The Calabar Landing and other Nigerian Navy amphibious operations conducted during the Nigerian Civil War

Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, the General Officer Commanding the Federal Third Infantry Division & the Officer Commanding Land Forces (left) and Commander James Rawe, the Forward Control Officer of naval forces on the bridge of Rawe’s vessel NNS Penelope during the amphibious attack on Oron, March 1968. (Credit: Photo archive of the late Captain James Rawe).

A post titled "The Liberation of Calabar, 1967" by a Facebook group named "Ibibio History" reminds me that I urgently need to complete my research project on all Nigerian Navy orchestrated landings during the civil war. Several errors of fact and improbable analyses stimulated me to make the following comments and observations.

These are the thoughts I jotted down soon after encountering the post:

1. The AI depiction of NNS Nigeria -a frigate- as a tiny patrol boat is a bit of an eyesore. Nigeria was 314 feet and possessed an array of gun armament vastly more than what a patrol boat would have.

2. The date of "14th, September 1967" in the image should have been removed as the combined operation occurred in October 1967.

3. Benjamin Adekunle, the General Officer Commanding the Federal Third Infantry Division, was a Lieutenant Colonel at the time - not yet a Brigadier or a Colonel as the text later states.

4. The text neglected to inform the reader how Major Anthony Ochefu, who the narrative initially states was on NNS Nigeria, later "disembarked from (NNS) Lokoja."

5. While Major Ochefu was on NNS Lokoja and successfully fought from a landing site and captured key territory in Calabar, the narrative -even if intended to be brief- ought to give an indication of how extremely tough it was for the Federal troops.

For one, the landing site was on lowland while the Biafran forces had taken up defensive positions on highland. Calabar is situated on high ground overlooking the Cross River. This meant that Ochefu and his troops were pinned down on the landing vessel Lokoja and could not open its heavy steel bow door for a considerable period because of the sheer volume of bullets smashing into the metallic structure of Lokoja.

The Federal side lost a lot of troops as they established a beachhead and slowly inched their way up the hilly terrain.

6. So, the sentence "small Biafran resistance was quickly overwhelmed" is an untrue portrayal of what went down. The Federal commanders of the navy and army expected the secessionist side to put up a spirited fight to preserve their last port. The operation was not as easy as both landing accomplished earlier at Bonny in July 1967 and at Sapele, Warri and Koko in September 1967.

At Bonny overconfidence on the part of the Biafran leadership that the Nigerian Navy was incapable of staging a landing because of the internal sabotage carried out by defecting naval personnel of Eastern region origin at the Apapa base, and by the thinking that the Nigerian Navy lacked the smarts to orchestrate an amphibious landing led to a state of gross underpreparedness.

The Biafrans failed to shift buoys at the entrance to the Bonny River which could have directed Federal naval navigators towards shallow waters where thier ships would have run aground. They failed to set up watchtowers, plant incendiaries in the river and station a garrison of appropriate strength to confront a potential invading force. They even failed to anticipate an invasion by keeping daily tabs on the rise and fall of the tide.

So far as Warri, Sapele and Koko is concerned, the Nigerian Navy vessels were extremely vulnerable to attacks while navigating the narrow rivers which were too shallow for NNS Nigeria to participate. The Nigerian ships and barges carrying soldiers of the Third Infantry Division would have been sitting ducks for an organised ambush involving rocket-propelled grenades and artillery.

But things were different for the Calabar landing.

The Biafran troops were well prepared. They laid Ogbunigwe bombs in uncharted rivers they correctly anticipated some Nigerian Navy vessels would use en route to attacking Calabar. They placed bombs on jetties, and they also placed tape recorders with sounds of gunfire amplified by loudspeakers on trees and other vantage points. The aim was to confuse the Federal soldiers as to where gunfire was coming from.

7. Another impediment to the Nigerian operation were an assortment of 105mm guns which the secessionist side fired from Oron, a town which is almost opposite to Calabar on the other side of the Cross River estuary. Lt. COL. Adekunle had wanted the operation to involve capturing both Calabar and Oron. But Commander James Rawe, the architect of the landing, successfully argued that the Federal side would be better off focusing on Calabar so as not split up naval and army resources. Rawe was aware of the "guns of Oron”, but it was a necessary risk for naval and merchant vessels to run the gauntlet to secure the more important target of Calabar.

