he left to attend the Imperial Defence College (now the Royal College of Defence Studies) in London. At the end of his course at the IDC, he remained in London as the Military Attaché at the Nigerian High Commission, where he was posted at the time of the January coup d'état in Nigeria.