'He was nicknamed Gary Cooper' (A.O. Uzokwe 2003 Surviving Biafra)

There's another reference to the movies – and possibly Westerns – penetrating popular culture in Nigeria. This time the reference is to Western actor Gary Cooper (1901-61) in a biography of the Nigerian Civil War/Biafra War by Alfred Obiora Uzokwe (2003).

Here we go (The excerpt is a little longer today because I thought a little context may be useful here):

Boys company was a youth program put together by the Biafran army for young boys between ages eight to fourteen. According to story, the boys were trained in intelligence gathering for Biafrans. … The Biafran army figured, according to the story, that the federal  troops would not kill the boys, so the younger the boys were, the better.

I envied the Biafran boys who were said to be in the Boys Company. There was this particular boy from my village called George Orji. H ewas said to be in the Boys Company and usually followed his uncle, Arthur Ngwube, a Biafran army officer, to the warfront. We heard that George had a complete army uniform and had actually seen action on many occasions! I never personally saw him in uniform, but we kept hearing all those stories about his bravery, and we believed every bit of it. At a point, the story was that he owned a helmet, which he got directly from the head of a dead Nigerian soldier! Like most kids then, I always wished I could be in his shoes. In 1973, I got into the same secondary school that he was already in two classes ahead of me. He was nicknamed Gary Cooper. Each time I saw him, all those incredulous stories about the war, and his supposed exploits, would come back to mind.

(Uzokwe 2003: 66-67)

I wonder whether he earned the nickname Gary Cooper because of his looks or maybe even because of the purportedly (in the imagination of other children) adventurous live as a member of the Boys Company during the war?