Oron was captured in the final amphibious operation six months later in March 1968.

8. The conclusion is overblown.

The poster writes: "This decisive operation marked a turning point in the Nigerian Civil War, demonstrating the effectiveness of joint naval and ground forces in reclaiming strategic territory."

Each amphibious operation prior to the Calabar landing was incrementally important in achieving the objective of creating a southern front and setting the scene of the ultimate encirclement of secessionist Biafra.

. Capturing Bonny town and securing the mouth of the Bonny River was important in ensuring that the secessionist side would not control the production and export oil.

. Capturing Warri, Koko and Sapele ensured that the Biafran side had no sea outlet through the Mid-West after the Biafran attack on the Mid-West in August 1967. It also played a part in ensuring the recapture of the Mid-West by the Third Infantry Division in combination with the Second Infantry Division which was led by Lieutenant Colonel Murtala Muhammed.

It should also be noted that the Nigerian Navy made an unopposed landing at Forcados in August 1967 soon after the Mid-West invasion.

. Capturing Calabar ensured that the Federal side could begin gaining territory in a northward direction while completing the task of sealing off the border with Cameroon.

I hope to complete or write the bulk of what should be an 8,000 to 10,000-word scholarly article over the coming summer months.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War College Nigeria.

Adeyinka’s article "The Bonny Landing: The anatomy of Black Africa’s first amphibious operation, July to September 1967" was published in the August 2024 edition of The Mariner's Mirror, the international journal of the Society for Nautical Research.

A critique of the rationale of Mark Felton’s criticism of the diminished fleet strength of the Royal Navy

Logo of the Royal Navy, the naval warfare force of Britain.

I fear that Dr. Mark Felton is merely playing to the populist gallery and being intellectually dishonest in a recent upload at his YouTube channel titled “British Navy Doom Loop - Can Terminal Decline Be Halted?”

First, for all its glory-laden history of ruling the waves, it became apparent to all after World War 2 and particularly after Suez that Britain was finished as a global military power. And with the decolonisation of empire in Africa and Asia, it was clear that the size and reach of the Royal Navy would have to be reduced.

Secondly, the ending of the ideological Cold War with the USSR ought to have further curtailed the size a British maritime force. NATO should have been disbanded and a new security architecture established on continental Europe which would have involved Russia.

The problem is that Britain has hung onto the coattails of the United States which succeeded it as a world power. This has meant regular involvement in military endeavours engineered by the United States, a situation that gives Britain's political, military and intelligence leaders the false impression of been still relevant in shaping a global dominium.

Felton mentions in the style of a pub debate that if Britain had a Falklands-type crisis, it would not be able to reclaim the islands.

But he forgets to mention that had Margaret Thatcher's proposed cuts to the Royal Navy gone through (she sacked her Navy Minister Keith Speed who opposed them) Britain would not have been able to have mounted a task force in 1982.

Importantly, Felton assumes that a large Royal Navy would be able to cope with any and every type of Falklands-type emergency.  Does he think that the Royal Navy could have kept Hong Kong as a British colony if Britain had refused to cede it to China in the 1990s?

He also refuses to contend with developments in maritime warfare. The Russia-Ukraine War and recent conflicts in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf have exposed the limitations of naval vessels including the vulnerability of aircraft carriers to shore-based ballistic missile and drone attacks.

The Royal Navy in combination with other NATO and non-NATO navies led by the U.S. Navy failed in the attempt to open up the Red Sea during continuous operations under the Biden and Trump administrations. And the U.S. Navy has discovered that it is incapable of opening the Strait of Hormuz given Iran's capability of sinking any and all U.S. vessels if they pressed the issue.

And while not all will go so far as to rule out aircraft carriers as obsolete in a similar vein to the those who argue that tanks are, Felton should be aware of the problems associated with developing new generation naval vessels. Just as the U.S. military have had issues in developing the F35 fighter jet, the U.S. Navy has admitted the failure of the development of the Zumwalt-class of naval destroyers.

