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.
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