[1] Okigbo was born on 16 August 1932, in the town of Ojoto, about 10 miles (16 km) from the city of Onitsha in Anambra State, located in the southeastern region of Nigeria.

[4] Despite his father's devout Christianity, Okigbo had an affinity, and came to believe later in his life, that in him was reincarnated the soul of his maternal grandfather,[5] a priest of Idoto, an Igbo deity.

Heavensgate (1962) opens with the lines: while in "Distances" (1964), he celebrates his final aesthetic and psychic return to his indigenous religious roots: Okigbo graduated from Government College Umuahia (in present Abia State, southeastern Nigeria) two years after Chinua Achebe, another noted Nigerian writer, having earned himself a reputation as both a voracious reader and a versatile athlete.

At Ibadan, he became an active member of the Mbari literary club, and completed, composed or published the works of his mature years, including Limits (1964), Silences (1962–65), Lament of the Masks (commemorating the centenary of the birth of W. B. Yeats in the forms of a Yoruba praise poem, 1964), Dance of the Painted Maidens (commemorating the 1964 birth of his daughter, Obiageli or Ibrahimat, whom he regarded as a reincarnation of his mother) and his final highly prophetic sequence, Path of Thunder (1965–67), which was published posthumously in 1971 with his magnum opus, Labyrinths, which incorporates the poems from the earlier collections.

An accomplished soldier, he was killed in action during a major push by Nigerian troops in 1967 against Nsukka, the university town where he found his voice as a poet, and which he vowed to defend with his life.

[16][17] "Elegy for Alto", the final poem in Path of Thunder, is today widely read as the poet's "last testament" embodying a prophecy of his own death as a sacrificial lamb for human freedom: The Okigbo Award was established by Wole Soyinka in his honor, in 1987.