Given these facts, why on earth would Felton propose that the Royal Navy can only be effective with a multitude of frigates, destroyers and carriers?

A more purposeful critique would have been to acknowledge the diminution of Britain's world power status and the non-efficacy of maintaining a large global naval force. He could have framed his argument by expounding on what a repurposed British naval Force would look like.

This would have encompassed the role that would need to be played by manned and unmanned drones including those with an underwater role. Submarine warfare remains a crucial aspect of waging modern wars and any cuts in this area should be validly scrutinised.

A correct means of addressing reforms to the naval service would be to calibrate what quantities of equipment and manpower should be deployed for defensive and offensive capabilities.

So far as manpower is concerned Felton's focus on advertisements featuring females and persons from non-white backgrounds points to a lazy but effective way of rousing nationalistic sentiment and positioning the dire state of the armed forces in the context of the culture wars. Felton makes the subtle but unmistakable proposition that the navy has become mired in so-called "woke" culture and is seeking to recruit "wogs" and "girlies" at the expense of white males.

His assertion that the army, although facing much the same problems as the navy, is better off because it has recruited more soldiers of Gurkha and Fijian heritage is a devious attempt at deflecting from the racialist undertone by invoking two longstanding sources of loyal non-white manpower. What goes unsaid is the unequal treatment both groups have been subjected to. Over twenty years ago veteran Gurkhas took the British government to court in a racial discrimination suit over their pensions, pay and conditions.

But Felton fails to consider the reasons why young white working-class males no longer have the urge to pursue a career in the military. As in the United States there are issues related to the general physical conditioning, competitive remuneration in the private sector, the physical demands of military service and different attitudes held by the younger generation to military service. Yet another challenge to recruitment which will become more pronounced in the non-so-distant future is that of falling birth rates which is shrinking the pool of potential recruits.

Felton was recently taken to task for his views on the naval service in a history-focused YouTube channel. It is titled "Mark Felton is helping spread misinformation.

Britons who are well-versed in the maritime history of their nation unsurprisingly and understandably think of the Roya Navy - the Senior Service- as the heroic figures who sank The Bismarck, whose plucky light cruisers backed up The Admiral Graff Spee in the Battle of the River Plate, who went toe-to-toe with the High Seas Fleet at Jutland and with imperious Nelsonian pride swiftly avenged their defeat at the Coronel by destroying a German squadron during the Battle of the Falklands. The British navy also played a decisive role in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade. 

But of course, the Royal Navy had its dark side, subduing -in the service of empire- a multitude of sovereign African and Asian city states and kingdoms. It also served as the instrument for conducting gunboat diplomacy by, for instance, assuming the role of a debt-collecting Leviathan Sea monster in the Don Pacifico Affair and by launching a series of amphibious assaults and blockades in the course of forcibly opening trade with China during the Opium Wars. Also, prior to 1807, the Royal Navy protected Britain's slave-based sugar economy by escorting slave ships and directly enslaving Africans who worked as labourers at dockyards on islands such as Jamaica and pressganging people into military service.

And notwithstanding the navy's laudible efforts in combating the drug trade on the high seas, its contemporary role alongside other branches of the British armed forces is often mired by their supporting act to the hegemonic adventures of the U.S. empire, endeavours in relation to which Britain has given diplomatic cover to American-instigated conflicts which do not stand the test of morality and which consistently breach the strict application of international law.

The question Felton does not address is precisely what an imperial-sized Royal Navy would be doing in this age? Provoking Russia in the Baltic and Black Seas? Or China in the Strait of Malacca? And does he envisage the Royal Navy follow the same path as the U.S. Navy which itself has been repurposed as a piratical maritime force which extrajudicially kills the occupants of speedboats far from its national jurisdiction, enforces illegal blockades aimed at stealing the natural resources of other nations such as Venezuela, as well as conducting medieval like sieges with the objective of starving countries such as Cuba into submission?

