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.