Ghanaian presidential lodge in the Akuapem hills where the federal government and the Eastern Region agreed in January 1967 to a confederation-style restructuring of Nigeria. Gowon repudiated the deal on his return to Lagos; the rupture led directly to Biafra's declaration in May 1967.
Aburi House (officially Peduase Lodge) sits in the Akuapem hills above Accra. It was built as the official country retreat of the Ghanaian head of state. In January 1967, four months after the second coup and the anti-Igbo pogroms, the National Liberation Council of Ghana under General Joseph Ankrah hosted talks between Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon (Federal Military Government) and Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu (Military Governor, Eastern Region).
The meeting, held 4–5 January 1967, produced what is now known as the Aburi Accord. Its central provision was a loose confederation: each Region would have its own armed forces and full autonomy over its internal affairs, with the federal centre exercising only enumerated powers agreed by all Regions. Decisions of the Supreme Military Council would require concurrence of all Regional Military Governors.
Ojukwu signed and travelled home. Gowon's advisers in Lagos — including federal civil servants and the Supreme Headquarters legal team — argued that what had been agreed at Aburi was incompatible with a single Nigerian state. The federal government issued Decree No. 8 of 1967, which incorporated only a fraction of the Aburi provisions. Ojukwu's response, the slogan 'On Aburi we stand', became the rallying point for the Eastern Region's drift to secession.
Aburi remains, in Nigerian political memory, the last serious attempt to renegotiate the federation before the civil war. It is invoked whenever the question of restructuring is raised — most recently in the National Conference of 2014 — as the road not taken.