I certainly believe Felton to be highly selective in terms of the information he has deployed on this latest critique of the Royal Navy and would go as far as to accuse him of sensationalism and even intellectual dishonesty.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War College Nigeria.

Adeyinka’s article "The Bonny Landing: The anatomy of Black Africa’s first amphibious operation, July to September 1967" was published in the August 2024 edition of The Mariner's Mirror, the international journal of the Society for Nautical Research.

Examining Nick Tosches' book on the life of Sonny Liston

Tosches’ book was titled Night Train: The Sonny Liston Story in the United Kingdom in contrast to its original American title The Devil and Sonny Liston.

My discovery yesterday of the publication of this article which examines Nick Tosches' biographical treatment of Charles "Sonny" Liston has just inspired me to fish out my copy of the Tosches book.

Sandwiched between biographies on Joe Frazier and Louis Armstrong, I have not opened it for a good number of years and can hardly believe how many years ago I acquired it. Accompanying the inscription of my name is the date of purchase: "27 April 2000".

The publication of Tosches' book was looked forward to by many boxing afficionados. The last treatment of Sonny's life had been that of Rob Steen which was titled Sonny Boy: The Life and Strife of Sonny Liston. It is another boxing biography among my collections and again cannot help but marvel at the passage of time. My inscription finishes with "20th of March 1993".

I recall that many aficionados were not enthralled by Steen's book and even fewer were thrilled by Tosches' effort.

It took some time for me to appreciate that many readers of the sport of boxing prefer what I would describe as a "meat and potatoes" stylizing of a biography. In other words, one that is linearly arranged, devoid of the penmanship of the hyper-intellectual overly devoted to thematic interludes on issues of culture and philosophy.

While the hard-boiled journalistic style of Budd Schulberg and the participatory journalism of Norman Mailer and was largely appreciated by the average boxing book reader, the efforts of writers such as Steen and Tosches were angrily dismissed.

Why?

I think Tosches was seen by many as fundamentally an interloper. In other words, he was cynically a non-aficionado using the rich history of sport, its litany of characters and the drama that intrinsically attaches to a contest between two gloved combatants in a squared ring for the selfish purpose of enhancing their credentials as a writer.

Also, Tosches' emphasis on the Mafia underworld at the expense of giving a more structured account of Liston's boxing career did not go down well. Neither did his unflattering evaluation of Muhammad Ali as the apotheosis of "mediocrity". Moreover, his penchant for "macho writing", described by the New York Times's reviewer as "his complex, heavy-breathing metaphors", struck boxing readers as akin to the exhibition of a show-off circus juggler.

I personally have no such qualms and seek to extract whatever knowledge and enjoyment that I can from each biography I read regardless of the author's stylization. If the biographer's aim is to present the "truth" and the essence of a person, there are a variety of ways of achieving this, including Tosches' strategy of framing Liston and his existence in America via Aristotelian ideology.

And I of course look forward to absorbing Narjisse Moumna's deconstructions of Nick Tosches' method of attempting to uncover the truth and the essence of Charles "Sonny" Liston.

The Architecture of Absence | ALMA Magazine

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Captain Eugene Simon Karpe: The U.S. naval officer whose suspected assassination inspired Ian Fleming to write the James Bond thriller From Russia, With Love

Portrait of U.S. Navy Captain Eugene Simon Karpe (Public Domain).

In February 1950, Eugene Simon Karpe, who for the previous three years had served as the U.S. Navy Attache to Romania, was returning to the United States when his mutilated body was found in a train tunnel near Salzburg, Austria.

He had been travelling on the Orient Express.

An Austrian railway lineman told reporters that both of Karpe's legs had been severed and found lying approximately sixty feet away from the rest of his body.

There had been no signs of struggle and no blood found inside the compartment. A spokesman for Austrian National Railways stated that all the doors into the train's sleeping cars opened inward and that if Karpe had lost his balance and fell, one of the doors would have had to have been left open at the last stop.

Karpe was said to have suffered from gout which made it difficult for him to stand erect.

But the reason why his death was suspected of being a political assassination engineered by one or more of the secret services of the Communist Bloc is that Karpe's close friend Robert A. Vogeler, an executive of the Hungarian subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph, had been arrested, tried and convicted in Hungary for what the authorities described as "espionage and economic sabotage".

It was speculated that the Hungarian authorities believed that Captain Karpe had, along with Vogeler, been a member of an allied spy-ring and that his death had been a political assassination. He had visited Vogeler's family in Vienna three days before his death, and Vogeler's wife had spoken of receiving three mysterious phone calls from a woman speaking perfect English who asked her:

"Have you heard about your friend?"

The caller then hung up. The calls occurred before news of Karpe's death was made public.

On his last visit to America, Karpe's brother-in-law recalled him saying the following:

"I kind of hate to go back to Europe. They are always keeping a close watch on me and know every move I make."

"They" referred to the communist authorities.

Karpe was buried at Arlington Cemetery on March 16th, 1950.

In 1952 a Romanian named Ryan Petrescu confessed to having killed Karpe by pushing him off the train prior to stealing important documents from him. He claimed that he had done this with the help of two accomplices. He also told the authorities in Switzerland who apprehended him that he had been acting under "orders from a foreign organisation." However, the Swiss police who disbelieved the 24-year-old law student's claim took no further action.

Karpe's death remains shrouded in mystery to this day.

NB

. While posted in Romania, Karpe was also a naval member of the Allied Control Commission (ACC) -the joint governing body of the Allied powers in occupied Germany and Austria after World War 2, which consisted of representatives from America, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. It exercised supreme authority to supervise demilitarization, denazification, and the administration of post-war Germany.

. During World War 2, Karpe served as the captain of a destroyer in the Pacific theatre.

. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis in 1926.

. He won the Legion of Merit and the Navy Commendation Ribbon.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Lieutenant Colonel Marcelino da Mata: Portugal’s Most Decorated Military Officer

 

Lt. COL. Marcelino da Mata photographed in full dress uniform (AI-treated Public Domain photograph).

Born into the Papel ethnic group in Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea Bissau), da Mata volunteered to serve in the Portuguese army in the early 1960s in place of his brother who had been conscripted.

He went on to fight in the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974) during which he participated in 2,412 military operations -mostly in Portuguese Guinea.

The most notable operations were:

. Operação Tridente (1963/64)

. Operação Mar Verde (1970)

Tridente was a combined operation aimed at eliminating the guerrilla presence from the Como Achipelago, while Mar Verde was the amphibious invasion of Guinea-Conakry.

He was a member of the Portuguese Commandos, an elite unit which specialised in counterinsurgency operations against the guerrillas of PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde / Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) which was led by Amilcar Cabral.

The guerrilla campaign was successful despite Cabral's assassination in 1973.

Da Mata received the following medals:

. Cruz de Guerra (War Cross) for acts of bravery. He received five in all.

. Appointed to the Order of the Tower and Sword, Portugal’s highest military decoration for valour.

He remained in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution of 1974 and was detained for a period. He served from 1960-1990. He lived quietly in Portugal until his death in 2021 from complications related to COVID. He was 80 years of age.

Da Mata's funeral was attended by senior military officials and his death acknowledged by the Portuguese president. 

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

The Naval Ranks of Rear Admiral And Commodore: A Tale of Controversy And "Confusion"

Joseph Edet Akinwale Wey, the Nigerian Chief of the Naval Staff photographed in 1968. (AI colorised via Grok).

This photograph of J.E.A. Wey displays shoulder boards which consist of a large eight-pointed star with a cross sword & baton and an eagle which reveal his rank to be that of a rear admiral in the old style used by the British Royal Navy, with the eagle replacing the royal cypher.

But for me the photograph recalled the often-fraught history of distinguishing the ranks worn respectively by rear admirals and commodores.

At one point I suspected that his shoulder board could have represented a 1960s era Nigerian translation of the rank of a Royal Navy commodore. And if so, that the picture library where I discovered it would have been wrong about the year in which the photograph of taken because Wey had been a commodore up to June 1967.

This confusion between the shoulder boards of rear admiral and commodore stems from the history of some naval captains been appointed as commodores. The first issue to clear up is that the designation of commodore was in fact not a rank but an appointment of a senior captain who exercised a high level of responsibility. This covered roles at sea such as serving as the commander of a squadron of ships or as the head of major shore establishments including naval bases.

The appointment was essentially temporary although it often formed a crucial stepping stone for an officer enroute to becoming a rear admiral. Indeed, a commodore (First Class) was entitled to wear the rank stripes of a rear admiral on the lower sleeves of his reefer jacket. However, when wearing either a great coat or the all-white service dress with a short, stand-up collar, commodores of the 1^st class had a distinct set of shoulder boards (also known as shoulder straps) which consisted of a large anchor, two small eight-pointed stars arranged horizontally and royal cypher.

This was depicted in the 1956 movie The Battle of the River Plate in which the figure of Commodore Henry Harwood, the commander of the South Atlantic Squadron was portrayed by the actor Anthony Quayle.

Anthony Quayle as Commodore Henry Harwood in The Battle of the River Plate.

But the mild confusion of the past has intensified in contemporary times.

In 1997, commodore became a substantive rank in the Royal Navy -equivalent to that of an army brigadier. They also inherited the shoulder boards, once worn by rear admirals, that is, the large eight-pointed star, cross sword & baton and royal cypher. Thus, when the old-style rear admirals shoulder boards are sold to collectors, a good many vendors often describe them as ones worn by commodores.

It means that images or depictions of rear admirals in the past may also be misunderstood. An example of this can be found in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice which was released in 1967.  Ian Fleming, the author of the novel upon which the film was based, revealed ‘M’, the fictional head of the British Secret Service, to be a retired vice admiral named Sir Miles Messervy ('M'). But in the movie the actor Bernard Lee who portrays Messervy wears the old-style Rear Admiral's shoulder boards. Today, a Royal Navy rear admiral’s shoulder boards consist of two eight-pointed stars arranged vertically, a crossed sword & baton and royal cypher.

Bernard Lee as the Ian Fleming created Sir Miles Messervy ('M') in You Only Live Twice (1967). Lee is wearing the old-style shoulder boards of a Royal Navy rear admiral which today would be worn by a commodore.

It should be noted that the "confusion" over the Rear Admiral and Commodore rank has its own story in the United States.

Originally a title granted by the Secretary of the Navy to naval captains who as in the case of the Royal Navy were granted special responsibilities such as the command of a naval squadron, or as in the case of the famous Matthew C. Perry, the commandant of a navy yard, the U.S. Navy in 1982 decided to create the substantive one-star rank of "commodore-admiral". This was renamed “commodore” until the rank of rear-admiral (Lower Half) was established in 1985. It retained its one-star status in contrast to the two-star status of rear admiral (Upper Half).

The reformation of ranks was largely due to complaints made by disgruntled officers from the other branches of the U.S. armed forces. For instance, army brigadier-generals when embarked on joint operations often perceived themselves as being superior in rank to rear admirals -despite their two-star status- because they were originally promoted from the rank of captain, a senior rank but one not that of a flag officer.

Meanwhile in Britain, it was discovered that even after the transforming of commodore from an appointment to a substantive rank, senior Royal Navy captains of six years seniority were being paid the same salary as British Army brigadiers and Royal Air Force air commodores. But as was the case with the United States military, these issues have been sorted out to quell inter-service grievances, as well as to establish uniformity with other militaries belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

And as is the case with the Royal Navy, the contemporary Nigerian Navy rear admiral does not wear the shoulder boards worn by Joseph Wey in 1968. Today they consist of two small six-pointed stars arranged horizontally, a crossed sword & baton and an eagle. In contrast, the board straps of a commodore display a small six-pointed star, an anchor and an eagle.

Rear Admiral (left) and Commodore ranks in today's Royal Navy

Note.

Joseph Wey was also a member of the Supreme Military Council and later became the Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters. He was compulsorily retired in July 1975 after the coup which overthrew General Yakubu Gowon and brought Brigadier Murtala Muhammed to power. His final rank was Vice Admiral.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War College Nigeria.

Adeyinka’s article "The Bonny Landing: The anatomy of Black Africa’s first amphibious operation, July to September 1967" was published in the August 2024 edition of The Mariner's Mirror, the international journal of the Society for Nautical Research.

The moral fibre and resilience of the Islamic Republic of Iran: A continuum of Persian civilisation

A 1978 poster titled “Ashura: Victory of Blood Over the Sword”.

The argument that the Islamic Republic of Iran, established in the wake of the Iranian revolution of 1979, has a moral compass will come as a shock to many of the propagandized people of the West.

Iran supports the Palestinian cause. It sees the Palestinians as the victims of a decades long programme of ethnic cleansing instigated by Zionist Israel which is backed by the United States. It also supported left wing liberation movements in South Africa and Central America. Israel was at the same time supporting Apartheid South Africa and training right-wing death squads in Latin America.

The Iranian Constitution has a clause making it mandatory to set aside funding for liberation movements. This is something not understood by the West and most Westerners who absorb all the conflated anti-Islamic propaganda of the Western Mainstream Media.

The accusation that Iran is the greatest sponsor of global terror is untrue. Most terrorist acts committed by militant Muslim groups are by Sunni organisations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. Iran's Shia ally -not proxy- in Lebanon, Hezbollah exists simply because of Zionist Israel's coveting of Lebanese territory up to the River Litani.

The West cannot digest the fact that far from introducing a regressive and unenlightened culture as they believe all Islamic societies do, Iran has maintained a scientific culture alongside the culture of poetry and philosophy. The educational qualifications of many of their political leaders attests to this. The late Ali Larijani for instance was a scholar who wrote three books on Immanuel Kant's philosophy including one which focused on the mathematical method in Kantian philosophy.

Iran's contemporary achievements in science can be ascertained from the amount of patents registered by its citizens, the contributions of its academic community to journals on physics, and of course from its ballistic missile and drone-making programmes.

Iran has a multi-layered moral base which is simplistically distorted in the West as a medieval hardline attitude against females and gays. They have no idea that Iranian women undertake almost the full gamut of occupations from taxi drivers to university professors. They do not all wear hijab and are not forced to. Their literacy rate is far in excess of the time of the Shah when rural illiteracy was widespread.

The West refuses to believe that Iran has for decades declined to make a nuclear bomb just as it refused to retaliate against Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and civilian populations during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Both decisions, fatwas respectively by Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei, were based on the view that usage of both in war is un-islamic.

Iran may be a theocratic state, but it has layers of democratic institutions and decision-making processes which cannot rationally have it pigeonholed as a despotic state ruled by a single dictatorial cleric. It is certainly more democratic than the absolutist monarchies of the Gulf region who are allies of the United States and subservient to Israeli interests.

Iran's lengthy heritage goes back to the Achaemenid Empire and its famous kings such as Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius. Persia also produced many scholars and poets during the highwater mark of Islamic achievement. They include the polymath Omar Khayyam.

Belatedly, Iran is now being acknowledged in Western media as a "civilizational state" -not only because of the aforementioned history, but because of the resilience of its political and military leadership in the face of a criminal war of aggression launched on it by the United States at the behest of the State of Israel and its lobby.

Its people -including many who are not supporters of the Islamic form of government- have also been resilient and have rallied to their leaders as they have seen scores of innocent civilians killed by American and Israeli bombs in deliberate attacks on population centres and non-military infrastructure.

This rallying around the flag in the face of an external aggressor is not a new phenomenon. But the resilience of the Iranian population who have staged rallies at squares, thoroughfares and bridges in defiance of American and Israeli bombing ought to inform Western audiences about a national psyche that is infused not only with a pride in being Persian but also from being a Shia nation for hundreds of years.

The resultant synthesis of Iranian culture and Shia Islam has imbued the country's people with the spirit of martyrdom for the cause of honour and liberation.

They are after all the "children of Imam Husayn", the grandson of Islam's Prophet, who sacrificed himself and his followers at the Battle of Karbala against an unjust ruler.

And in this existential war against what they consider to be the "unjust" regimes of America and Israel, they are willing to endure sacrifices which the average Westerner is unable to comprehend.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.